Dublin actor Gabriel Byrne has made his way onto a Netflix original series as it's just been announced he will have a role in the second season of Marco Polo.

The actor, whose most recently been seen in TV shows Vikings, Quirke and In Treatment, will play the part of Pope Gregory X in the historical drama which launches its second season on the streaming service on July 1st.

Commenting on the role, Gabriel Byrne said "I’ve always been kind of fascinated by Papal history, and the Janiston play, the Pope doesn’t come up everyday. I mean I’ve played the devil, played a priest but you know to play the Pope is an interesting segway. So I was very happy to be part of it. And It’s a huge production, a gigantic crew, so the idea of joining a huge enterprise like this, was interesting."

Going on to say; "An interesting change has happened over the last few years in terms of film and television; more people are watching Netflix rather than are actually going to see independent films. There was a time television was snobingly regarded as the poor cousin of the cinema artistically. But now people are beginning to see that writers have the power in television, so scripts and themes are more varied and more interesting...

"The market for this kind of production means that it will reach households all over the world and that’s an enormous difference to what it was like 15/20 years ago when if you made a film like this it would come to a cinema, probably a multiplex, you go see it but it didn’t reach into areas outside the multiplex. So, in a way, Netflix, HBO, Showtime, they are now in people’s houses with what used to be the product of the cinema...There’s tremendous scope artistically to deal with a variety of topics because of the freedom in these kind of productions...And it’s changed the way people absorb entertainment."

For those that haven't seen it, Marco Polo stars Lorenzo Richelmy as the famed explorer and follows his adventures in Kublai Khan's court in 13th Century China.