Playing Henry VIII in The Tudors has given Jonathan Rhys Meyers a keen sense of 16th-century royal cuisine.

"If you look at the Tudor diet, I'm surprised anyone lasted longer than six months," said Rhys Meyers, whose series returns to CBC for its third season tonight.

The conversation about food got started when we mentioned to Rhys Meyers that he is considerably younger than Henry VIII was when the general events -- with poetic licence, of course -- depicted in The Tudors took place.

"Eight years, we've pulled everything back only eight years," said Rhys Meyers, a 32-year-old native of Ireland. "Remember, Henry was dead by the time he was (55), and he was king by the time he was (17).

"By the time you were 12 you were a fully grown man. Girls were married at 12 and 13. They would bear five children by the time they were 20, you know? They were lucky to last past 30."

And then there was the diet.

There seems to be plenty of fruit on the set of The Tudors, but that mostly is due to the personal tastes of the actors. The real Henry VIII probably was eating fried chicken all day, right?

"But Henry wouldn't eat fried chicken," Rhys Meyers corrected. "They would take a chicken, tear the top off, giblets on the top, and they would take giblets from the bottom, they would take the throat, and the head, and the feet, and they would clip the wings, and they would cook those. The breast would go to the poor."

Not surprisingly, the poor sometimes were healthier and lived longer than the rich in Henry VIII's time.

"The poor were mostly rural, agricultural, so they would eat vegetables, they would drink water, they would eat roast beef, whatever they had at the time," Rhys Meyers said. "Whereas if you went into the city, you're having jowl of salmon, jowl of chicken.

"And when you're inside the kingdom itself, sanitation goes out the window. Clean water was not a possibility. What they used to drink as water had a good percentage of ale in it.

"The average man would imbibe 22 litres of alcohol per week, the average woman 15. So when you see portraits from that time and everybody looks a little worn? That's why they look worn."

Could Rhys Meyers have told us anything about this stuff before he joined the cast of The Tudors?

"Of course, you learn," he acknowledged.

Don't we all.

The third season of The Tudors already has aired in many countries, but the show always gets delayed in Canada because of CBC's springtime coverage of the Stanley Cup playoffs. The fourth -- and reportedly final -- season of The Tudors will air in 2010.

As the third season begins, Anne Boleyn has been beheaded and Henry VIII weds a third time, to well-liked peacemaker Jane Seymour (Annabelle Wallis).

While life at court has become calmer, a group of once-loyal subjects in the north begins a rebellion, in objection to Henry's crusade against Catholicism. The rebellion enrages Henry, who blames Thomas Cromwell (James Frain) for either misreading the level of resistance or misinforming the king.

Later in the third season, young British singer Joss Stone will appear as Henry's fourth wife, Anne of Cleves.

"At the start of season three, even though Henry is still dangerous, he has found some sort of comfortable family life," Rhys Meyers said. "That is snatched away from him, throwing him into further turmoil. And then there's the rebellion in the north and the ill-advice he got from Thomas Cromwell.

"So a lot of things are going on in Henry's head. He is a leader. It is very difficult to lead."

Nothing vast quantities of ale won't cure. Oh wait, that's part of the problem, got it.