David Farnor | On 24, May 2016

Gabriel Bryne has joined the cast for Season 2 of Marco Polo.

The 10-episode second run of the Netflix original series, created by John Fusco, will continue the tale of the explorer (pictured above) in Kublai Khan’s court in 13th Century China – a world replete with greed, betrayal, sexual intrigue and rivalry.

The Irish actor, who memorably appeared in TV show Vikings (which airs on Netflix rival Amazon Prime Video in the UK), will play Pope Gregory X.

Commenting on the role, Gabriel Byrne told Entertainment.ie: “I’ve always been kind of fascinated by Papal history, and the Janiston play, the Pope doesn’t come up everyday. I mean I’ve played the devil, played a priest but you know to play the Pope is an interesting segway. So I was very happy to be part of it. And It’s a huge production, a gigantic crew, so the idea of joining a huge enterprise like this, was interesting.”

“An interesting change has happened over the last few years in terms of film and television; more people are watching Netflix rather than are actually going to see independent films,” he added. “There was a time television was snobingly regarded as the poor cousin of the cinema artistically. But now people are beginning to see that writers have the power in television, so scripts and themes are more varied and more interesting…

“The market for this kind of production means that it will reach households all over the world and that’s an enormous difference to what it was like 15/20 years ago when if you made a film like this it would come to a cinema, probably a multiplex, you go see it but it didn’t reach into areas outside the multiplex. So, in a way, Netflix, HBO, Showtime, they are now in people’s houses with what used to be the product of the cinema…There’s tremendous scope artistically to deal with a variety of topics because of the freedom in these kind of productions.”

Season 2 of the action adventure will premiere globally on Friday 1st July 2016.

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