Renaissance man
WHY THE rETurn OF MEDICI IS SET TO BE MAGnIFICO…
1 You don’t need to have seen the first season
You might have seen Medici: Masters Of Florence – the one with Dustin Hoffman and Richard Madden – but it really doesn’t matter if you haven’t. Netflix’s Medici: The Magnificent is technically Season 2 of the same show, but set 90 years later, telling a new story with a new cast about a completely different member of the Medici family. “I want people who don’t even like historical drama to want to watch this,” says writer and showrunner Frank Spotnitz (The X-Files, The Man In The High Castle). “Pretend it’s not about a real guy and this is still a story that absolutely needs to be told.”
2Lorenzo de’ Medici changed everYthing
Lorenzo de’ Medici was the rich kid who dragged the western world out of the dark ages in the 15th Century, financing the Renaissance, fighting for Florence and schmoozing his way through some very sticky Italian politics. “Lorenzo’s history is such a Hollywood story,” says Daniel Sharman (Immortals, Teen Wolf), leading the cast alongside Sean Bean, Sarah Parish and Alessandra Mastronardi. “It’s got death and jealousy and sex and madness and art and great big battles… and it’s all tied to this one young guy who took on the establishment as a twentysomething. He’s an action hero.”
3 sean Bean is Mean
“It’s always good to get your teeth into a juicy bad guy role,” says Bean, back swinging his sword on TV again as Jacopo de’ Pazzi, the old, bitter, art-hating nemesis of the Medicis who (literally) stabs people in the back. “I didn’t know much about the guy to be honest, but I always enjoy that part of the process the best, reading up on the real facts.” Not that there isn’t a downside to playing another historical villain. “I tend to die horribly in everything where I have to wear long hair,” he laughs. “I start reading my scripts from the back now!”
4 it’s aBout Bankers (But that’s ok)
“One of our first challenges was to ask ourselves, ‘Why should a modern audience care about 15th Century bankers?’” says Spotnitz. “But this has always been about so much more than that.” For everyone involved, one of the biggest draws was getting to retell the history of the real people who made history… the unsung women in the background. “Lucrezia de’ Medici was one of the first feminists,” says Parish. “She wrote poetry, she wrote plays, and she helped to steer the current of world events, really without any credit.”
5 it’s kind of a Big deaL
Filmed back-to-back with Season 3 – which will follow Lorenzo’s story as an older man – Medici: The Magnificent was shot on location in real Florentine palaces. What’s more, since the first season broke viewing figures in Italy, the show is being financed like a blockbuster. For Bean, who knows his way around an expensive set, it’s all a bit overwhelming. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” he says. “When I made Sharpe we didn’t even have any lights. We once filmed a whole army with 15 blokes walking around the camera in a circle. This is something
else.” Paul Bradshaw