Move over, hot priest! Tom Hiddleston is serving 'lusty vicar' on The Essex Serpent

If your love for Fleabag's Hot Priest (Andrew Scott) still hasn't passed, Tom Hiddleston is here to save the day (or quite possibly ruin your life).

Hiddleston stars as Will, a Victorian vicar who forges a connection with amateur scientist Cora Seaborne (Claire Danes), on Apple TV+'s The Essex Serpent.

When asked about the inevitable comparisons playing an attractive man of the cloth, Hiddleston laughs, before Danes prompts him to tell a story about a man who wandered onto their location shoot and realized what they were filming (The Essex Serpent is based on Sarah Perry's novel of the same name).

"There was a passerby who'd come to visit an ancient site in Essex," Hiddleston recounts to EW. "He came by where we were filming and said, 'I'm not here to disturb, but I think I know what you're doing and I know the story. You must be the lusty vicar. There's always a lusty vicar. I can tell by your hair.'"

"The performance followed," Danes drolly remarks.

Hiddleston demurs when it comes to anticipating audience reaction to his new role, saying, "There's no competition with Andrew Scott. C'mon, no one can compete with Andrew Scott, no one."

But his co-star understands the appeal of his role innately. "I'm on Team Lusty here," Danes quips.

In all seriousness though, the role demands much of Hiddleston, a man of faith trying to lead his flock through a difficult time and resisting a mounting attraction to Cora despite already having a wife, Stella (Clemence Poesy). An exclusive clip from the series' premiere showcases Will acting as a literal shepherd to a flock, trying to free a sheep caught in the marsh — as Cora comes to his aid.

One might assume Hiddleston's background as a classics student at Cambridge would have been excellent preparation to portray a man who often recites passages in Latin. But Hiddleston says he found the religious texts themselves and the collective experience of the pandemic most useful in crafting his character.

"I was really humbled by it in a way," he reflects. "I was more aware than ever of the extraordinary responsibility that someone like Will has for helping people through times of uncertainty. And to be someone who takes that sense of duty and responsibility very seriously. It must be so challenging to contain the anxieties of so many."

"I have no great expertise in the great texts of faith actually, so that was a bit of new territory for me," he adds, elaborating on his reading preparation for the role. "Those stories seem familiar but they actually weren't and it was really enjoyable to excavate them and to read them. There's one moment, it's one of the psalms that we put on camera at this one point where Will is trying to help everybody and he says, 'Therefore we will not fear though the waters roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling.' You realize that these words have been around so long, and we've all been through so much uncertainty and it was so apt to what we were doing."

The Essex Serpent premieres May 13. Watch the clip above for more.

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