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Can You Picture Jude Law As The Pope?

By Amy Feinstein
Published on: 23:10 PST, Jan 12, 2016

Hollywood has a history of putting out movies with a religious bent, but Jude Law as a sort of sexy pope is a new angle. Law will be playing a fictional American pope, Pope Pius XIII in the upcoming movie The Young Pope. And it seems that the movie provides unique discomforts for Law, who is best known for playing suave, sophisticated hustlers than religious icons.

According to Vanity Fair, Law has complaints about literally being uncomfortable with the various fancy costumes he must wear as the pope.

“At the moment, [the challenge is] that I can only sit on a very uncomfortable sort of stool because they don’t want my papal robes to get creased,” Law said at the Rome Film Fest this October. “So I have to sort of hitch them up and put them over the stool and perch. So once I put the robes on, I usually spend the day, 14 hours, whatever, unable to sit. So I look great, but I’m very uncomfortable.”

The made for television series will air in the United States this year on HBO, and follows the journey of a young American pope making the adjustment to leader of the Catholic Church.

The Daily Mail reported that it isn’t only the costumes that are making Jude Law uncomfortable, but the weather has also been extreme. Law was sweltering in his cassock in South Africa, and shivering with a down coat over his gear in Venice this week. The mini-series will tell the story of the first and youngest American pope in contemporary times that struggles with applying his conservative views in a modern world.

“[It shows] the inner struggle between the huge responsibility of the Head of the Catholic Church and the miseries of the simple man that fate (or the Holy Spirit) chose as Pontiff.”

The Young Pope is a story about faith, and how it can be lost, and once again found.

“[The Young Pope is about] the clear signs of God’s existence. The clear signs of God’s absence. How faith can be searched for and lost. The greatness of holiness, so great as to be unbearable when you are fighting temptations and when all you can do is to yield to them.”

Entertainment Tonight says that tourists have been giving Jude Law strange double takes on the streets of Venice during filming of The Young Pope. They pointed out the irony that even a fictional American pope isn’t well, American. In addition to Law, Diane Keaton will be playing a nun in the crazy world in which Jude Law is the Pope.

The Gazette Review pondered that Jude Law has been laying low for the last few years, and wondered what happened to him when he reappeared as, of all things, the Pope. It seems Law has spent more time in the last few years since his turn as Dr. Watson in 2009 on the stage doing Shakespeare, and participating in political activism.

But now he is back, and has thrown himself into the role as an American cardinal turned pope. But Law is still proving himself to be less human than divine, as he has been photographed in his full papal costume, trying to smoke a cigarette on the sly, The Lord sees everything, Jude Law!

Is Jude Law the actor you would have cast as the pope?

[Photo courtesy of Guido de Bortoli/Getty Images]

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