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Archive for the ‘Press’ Category

While promoting his Oscar-nominated work on 2018’s The Favourite, writer Tony McNamara expressed a dissatisfaction with period drama. Industry insiders were surprised, then, when his follow-up project turned out to be Hulu’s The Great, a darkly comic satire charting the rise of Catherine the Great from outsider to the longest-reigning female ruler in Russian history.

Starring Elle Fanning as Catherine and Nicholas Hoult as her husband Peter, the show is a surprisingly factual deep dive into the life of a woman more widely known for scandalous, and likely untrue, stories about her unseemly love of horses.

Asked about his apparent change of heart during Deadline’s Contenders Television virtual event, the Australian writer laughed. “I think I just don’t like the politeness of period shows,” McNamara clarified. “It’s not like I don’t like period pieces at all—I like Dangerous Liaisons and Barry Lyndon and things like that—I just think I’ve always just been a bit bored by BBC-style period shows. I love the life-and-death nature and the high stakes of period shows, but I just never liked the polite execution. It didn’t seem interesting character-wise, and it didn’t feel visceral and present, and it didn’t feel very funny.”

McNamara revealed that the idea for The Great came to him by chance. “I didn’t know much about her except that maybe she banged a horse,” he said of the famous rumor circulated about Catherine. “And then I heard something about her keeping the Age of Enlightenment alive. So, I read up on her and she seemed to be an amazing character—really complicated and really modern in a lot of ways. That made me want to write about her, and I thought, well, how do I write about her in a way that would make me want to watch it?”

Similarly, Fanning knew little about the real-life Catherine. “Like Tony, I knew her for the horse incident,” she noted, “and I knew she was Empress of Russia, but through this I learned so much more about what she did and how she truly is a feminist icon. She took down The Man. She did it, and that was just so fascinating and exciting to me—to show how she became the person who was able to do that. Because, of course, she was born with those qualities inside her, but she had to learn how to use those qualities. And so that’s what enticed me the most—that and her gorgeous optimism and romanticism. She’s a true romantic, and throughout the series she learns that Russia is actually her great love. It’s not a man, it’s a country.”

For Hoult, who also appeared in The Favourite, a big part of the show’s appeal was the chance to work with McNamara again. “It’s my second time working with Tony,” he said, “and everything I’ve read that he’s written, I’ve just fallen in love with instantly. It’s kind of the perfect framework, as an actor, because you get given this brilliant, witty dialogue to deliver and also the scenes just always work fundamentally. So, then you can go off and play.”

Via

With hundreds of scripted shows on television each year, producers are increasingly leaning on existing IP and new takes on established figures to lure viewers in.

This allows deeper, more unique takes on characters that may not have been explored extensively in the past. But for the performers portraying them, it brings a different challenge, as they have to carve out a space for themselves amidst the previous perception of the figure.

Olivia Colman, who stepped into Queen Elizabeth II’s shoes for “The Crown’s” third season, is the perfect example of this: The royal has been portrayed dozens of times in film, television and theater since the 1970s. Colman took on the character after Claire Foy portrayed her earlier years on the Netflix drama for two seasons, and won an Emmy for her efforts in 2018, as well.

Similarly, Hailee Steinfeld became the titular poet in Apple TV Plus’ “Dickinson” just months after other actors brought her to life in big-screen biopics.

“Playing someone that actually existed, those are huge shoes to fill,” says Steinfeld. “There are people who are just completely and utterly moved by [Emily’s] work and what she left behind — you feel the pressure of their expectations. This is someone who has been in people’s lives, who has made people feel like they are not weird because all they want to do is create.”

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Elle is featured in The Hollywood Reporter’s Comedy Actress Roundtable with Tiffany Haddish, Jane Levy, Jameela Jamil, Robin Thede and Amy Sedaris. The actresses were asked to share a personal picture for the article, and Elle choose a photo taken by Max Minghella.


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Via

If you’re put off by stuffy biodramas of kings and queens, don’t fear the period series “The Great.” Rest assured: so is the show’s creator.

“I hate period things. Everything I wrote was contemporary,” says Tony McNamara, the Australian TV veteran and Oscar-nominated screenwriter of “The Favourite.” So of course his new Hulu show is set in 1740s Russia and is about Catherine (you know, … the Great). “I read about her and thought, ‘I really want to write about her. … What would it take for me to like it?’”

“The Great” is a splash of cold water to the face of the “Masterpiece Theater” crowd and straight-no-chaser to “The Lion in Winter” fans, who like their royals sniping and snarling, but impeccably written all the same. It’s shockingly direct, even abrupt, but all in service of a compelling narrative with a whole country at stake. Just don’t take it as, shall we say, biographically precise.

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