In recent news, Minnie Driver has taken on the role of Queen Elizabeth in the second season of the Starz series, “The Serpent Queen.” In a recent interview with CNN, Driver discussed her approach to portraying one of England’s most influential monarchs.
“I had lots of conversations with Justin Haythe [executive producer] about all the different aspects we were gonna see in her. The playfulness, basically seeing her using her sexuality as power,” Driver said. “I kind of focused on the things that were going to be different about the performance rather than going back and looking at previous ones because it’s baked in, the extraordinary power that this woman had.”
Driver stars opposite Samantha Morton as Catherine de’ Medici, the queen of France, in the series. While history doesn’t confirm the female rulers ever met in person, they did correspond, and the show imagines what their relationship might have been.
“It was like three and a half hours every day to do makeup, costume, hair. It was a lot, it was a transformation,” Driver said of the elaborate styling required for Queen Elizabeth. “That transformation was so key to that character and the way that she looked. Not just because historically we know that certainly in the portraits we’ve seen, she looked that way, but also because it was her facade. It was her mask. It was how she met the world.”
Despite the creative liberties taken in the show, Driver wanted to nail down every detail, including Queen Elizabeth’s appearance.
The second season of “The Serpent Queen” streams on Starz with new episodes released on its linear channel Fridays at 8 p.m. ET.