Actor David O'Hara will join "The Tudors" for the fourth and final season on Showtime. O'Hara plays the Earl of Surrey, the son and heir of the Duke of Norfolk. According to the press release, he is the arrogant but sensitive scion of an ancient family. You may recognize O'Hara from a couple of his previous projects in which he worked with other Tudors' actors like as Donnchadh (King of Ireland) in Tristan+Isolde (in which he starred alongside Henry Cavill and Jamie King) and as Sean Kelly in The Matchmaker (as Maria Doyle Kennedy's brother).
A little background on Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey: He was the son of Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk and that makes him Anne Boleyn's first cousin. Although historically he accompanied Anne and Henry VIII on their trip to France to formally present Anne to Francois I as the future Queen of England, the series The Tudors has not introduced him before now.
It should be interesting to see how Michael Hirst writes Surrey into the show seeing as they have written-out his closest family and friends. His father, the Duke of Norfolk, played by Henry Czerny in season one has been greatly missed since not returning. Personally, I would have loved to have seen his crucial part in Anne's downfall and execution. Hirst could have played out the dramatic moment that Norfolk was forced to condemn his own niece and nephew to death.As for his friends, after Anne's beheading at the end of season two, we saw no more of poet Thomas Wyatt, played by the adorable Jamie Thomas King even though his life was spared and he was released from the Tower. Surrey was a contemporary of Wyatt and shares with him the title of "Father of the English Sonnet." Surrey's closest friend growing up was Henry Fitzroy, whom Hirst chose to kill-off at a historically inaccurate age in season one.
The Tudors is currently shooting in Ireland.