Catherine de Medici is lastly getting her 'day in court docket' within the new collection 'The Serpent Queen.' HL spoke EXCLUSIVELY with the EPs about bringing his anti-hero to reside onscreen, having two Catherine de Medicis, and extra.
Regardless of being one of many longest-serving rulers in French historical past, a tv present has by no means centered round Catherine de Medici — till now. The Serpent Queen premieres September 11 on STARZ and follows Catherine’s unimaginable rise to energy via any means essential. HollywoodLife spoke EXCLUSIVELY with government producers Justin Haythe and Erwin Stoff about why Catherine’s story intrigued them.
“To me, I really feel like I’ve by no means seen an antihero like that who occurred to be a girl,” Justin mentioned throughout the present’s press junket. “We have now nice anti-heroes in tv and movie, and I couldn’t consider one [that was a woman]. She felt extremely trendy to me. The way in which she staged managed her picture, the best way that she negotiated these challenges, the best way that she needed to be higher than all the boys round her. All of this felt relatable. She lived on this absurd world that in sure methods feels relatable to our personal, the place more and more the identical folks win each time it doesn't matter what. I simply had by no means encountered a personality like her, and I had needed to do a villain from historical past, who we’ve judged as a villain, and provides them their day in court docket because it had been, their alternative to show to us and say, ‘Hey, you'd have performed what I did as a result of all the nice persons are already useless.’ That appeared like a very distinctive and enjoyable alternative.”
Erwin added, “To me, her plight very a lot jogged my memory of the plight of girls on this enterprise after I first got here into it within the ’80s. They need to be higher. They need to be smarter, and so they at all times needed to do it behind a person as a result of no person would really give them the ability to do it.”
The producers additionally weighed in on why they assume there’s by no means been a present solely about Catherine de Medici, whose life was crammed to the brim with made-for-TV materials. “The way in which she’s described is unattractive, unroyal, and unable to bear kids, doesn’t pay her dowry. She’s beginning on the backside, and I feel all these issues are within the eye of the beholder,” Justin famous. “You have a look at the work for the interval of that point with the people who find themselves thought of lovely, and to our eye, we expect, wow, okay, that was the wonder normal of the day. This stuff are arbitrary. This stuff are subjective. However she was thought of unfortunate in love. All of these items at some stage aren’t the issues that we normally put a body round.”
He continued, “Our tackle the present was meaning she needed to be smarter, meaning she needed to be able to better cruelty. She needed to be humorous, or she needed to be wittier. There may be want achievement right here the place whenever you’re confronted with challenges, whenever you’re underestimated, you even have the products to triumph. That’s the story. And I feel that’s why folks hadn’t gotten to it earlier than.”
The function of Catherine de Medici can be performed by two actresses: Liv Hill and Samantha Morton. Justin pressured that it was “important” to start out Catherine’s story when she was a younger lady.
“The method was devising the story saying, okay, how can we inform the story about Catherine the place I feel it’s important to inform how younger she was when she was knocked out of her life and dropped, after which needed to consummate her marriage in entrance of an viewers, together with her uncle. I've two youngsters. That’s each teenager’s worst nightmare, proper? She was actually younger. You needed to inform that, however you additionally needed to inform how lengthy Catherine dominated, what number of kids she had, what number of challenges she overcame, what number of kings she outlived, so that you wanted to have two actors play her,” Justin defined.
Regardless of not sharing the display screen collectively, Justin mentioned that Samantha and Liv had a “nice chemistry” with their performances of the identical character. “Liv has a rare poise for someone so younger, and I feel Samantha has an identical poise and energy,” Justin informed HollywoodLife. The Serpent Queen will air Sundays on STARZ.