The Spanish Princess

ridatemi Melusina

Comunque sì che carine lei e Mary!

Graham added, “I loved writing Margaret. Harriet felt close to Margaret and protective of her, defensive actually. In the second half of the season, where Margaret has become increasingly vicious, Harriet came to us and said ‘I don’t want her to be a villain. I don’t want it to be evil and wicked.’ And we had long conversations about it; we talked about Margaret’s legacy, that she brought education for women into England, and she promoted William Caxton and his printing press. We all, look, you know, Margaret isn’t a villain. She is a product of her time. She’s a powerful woman who believes she is plowing a very lonely furrow. She says it on her deathbed, ‘It’s so lonely being being right,’ being the voice of God.” So Harriet really got into that. But as a kind of funny aside, once she did her first scene where she had to be vicious and scream in Maggie’s face, she came off set and she looked at us and she had a little twinkle, and she went, “oh I rather enjoyed that.” So once she got into that, she loved doing more of it. I was sad to see her go.”

“Historically what we know about Lina is that she was part of Catherine’s household 24 years. So for us, the friendship that that implies was such a key piece of the show right from the very beginning.”

Lina and Oviedo’s stories are also two explorations of the experiences of people of color in Tudor England, which Part 2 will continue to document. “There was an incident called Evil May Day, which was kind of like a Tutor [sic] Brexit,” Frost said regarding what their research of the period uncovered. “There was massive rioting and civil unrest and anybody who was perceived as a foreigner in any way was caught up in it. And that felt like such an integral part of the story. Not just for anybody who is living London as an immigrant in this period, but also it has such obvious resonances with our current times. So we, we dig into that story.”
Frost also teased some challenges for Lina and Catherine’s close friendship which (according to my own guess) might stem from Ovideo asking her to put him and their family above Catherine, though Frost stayed mum about any spoilers.

[...] Matthew Graham added, “I think it’s safe to say, without giving too much away, that Maggie’s story with regards to fighting the Tudors is over now. She never will forgive them, and in her heart there is hatred for the Tudors and what they’ve done. But her fealty is now is now in place in terms of, she will not be involved her with more York rebellions or fighting. But we have got another story for her that it will be connected to her faith. and to her loneliness as a woman, actually. We are creating a very interesting relationship story for her that I think will take Maggie to a very, very unusual place, quite a challenging place for the audience and for us as writers [...]"

[...] Given the short span of episodes, and so much history to traverse, there might be a presumption that Part 2 of The Spanish Princess may come after a time jump. But Graham explained that, “we won’t be jumping too far forward, because one of the things we do want to enjoy and we want the audience to see is what an extraordinary early reign Henry VIII had, and Catherine with him. I mean it was a boom for England. The economy was growing, the confidence was growing, it was becoming the sexiest and coolest country in Europe. They were like rock stars, and we want to have a little bit of fun, really, seeing that. We do want to pick up early on in the reign, and then we carry it forward and explore, in great detail really, the machinations of their marriage and how Henry starts to become increasingly paranoid about not being happy, having an heir.”

Graham teased the widening scope of the back eight episodes as well, “It’s a wider ranging a run I think, in terms of its arena, even than the first eight because we were going to also be seeing what happens to Meg in Scotland with James IV. There’s a war between Scotland and England. There’s also what happens with Mary, who’s now a beautiful young woman and is married off into France, to the court of King Louis. So, it’s not just going to be all the tangles within Westminster. It’s going to be tangles in Scotland and tangles in France, and how they all sort of center around the nexus, which is, which is Catherine in London. […] I think the Catherine and taking on the role of queen has been really exciting to write about, and how that encompasses not just [her as a] politician, but army commander and other things that she really was involved in.”

“I think for me there is a massive new chapter of female identity and female experience that we get to explore in the back eight that I’ve never really been able to explore with any iteration of this shows so far, because the York women were always so fertile or popping out babies left right and center,” Frost said. “As a matter of historical record, poor Catherine really struggled to produce that very much wanted heir. And I think there is a whole theme of emotion that is unexplored for me in a drama, but also one I think will really resonate with an audience. It’s not often enough talked about.”

[...] She also teased that, “in the back eight, the stories are bigger and better and more exciting even than the front eight, we think. So it would’ve been such a tragedy if we weren’t able to make them. We hope we’ve saved the best for last.”

I know that you’ve mentioned that you’ve already broken down the next eight episodes. How far in history will those eight episodes go?

Graham: Well, we’d rather not give too much away at this stage. But we will say that obviously we go deep into the marriage between Henry and Catherine and we see a little bit more of the emergence of the Henry VIII that we know and love so well. I guess really what we see is in much more detail — emotional detail and dramatic detail — is basically the fallout from that lie that Catherine told. This is about their struggle to give birth to an heir, and so on, but there’s also a wider political story which is going to be so much fun for the audience. It’s been fun for us.

We’re going to follow Meg Tudor in Scotland with her husband James IV. There’s a point that Scotland goes to war with England that Meg and Catherine will be right in the heart of that. We follow young Princess Mary who gets married off to fat King Louis down in France and we follow some of that. So we’re really following the fortunes of all these women in the course of the next eight [episodes] as well. So it’s opening the show up in a way, taking it out off just the machinations of Westminster and into the machinations of Scotland and in France.

You’re absolutely certainly going to see, the heart of a very robust and a very very macho Scottish court. I mean the Scottish court we’ve had a lot of fun with because it’s going to have a different vibe to the Tudor court. It will be a more aggressive, more machismo, more testosterone, and Meg has to really hold her own up there. She was rather unfortunate with the men in her love life and we will be exploring some of that as well. But she really always gave as good as she got. So expect to see a lot more of that.

You mentioned that we’re also following Mary Tudor. She’s quite young in the first season. Is she going to be possibly recast? I know that the leads are staying, but is anyone else going to be replaced with a new kind of generation of performer?

Frost: You’re quite right. Mary will be recast as an adult, a young adult. There are no plans to recast anybody else. I say that really cautiously because I’m not sure yet if everybody will come back. Certainly there were no plans to recast anybody else.

Then there are some fantastic new characters who will be coming in such as Thomas More, King James IV of Scotland, a new lady in waiting who has replaced Rosa. We’ve got some great new blood as well. Beyond that, we will absolutely be with the original cast.

e se ci sarà la corte francese.

Di Lina e Oviedo poco m'importa