The first season of Cursed, the TV adaptation of Tom Wheeler and Frank Miller’s graphic novel, is finally streaming on Netflix, and TV fans have their first chance to get acquainted with this unique spin on classic Arthurian lore. While you’ve heard of some of the characters on the show before, such as Nimue, Arthur, and Merlin, you may not be as familiar with its villains. Peter Mullan’s Father Carden is the main antagonist throughout the first season, but it’s the church’s enforcer, The Weeping Monk, that provides the show with its most exciting and intriguing baddie.
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The Weeping Monk is played by Daniel Sharman, who many TV fans will recognize for his work on Teen Wolf, Medici, and Fear the Walking Dead. In Cursed, his character is a stoic and mysterious villain, one who doesn’t often reveal too much about what he’s thinking. An expert swordsman, he’s a nearly silent assassin, but he’s also a rather complicated character. There’s definitely more to meets the eye with this one, which will draw some comparison’s to Sharman’s popular character from Fear the Walking Dead, Troy Otto.
“There are a few really big outsider elements of the character, which I really love,” Sharman told ComicBook.com. “I love playing people who are outsiders or misunderstood or there’s some degree of an internal life that isn’t quite resolved. I think what helps with a character like that is there’s something volatile about Troy. The volatility of his internal life is more in how he interacts, whereas with The Weeping Monk, I had to kind of take all of that away because I wanted him to be more emotionally devoid. Like entirely take some of the emotion out of him. Because that’s what made Troy quite fun to play, and also people related to it because there was a charm to him, and there’s something interesting about how he was able to relate to people that was just a bit off. Whereas I wanted to take all of the ability to relate and empathy out of The Weeping Monk so that it took a lot longer for you to get to know this person, and by the end his arc is really interesting.
“But I kind of like that there isn’t a play of that, you keep the audience in the sense of, ‘I just don’t know who this person is.’ Yeah, there are some similarities though between them.”
Otto and the Monk are very different on the surface, in that one is emotional and reactionary, while the other is calm and calculated. But both are very complex individuals, each being misunderstood by the people around them.
You can check out our full interview with Daniel Sharman in the video at the top of the page.
Are you looking forward to watching Cursed on Netflix this weekend? Let us know in the comments!
