Miscasting: a triple FAIL

I think the casting was ok, if not stellar. But there's so much even the season actors can do when the screenplay so weak.

Irons has supplied great performances elsewhere but looks as wizened and ineffectual here as a piece of paper.

Exactly. He was so insubstantial that I worried for his health. He looked exsanguinated and ghastly even when he was an ambitious cardinal, but when he attained the papacy, he resembled an old sheet of parchment, and his mummy-mumbling performance did, too.

I'm afraid I can't agree with the assessments here, especially of Jeremy Irons. His work is stellar as usual. Generally, I think the women are stronger than the men (their acting, I mean), but Colm Fiore is exceptional.
On a side note, I can't help but noticing how much Jeremy Irons looks like Boris Karloff in this series.

my thoughts were that irons was not strong, but in a way it grew on me, how he looked like afrail old teacher or something, someone you would trust from the sound of his voice, and you know in reality behind the mask HE WASNT AT ALL! - it somehow made him even more menacing as the show went on.Made him mnore real, because thats how villains are in real life, you dont recognise them as bad from their face.

that holiday girl was too old to play a child, and freking spotty ugly too with everyone calling her a great beauty that didnt work for sure! But her character wasnt written well, sometimes thick as to planks, sometimes a schemer.


it was a mixed bag of nuts that casting.

I agree. Irons is not the right type for this. You know who would have been perfect? Trump! If you read Borgia's story it's so similar. The nepotism and wilfulness. At one point Irons even utters a famous Trump line: "So true, so true".