Iwan Rheon on ‘Those Who Are Going to Die’ and Ramsay Bolton at the Colosseum

SPOILER ALERT: This post contains spoilers for the entire first season of “Those About to Die,” now streaming on Peacock.

In the underbelly of Rome in Peacock’s swords-and-sandals epic “Those About to Die,” you can call Tenax (Iwan Rheon) many things. Bookie, fixer, faction leader, patron saint of orphans. But by the end of the Season 1 finale, he has taken on another title, whether he likes it or not: Emperor Emperor.

It all goes back to his messy alliance with Domitian (Jojo Macari), the youngest son of the late Emperor Vespasian (Anthony Hopkins), who never quite accepted his older brother Titus (Tom Hughes) as their father’s successor to the throne. In addition to running the betting for the Circus Maximus races, Tenax has become the main force in Domitian’s attempts to disrupt his brother’s rule. A precarious task that Tenax undertakes to gain Domitian’s approval to create a new faction of charioteers. Tenax wants power, fortune and respect, and he can get that by hitching his horse to Domitian’s chariot, so to speak.

But in the finale, Titus is informed of Domitian’s plans to interrupt imports to Rome, which could cause chaos among the citizens. After presiding over the bloody and exciting opening day of the Flavian Amphitheater – what we now know as the Roman Colosseum, built under their father’s reign – Titus drags Domitian outside to hear the evidence against him. A betrayal that, according to him, is punishable by death. What Titus does not know is that Domitian had already ordered Tenax to orchestrate his murder, a plan that falls apart so spectacularly that Tenax must kill Titus himself to prevent Domitian from being confronted by the knife with his meal ticket.

Although Tenax orders more than a few deaths over the course of the series — which was created by Robert Rodat, based on Daniel P. Mannix’s 1958 novel — killing the Emperor is, appropriately, a rubicon he never can unravel.

“It’s business for Tenax,” says Rheon Variety. “It’s always business. In order to function in the big league he has entered, every choice he makes is a matter of life and death. He is constantly one step away from death. So everything he does is to survive. It’s not like he wants to do these things, and he even says so. At no point does he want to kill an emperor, but he has no other options.”

However, by handing Domitian the crown, Tenax leaves Rome at the mercy of a man who will not be so practical or clear-minded about what drives him. After all, this is the same man who watched with glee as his former lover was executed just minutes earlier. The method of implementation? He was tied to the bow of a ship and fed to crocodiles in the flooded amphitheater before a cheering audience. Don’t forget that Domitian already had his tongue cut out.

Rheon says that Tenax wrongly assumes that he has doomed himself by tying himself to Domitian. But the time has passed before doubts start to make a big difference.

“You can see in his eyes that Tenax isn’t sure if this is doable,” Rheon says of his character’s anxiety about Domitian. “Essentially he created a monster. He enabled a monster and put him in power. It’s just a matter of whether he can control it. Can he control him like he controlled Scorpus? Scorpus was a drunken but brilliant charioteer. Domitian could have him killed in a second.

“I think Tenax is scared at the end because he’s in a position he always wanted to be in, but the consequences are scary.”

Speaking of being afraid, the season is coming to an end and Tenax admits out loud that he is not afraid of Domitian, but of the relationship he has developed with Cala (Sara Martins). After joining Tenax to rescue her enslaved children, Cala never claimed that her primary motivation was anything other than bringing her family back home. But her increasingly important role as manager of Tenax’s gambling operations – and their undeniable chemistry – intertwines these two strong-willed people in ways they never expected. Rheon says that Cala brings out an almost childlike vulnerability in Tenax that he suppressed long ago to harden himself while living on the streets.

“She’s probably the only person who’s honest with him,” he says. ‘He has no friends. He’s a loner, a lone wolf. He doesn’t let people in, and he’s a brutal person because he doesn’t have to question himself morally. But here she is, and having some kind of companion is quite important to him. Especially someone who doesn’t lie and whose motivation is completely pure. Everyone is playing a game, but not her.”

Perhaps that’s why he’s so hurt when Cala doesn’t hesitate to betray him to save her children, revealing evidence of his part in the plot to kill Titus. Ultimately, the evidence never reaches Titus before Tenax finishes the job. But the damage has been done. In their final scene, he tells Cala to kill her because she knows he killed the Emperor, and she firmly meets his threat with a fact he can’t refute: he needs her to run his business now that he has his hands. full of Domitian. Their undeniable attraction has become the will of the season that may or may not romance them, but thanks to this feud, it remains unrequited as the credits roll.

“That last scene was a joy to do, and Sara is so amazing,” says Rheon. “But the fact that he doesn’t kill her is important. At any other time in his life or anyone else betrays him, he kills them. Letting people live shows weakness. But that’s why he says, “You scare me.” He knows he needs her.”

But what does Tenax ultimately want? He has shown his aptitude for chariot racing and blood sports. He has spies all over town, many of them children who view him as a father figure. He has also proven that he is willing to get his own hands dirty to further his cause. But what is that cause?

“Respect is what he wants,” says Rheon. “He wants this aristocracy to respect him. There’s something in him that needs that, like a father saying, “Well done, son.”

That would make sense considering that Tenax’s childhood friend and stalker Ursus (Daniel Stisen) revealed that Tenax may have been the son of the patrician who raised them as slaves and whom they later killed to escape. But, Rheon says, more than the nobility running through his veins, Tenax’s closeness to Emperor Domitian causes him to dream bigger by the end of the season.

“As soon as he gets to the end of the season, he thinks, ‘I could be the emperor,’” he says. “And he would probably be a fantastic emperor, because he knows how to run things and make difficult decisions. He is an intelligent man who knows how to play the game. But first he must consolidate himself. Maybe he’s a patrician, which means he can level up much easier. But there is the little problem of Domitian. He has to manage him first.”

Can anyone control a psychopath high on his first real taste of untapped power? Rheon would know better than most, having played a version of that as the chillingly volatile Ramsay Bolton on HBO’s “Game of Thrones.” Ramsay, one of the most cruel and rightly despised characters in all of the Seven Kingdoms, makes some of Tenax’s dark deeds seem like the actions of a Good Samaritan.

So who would win if the two characters Rheon played were dropped into the Colosseum for a gladiator fight? Rheon is betting his money on the man with the patience to emerge victorious.

“I think Tenax wins,” he says, laughing, as he thinks about the odds. “I think Ramsay would make a mistake. In any case, you certainly wouldn’t want to mess with Ramsay, but I think Tenax has a cool head on him, and would involve Ramsay at some point. Ramsay is basically just an idiot. He’s a psychopath. He has no empathy. But Tenax is very empathetic, which means something – even if he doesn’t really show it.

“It would be a good fight though.”