‘I’M LIVING IN A QUESTION MARK. IT’S ALL UNKNOWN.’ TOM HIDDLESTON

What do you think?” Tom Hiddleston asks, leaning forward in the cosy library of London’s Charlotte Street Hotel, next to a roaring fire. We’re sitting in wingback chairs in front of the stone hearth on a cold-snap day in March as though cosplaying his latest project, Apple TV+’s The Essex Serpent.

Adapted from Sarah Perry’s bestseller and directed by Clio Barnard, it follows newly widowed Victorian Cara (Claire Danes) as she travels to the town of Aldwinter in the titular county when hysteria takes hold that a marsh-dwelling beast is stealing local children into the brackish water.

When she meets a married local vicar, William (Hiddleston), the duo struggle with theology, science and myth – as well as a growing illicit connection. A clammy exploration of faith in all its forms, The Essex Serpent leans into Hiddleston’s brooding ability to unpick the kind of morally fractured characters that have peppered his CV since graduating from RADA and making his film debut as a manipulative youth in Joanna Hogg’s Unrelated.

Since then he’s played a relatable rake in The Deep Blue Sea, an undead culture-seeker in Only Lovers Left Alive, an incestuous gent in Crimson Peak, a duplicitous concierge in The Night Manager, and his most famous role, the quicksilver Loki in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. With global fame came West End headlining, in Shakespeare productions of Josie Rourke’s Coriolanus and Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet, as well as a more recent hit (with a Broadway transfer) in Harold Pinter’s Betrayal alongside his off-stage partner, Zawe Ashton.

Now as we toast our toes by the flames and wonder at the aptness of the saucers of our vintage teacups having a serpent-like creature painted into the china, Hiddleston’s contemplation of his latest artistic shapeshifting is prompting as many questions as he answers. Looking a tad spy-like today in navy crew neck (which he worries round the neck as he talks), navy peacoat with dark jeans and grey desert boots, he’s little changed from the polite, affable thesp readers voted as ‘hottest actor’ in our 2012 Hot List Awards, except the pauses are greater between thoughts, as though he now measures his words far more carefully after over