Elle and The Great have been nominated a TCA Award, by the TV Critics Association, and are potential hint of what Emmy nominations will look like.

INDIVIDUAL ACHIEVEMENT IN COMEDY
Pamela Adlon, “Better Things” – FX
Christina Applegate, “Dead to Me” – Netflix
Elle Fanning, “The Great” – Hulu
Catherine O’Hara, “Schitt’s Creek” – Pop TV
Issa Rae, “Insecure” – HBO
Ramy Youssef, “Ramy” – Hulu

OUTSTANDING NEW PROGRAM
“The Great” – Hulu
“The Mandalorian” – Disney+
“The Morning Show” – AppleTV+
“Never Have I Ever” – Netflix
“Watchmen” – HBO
“Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist” – NBC

The Great star and executive producer Elle Fanning, star Nicholas Hoult, and creator Tony McNamara joined Alan Sepinwall for a special Film at Lincoln Center Members Q&A.

When it came to playing the hijinks of Russian empress visionary Catherine the Great and her buffoon husband Peter III in Hulu and MRC’s period series The Great, Elle Fanning and Nicholas Hoult “threw out the history books.”

More specifically, rather than have their performances become bogged down by all the historical facts, they left that to creator Tony McNamara, who is quickly establishing a flair for melding historical drama with absurdist comedy. Not having to hit the books, allowed Hoult, who worked on McNamara’s Oscar nominated The Favourite (he was nominated for original screenplay) to “mess around”; of sheer delight being Peter III’s physical antics of brawling and sharp Month Python-esque one-liners.

That great chemistry between Fanning’s deadpan and Hoult’s foolish king is chemistry the actress says came about during the six month shoot of The Great, even though it’s the second time the duo have worked together after the 2014 sci-fi western Young Ones.

Says Fanning, on which The Great reps her first time as a TV series EP, “Tony has done so much research on the period and in Catherine and Peter, and used the facts that work specifically for our tone. The real work was humanizing the character, making her a character that that could come to modern audiences and show how she became this feminist icon.”

Watch the clip from Tuesday night virtual screening of Hulu’s The Great.

The opening credits to each episode call “The Great” “an occasionally true story,” and certainly there’s a distinctly modern sensibility and a load of deliberate anachronisms in the portrayal of the dysfunctional Russian court. The series is blackly comic feast centered on the delicious feuding between Hoult, played by “The Favorite” vet Nicholas Hoult, and Catherine, played by Elle Fanning with a breezy combination of innocence and steel. Fanning, who also served as an executive producer on the series, spoke to TheWrap about “The Great” on the day that Hulu renewed it for a second season.

“I really find satisfaction with looking at my calendar and figuring out what time I have certain things. But I also don’t force myself to do anything. I’m a daydreamer.”

Just before quarantine started, Elle Fanning was set to fly to Budapest with her older sister, Dakota, to start shooting the World War II film The Nightingale, based on the 2015 novel by Kristin Hannah, which will mark the sisters’ first on-screen appearance together. “We talk about what it’s going to be like a lot,” says Elle, 22. “We’re playing sisters, so there’s not much research to be done. We’ve got that covered.”

Right now, the sisters are in Los Angeles, in isolation together, along with their mom and grandmother. Elle has experienced a few milestones during quarantine: her birthday, in April, and the release, in May, of The Great, a satirical Hulu series about Catherine the Great in which she stars. On July 2, the show’s second season was announced. Catherine is one of Fanning’s first comedic roles, and The Great also marks her first turn as an executive producer.

Fanning has been using the past few months to relax a bit: forgoing alarms, baking ooey gooey butter cakes, going on walks with her mom, doing experimental makeup inspired by the comedian Chelsea Peretti. Here, she talks to WSJ. about her favorite exercise class, the best advice she’s gotten and why this spring was an ideal time for The Great to come out.

The writer behind ‘The Favourite’ penned a bawdy, satirical and not-so-accurate tale: “We actually pride ourselves on the lack of historical accuracy,” says Fanning with a laugh.

Lying atop the red velvety covers of an ornate four-poster bed in a gold-soaked set on a rainy day in London, a sickly looking Nicholas Hoult takes swigs from a bottle of water between takes.

“Men love me for my parties, women and … [gulp] … delicious food,” he splutters moments later after the camera begins rolling (bottle now hidden under the blanket), groaning and retching while Elle Fanning, in a corseted light-green gown and tightly curled blond wig, stands at his feet, feigning concern.

“And women love me for my massive cock.”

Welcome to the world of The Great, Hulu’s bawdy, satirical and not exactly (in many cases, not remotely) historically accurate retelling of the early years of Russia’s famed 18th century monarch Catherine the Great.

A grown-up child star finding her creative power in playing one of history’s most cunning female rulers — the metaphor would be a bit on the nose if it weren’t crafted as thoughtfully as Elle Fanning’s portrayal of Catherine II, the longest-reigning Empress of Russia, on The Great.

The actress steps strikingly into the Golden Era of the empire’s 18th century Enlightenment on the lauded Hulu series, though it takes her character a moment to see past the glitz and glamour. “She starts out as this romantic and very optimistic young girl,” Fanning tells ET of her Catherine, scripted to cunning perfection by The Favourite screenwriter Tony McNamara, who created the series, “and basically is slapped in the face with reality and realizes, ‘OK, this is not the life that I wanted, so I’m going to make the life that I want.'”

Catherine The Great is to continue her reign on Hulu after the streamer ordered a second season of The Great.

The Elle Fanning and Nicholas Hoult comedy drama is coming back for another 10-episode run after its first season debuted on May 15. The streamer said that The Great was “one of the top performing original comedies” on the service, without giving ratings information.

The satirical show tells the story of the rise of Catherine the Great from outsider to the longest-reigning female ruler in Russia’s history with only a few occasional facts.

Phoebe Fox, Adam Godley, Gwilym Lee, Charity Wakefield, Douglas Hodge, Sacha Dhawan, Sebastian de Souza, Bayo Gbadamosi and Belinda Bromilow also star.

The series comes from The Favourite’s Tony McNamara, who created, wrote and exec produced. Other exec producers include Marian Macgowan, Thruline’s Josh Kesselman and Ron West, Echo Lake’s Brittany Kahan Ward, Doug Mankoff and Andrew Spaulding, Elle Fanning, Mark Winemaker and Matt Shakman. It is produced by Civic Center Media in association with MRC Television.

At Deadline’s recent Contenders event, 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?”

Fanning similarly said that she knew little about the real-life Catherine. “Like Tony, I knew her for the horse incident,” she said, “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.”

Via

The star and executive producer of the bawdy historical comedy on boundaries, blood, and bare bottoms.

The Character: Catherine the Great, The Great
In The Great’s first episode, a pink-cheeked Catherine (Elle Fanning) pilots a flower-entwined swing and burbles to a friend about how romantic her wedding to Russian Emperor Peter III (Nicholas Hoult) will be. But after Catherine is delivered from her sleepy German village to the Russian palace, her girlish dreams are dashed when she meets the tyrannical and narcissistic Peter. As she solemnly presents him with an evergreen as a symbol of their love, he turns to one of his minions and barks, “She gave me a twig. She’s not another inbred, is she?”

It’s the abrupt end of her innocent imaginings, as well as the start of a young woman’s campaign, aided by her wit and charm, to plot a putsch—after Catherine learns that if Peter just happens to be killed, she can claim the throne.

“It’s been phenomenal to watch Elle grow into this character as a performer, to balance a tightrope in bringing her to life as this woman who is naive but strong, and also powerless at times,” says Hoult. “[She’s] understanding this new world she’s been thrown into, and also her raison d’être.”