‘Spartacus: House Of Ashur’s Nick E. Tarabay & Steven S. DeKnight Talk Resurrecting A Villain, John Hannah’s Almost Return & Reuniting With Lucy Lawless

The action-packed premiere of Starz‘s Spartacus: House of Ashur is coming on December 5th with two episodes, and Deadline has new insight as to what fans can expect when Nick E. Tarabay returns to Steven S. DeKnight‘s gladiator Universe as Ashur, more powerful than ever before.

There will be plenty for both returning fans and those who are entering the ludus (gladiator school) for the first time, including the intrigue, battle scenes, deception, and lots of Jupiter’s expletives, all of which made the original series a hit for Starz.

The next chapter of the Spartacus universe poses the question: What if Ashur had lived and the Romans rewarded his treachery with the gladiator school where he once bled?

Welcome to the House of Ashur. No longer a slave, Ashur has clawed his way to power, owning the same ludus that once owned him. But ruling a band of merciless gladiators is child’s play compared to surviving the savage world of Roman politics — a cutthroat game in which betrayal isn’t a sin, it’s currency. He flips tradition on its head by unleashing Achillia (Tenika Davis), a fierce and powerful gladiatrix eager to prove herself worthy in a man’s world. Together, they ignite a new kind of spectacle that shocks, disrupts, and offends the elite with every drop of blood.

The series also stars Graham McTavish, Jordi Webbe, Jamaica Vaughan, Ivana Baquero, Claudia Black as Cossutia, India Shaw-Smith, Jackson Gallagher, Jaime Slater and Leigh Gill.

Tarabay and DeKnight spoke to Deadline at San Diego Comic-Con this summer, teasing the resurrection of everyone’s favorite villain, connecting to the show’s origins with the return of Lucy Lawless as Lucretia, and how John Hannah was thisclose to returning as Quintus Lentulus Batiatus—and how the possibility isn’t dead.

DEADLINE: Nick, what insight can you share into how you reconnected with the character of Ashur after all these years?

NICK E. TARABAY: I wish there were a process for Spartacus, but there isn’t. It’s one of those worlds where the more you prep, the better, but until you’re in it, you don’t know what to expect. It’s a show that’s demanding and takes a lot out of you. But I’ve known about how this works for a while now. Steven called me in 2022, so I couldn’t sleep for two years before we started filming because I was super excited. [Laughs]

He knew how to hook me by telling me the last sentence I would say when Season 1 ends. I can’t tell you what it is, but he told me what I would be doing and saying in the first finale before the screen goes black. This is why I haven’t slept in two years, because I couldn’t wait to say that line. I’m a big fan of Steven’s, and it’s such a privilege to work with him. I’m down for whatever he wants to do.

DEADLINE: What type of prep work did you do?

TARABAY: I started working on Shakespeare because I knew the writing was going to be demanding, and it delivered. What I love about this show is Steven’s writing and how you can never get ahead of it. I never know what’s going to happen.

STEVEN K. DEKNIGHT: I remember Nick asking me during the original series how John Hannah did all of those speeches. There is so much material. And now, that’s you.

TARABAY: In hindsight, I think John had it easier. [Laughs] In the first couple of episodes, I talk so much. But you know what? It all makes sense. Sometimes you work on shows, and you struggle to say the words because you can’t make sense of them. But on Spartacus, it’s so poetic. It’s very close to Shakespeare. It’s Shakespeare meets The Sopranos.

DEKNIGHT: I would say it’s Shakespeare meets Conan the Barbarian.

DEADLINE: Steven, you really had the choice of bringing nearly any character back from this franchise, and you picked Ashur. Why did you go with Ashur?

DEKNIGHT: I love working with Nick so much that I wanted to bring him back from the dead.

TARABAY: Aww, thank you.

DEKNIGHT: Ashur is just such a juicy character. He is definitely a villain in the original series. But when you go to Gods of the Arena, you see why he became that. He just wanted to be part of the brotherhood. He wanted to have friends and love, and he was denied that. It was pretty much, “If I can’t serve in heaven, I’ll rule in hell.” This deep-seated emptiness in his heart really drives him, his need to be accepted and loved. One of the challenges we face in the new show is how to take a character who was so despicable in the original and get the audience behind them. And the answer is, introduce even worse people, and they are the Roman elites who really work them over.

DEADLINE: Did you view Ashur the same way, Nick?

TARABAY: I never perceived my character as bad or evil. I saw that everything he did was justified because he had to survive. Back then, it wasn’t like, “Oh, we disagree and we can go our own way.” No, we disagree, so you die. So he had to develop that. I always saw Ashur as a loyal dude who wants to belong, but he wasn’t given that opportunity. This season, Ashur is going up against the big dogs. I’m talking about the big dogs like Caesar and Cornelia, the biggest people of Rome. After meeting them, you’ll think Ashur isn’t so bad after all.

DEADLINE: What can you say about Ashur’s ambitions?

TARABAY: He’s extremely ambitious. There are no friends in this show. One moment, you see two people, and you think they’re buddies, but something bad is going to happen. You are your own man. It’s either deliver or be delivered.

DEADLINE: Steven, in addition to giving us Ashur, the gods will be blessing us with the return of Lucy Lawless as Lucretia. Her appearance is brief, but it explains how bringing back Ashur from the dead was possible. What can you tease?

DEKNIGHT: I think it was so important to bring a legacy character back to introduce this “what if” world. We wanted someone who was intimately connected to Ashur in the original series, which was definitely Lucy Lawless as Lucretia. Since Vengeance, Lucy became basically his slave, for all intents and purposes. That’s how we built the show, based on that one scene that Asher has with Lucretia, where he tells her, “I’m going to get the Ludus and the villa and everything your husband had, and this will be the rise of the house of Asher,” which was the germ of that idea. So we were delighted that Lucy agreed to come back and kick off the show.

DEADLINE: Had you considered anyone else?

DEKNIGHT: We had a contingency plan: John Hannah, in case Lucy’s schedule didn’t work out. We reached out to his team, and they told us he was busy shooting a movie in Spain. So we were like, Peter Mensah? [Laughs] It all would’ve been so different, though, because the relationship between Lucretia and Ashur was so powerful. She was responsible for his getting his head cut off.

TARABAY: Working with Lucy is always such a pleasure. It was so lovely to see her and to play with her back in this universe. The little bit of time I got with Lucy was absolutely brilliant. I would’ve loved to have played with John; he’s one of my favorite people I’ve ever worked with.

DEKNIGHT: We almost put John in the first season. Actually, it was the second season. We had a storyline of you having nightmares and being haunted by John Hannah. But that didn’t quite work out.

TARABAY: Even if you can bring him back for one episode, I would love that.

DEADLINE: The biggest star of the franchise hasn’t been announced, but will be making many appearances in Season 1: Jupiter’s c**k. What can fans expect?

TARABAY: You’ll hear more about him in Season 1, as well as some new variations. [Laughs]

DEKNIGHT: [Laughs] You’ll hear Jupiter’s c**k, the song called “My C**k Races On… There are a lot of surprises. I can’t wait to see what the fans have to say.