Gabriel Byrne Joins Netflix's Marco Polo Cast

The Walkinstown native will be crowned with the Papal Tiara as Pope Gregory X.
Fleshing out the Marco Polo cast, Byrne will no doubt bring a serious sense of authenticity to the role. Raised in a strict Roman-Catholic household, he has first-hand experience of the Catholic Church after spending five years of his youth training to become a priest.
Byrne is delighted that the opportunity of such a role has been granted to him; "I’ve always been kind of fascinated by Papal history, and the Janiston play, the Pope doesn’t come up everyday. I mean I’ve played the devil, played a priest but you know to play the Pope is an interesting segway. So I was very happy to be part of it. And It’s a huge production, a gigantic crew, so the idea of joining a huge enterprise like this, was interesting."
Byrne's casting is yet another major Hollywood name to be signed to a Netflix project as the streaming service continues to get bigger and bigger. "There was a time television was snobingly regarded as the poor cousin of the cinema artistically. But now people are beginning to see that writers have the power television, so scripts and themes are more varied and more interesting..." Byrne commented, "So, in a way, Netflix, HBO, Showtime, they are now in people’s houses with what used to be the product of the cinema...There’s tremendous scope artistically to deal with a variety of topics because of the freedom in these kind of productions...And it’s changed the way people absorb entertainment."
Marco Polo Season Two will see the famed explorer venturing into 13th-century China. Season 2 is due to launch on July 1 but in the meantime, you can catch up on Polo's adventures in Season 1 which are all ready and waiting on Netflix.