There’s a lot more to The Weeping Monk on Cursed. He’s not just a ruthless assassin. Underneath that hood, there’s a troubled man with a heart. In the final moments of season 1 after escaping with Squirrel, who is actually Percival, The Weeping Monk reveals his real name: the one and only Lancelot, a major figure from the Arthurian legend. Daniel Sharman revealed when he found out that he was going to be playing such an iconic character.
“It was something Tom [Wheeler] had talked to me about, so I knew where I had to get to,” Daniel told HollywoodLife. “I knew that was the end goal, this revealing of this person, which made it really fun. I could commit to the first part because I knew where it was going toward the end.”
Since Cursed explores Lancelot’s life before he becomes Lancelot, this gave Daniel the chance to get creative with the backstory for his character. “I think what was interesting about that is you can make it up,” Daniel said. “You can kind of say: how did he get here and where does he go? Why does he become the person that he eventually becomes? You can fill in the blanks, and I talked with Tom about how he got there, how he ended up like this, and what the tears represent.” However, Daniel did read about Lancelot’s past in “various telling of the old myths.” He continued, “He has a very specific temperament. He’s a very specific kind of character. Largely, that will be something that you will have to assume happens after this story is told. He gets there but through this weird side angle.”
Daniel loved having the ability to play a character that no one knew the true identity of until the finale. “I always like that people have certain preconceived ideas of something because you can always produce a reaction from people when they’re like that’s not how he would be or he looks like this,” the actor said. “I think what Tom and Frank [Miller] have done is make something that does that all the way along. When you’re in a world where none of those things [the preconceived notions] really apply, you can kind of make and invent. How would a human being get to be under the care of Cardin? Having been a Fey himself, what kind of trauma must he have gone through to get to that point? So you build out from there. And then on top of that, exploring how he expresses himself and what’s going on underneath. That was all layering it up.”
As for what he’d like to see in a potential season 2, Daniel still definitely wants to explore Lancelot’s inner turmoil. “I think it would be really interesting to begin at the point of being revealed,” Daniel told HollywoodLife. “If it ever gets there, this idea that you get to then play with how conflicted he is. I don’t think it’s now I’m this and everything’s fine. There’s a deep sense of repressed feelings that have been under there for 15 years, so playing a character who is coming to terms with who they were and who they are, how does that play itself out? I don’t think it would be a quick process. I think that would be a long, arduous process.” Cursed season 1 is now streaming on Netflix.