One of the NYCC round table interviews with Tom and David S. Goyer - the one mentioning polyamorous sex - has been transcribed by Just Press Play.com and posted on their website. Read it in full on that site.
Q: I studied Da Vinci in college, but I didn't know most of the things that I've learned from the show. What's the most surprising thing about him that you've learned from doing this?
Tom Riley: Probably his anatomy dissection, of course, and when I saw an exhibition of his that showed how deep into anatomy he went. At the very end, there was a piece saying that it was lost to history but if it had come out, he'd have been the greatest anatomist that ever lived. You think, how is that just a hobby? How do you have that as a hobby and be the greatest that anyone had ever known? But also, and it's the strangest, the double-edged sword of the part, but people have such expectations of who he was and yet you want to do justice to the stuff that you found out about him in his twenties that no one really knows.
David S. Goyer: There's a lot of misinformation about him-
Tom Riley: Yeah, there is.
David S. Goyer: I mean, a lot say they know him-
Tom Riley: He's held in such high regard. People assume they have an idea in their head of who he is and you want to do, particularly an artist who's slightly crazy actually a bit, the version that has foundations in reality as best as possible, and that reality isn't necessarily what's in people's head.
David S. Goyer: And we found out, we were in Florence when we premiered the show last year, and we found out some things, and I mean, this is true, but if we did it, people would say it's bullshit, which is that at one point, Leonardo and Botticelli had a restaurant on the Ponte Vecchio together.
Tom Riley: And it's the sitcom version.
David S. Goyer: Yeah, and this is true. It ran about a year, but it failed because they were much more concerned about like the presentation of the food than they were about getting the food out on time.
Tom Riley: These stories they were telling us, that was when you realize that no matter what you do, you can't, the show is what the show is. We aren't going to please everyone. I watched two historians argue so hard, one saying, “Leonardo was a very thin man, he was a very, very thin man, and he only ate vegetables,” and the other one, “What are you talking about? He was fat! He loved cake!” And they just, these two Italians arguing.
A rather nice review for season 1 has appeared on this blog.
The writing behind any TV show and movie is the backbone of each. It can make or break the given TV show or movie. By direct correlation, the work of the show’s cast makes the show even more of a joy to watch. Actor Tom Riley aptly fills the role of a young Leonardo Da Vinci opposite his equally talented cast mates. He shows his acting chops quite well with this subtle wit and control over his character’s deeper emotions. There are those actors that tend to ham it up on both ends of that spectrum. But Riley doesn’t do that. It makes him all the more fun to watch. He and his cast mates collectively make suspension of disbelief easy, too. This should come as no surprise considering the resumes of some of the main cast. The cast is comprised of rather well trained theater actors that are just as experienced in their craft as they are trained.
