“She’s the first character I had to inject the most of myself into. “I just kind of went, What was I like when I was 14?” Reiss says. “I think that’s why we’re drawn to her.” It wasn’t until she started to think back to her own teenage experience that she began to understand what Elizabeth was going through. “There is something a bit enigmatic and ambiguous about what is going on with her,” she says. It took Reiss a bit longer to get into Elizabeth’s head. Her favorite is his comment to his brother, Thomas Seymour, in episode 1: “We weren’t made to marry princesses.” And suddenly these people became very real to me.” She even found herself taking lines straight from the Duke of Somerset’s letters and using them on the show. “I just kind of went, ‘Oh, I know that guy.’ I’d worked with a guy like that. Can’t you guys take any initiative!'” she says.
“He kept saying, ‘Stop making decisions without me, you have to consult me! I am the one ruling England not you!’ Then he’d write back a week later. She recalls that one note from Edward Seymour, the Duke of Somerset who served as his nephew King Edward VI’s head of state, to the Royal Army in Scotland really unlocked these characters for her. To find the voices of Elizabeth (played by Alicia von Rittberg) and the other royals, Reiss read lots of letters and speeches from the era. Even Elizabeth, who was only 14 when her dad passed away, made power moves that were intended to put her in good favor with her half-brother, although some of those decisions put her at odds with her older half-sister, Mary, who became queen following Edward’s death at the age of 15. Many in the royal court saw the petulant boy’s youth and inexperience as an opportunity to assert their power over the monarchy, while others saw it as a chance to choose their fighter in this battle for royal supremacy. “Seeing how Elizabeth helped shape the world, we should know what helped her understand it.”īecoming Elizabeth, airing Sundays, delves into the real-life royal drama that played out following the death of Elizabeth’s absentee father, King Henry VIII, and his decision to name his first surviving and only legitimate son, nine-year-old Edward VI, heir to the throne. Her understanding of the world comes from this time,” the British playwright and screenwriter tells TIME. To the surprise of show creator Anya Reiss, this era was one aspect of the English monarch’s life and historic 45-year reign that hadn’t yet been covered to excess by Hollywood. The Starz series Becoming Elizabeth centers on the teenage years of Queen Elizabeth I.
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