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“Vorenus goes into a deep depression because everything that was important to him as a man is gone,” explains Kevin McKidd, whose cheerful off-camera demeanor is light years away from the somber bearing of Vorenus. “Where before he was a moral force, now you start to see him unravel. Mark Antony snaps him out of it by giving him the job of cleaning up the marketplace, which was run by gangs. Antony senses a darker, more malevolent side to Vorenus that will enable him to be an effective leader. And in fact, Vorenus terrifies all the gangs because he genuinely doesn’t care whether he lives or dies. There are no longer any consequences for him.”

McKidd says he relishes the opportunity to take the stern Vorenus in new directions. “I love this character, but it’s possible to get frustrated with Vorenus because he’s so emotionally constricted – kind of a monosyllabic, John Wayne type – although there’s all sorts of stuff going on inside him. So it’s fun to explore the flip side of the guy. Shifts of character are not the norm on most episodic TV. Usually you latch onto a character, and that’s that. The challenge for me is to keep Vorenus the man we knew, but show how these cataclysmic events have affected him, show where he’s coming from.

“I always thought of Vorenus as a man out of step with his time, more of a modern thinker. Even when he’s the leader of a gang, he’s trying to do the right thing under the circumstances.”