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Rylan Clark and Alice Roberts front The Witches of Essex(Image: Sky HISTORY)
Rylan Clark is turning his lifelong passion for history into a deep dive into witchcraft as he fronts The Witches Of Essex. It’s a subject that’s fascinated him since childhood.
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“It started at primary school. I was obsessed with history and the Tudors. I remember it all so vividly,” says Rylan Clark. “Things like witchcraft were spoken about but not in detail, and I didn’t realise what a big thing it was.”
Now, in three gripping episodes, Rylan revisits three witch hunts that define British history’s darkest chapters. And he was stunned to discover the story hit far closer to home than he ever expected.
But the more he dug, the more Rylan realised what could really be the root cause of the witch hunts – and a disturbing pattern emerged. “You could have a big nose and be called a witch, it’s that simple, it’s so ridiculous,” he says.
“You could have a disability, you could have a birthmark. If you had a pet, it was called a familiar and you could accuse someone’s pet of completing witchcraft on their behalf. It was anything and everything. If people didn’t like you and wanted you gone, you were a witch.”
Rylan’s outrage sharpened when he learnt about Matthew Hopkins, Witchfinder General in the 1640s. “This man was given the run of Essex to say whatever he wanted, get away with it and women were killed because of him.
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His book became the manual for persecution of women, which then went to America. It makes you angry that someone had the audacity to say a person should be killed, and people went along with it,” Rylan says.
Hopkins’ authority, he continues, was almost cult-like. “He was very powerful and many people treated him like a god. It felt like a cult,” Rylan says.
“The government and royals let him do what he wanted. When you give someone that power, they will use it.” Hopkins’ legacy stretched across the Atlantic, influencing the Salem witch trials in Massachusetts, where 19 people were executed by hanging.
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The punishments, however, were what haunted Rylan the most. “To find out if you were a witch, they would dunk you in a river. If you drowned, you weren’t a witch but you were dead. If you survived, you were a witch and then hanged. It was crazy,” he says.
Rylan has no doubt about the root cause of the witch trials. “Misogyny played a massive part in it and it’s still prevalent today,” he says. “A lot of it boils down to that in the 1600s men ran everything, and women were pushed into the background.”
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Rylan Clark teams up with professor Alice Roberts as they dive deep into the causes of the witch hunts in Britain(Image: Sky HISTORY)
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“Whenever I thought about witchcraft I always thought of Salem, but actually Essex is the original, and the reason Salem happened was because of Essex,” he says. “I’m an Essex boy, I didn’t realise half the stuff happened 20 minutes from my house!”
The series charts centuries of fear and paranoia. In the show’s opening episode, Rylan rewinds to the early years of Queen Elizabeth I’s reign, when an Act of Parliament made witchcraft a felony punishable by death.
In episode two, he reopens a chilling cold case from 1582, when state-sponsored violence against suspected witches swept across England. In the finale, he then investigates the witchcraft hysteria during the English Civil War. But he’s not tackling these stories alone.
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Joining him is Professor Alice Roberts, whose expertise and quick rapport added to the spark on set. “Pretty soon into the shoot we realised that we could be ourselves,” Rylan says.
“Like when Alice does a deep dive into something and I’d yawn at her and go, ‘It’s not that deep.’ We just got each other’s personalities.” Their dynamic was just as playful off-camera. “I definitely pulled her out of her comfort zone at times,” Rylan says.
Together, the pair welcome a string of specialists to piece together the truth of what really happened to those accused of witchcraft. For Rylan, the partnership with these experts became as personal as it was professional.
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“It was majorly important for me personally as well as Alice,” Rylan says. “Alice knew a lot about what the experts were talking about, but I didn’t, so I asked questions.”
Still, they never lost sight of the seriousness at the heart of the subject matter. “There are fun moments and some Rylan-isms where we have the odd joke.
But what works is Alice doesn’t necessarily believe in witchcraft. I’m more open to believing something,” he says. “But ultimately we both just want answers and to know why this happened.”
