Bodices and bodies
Period piece Mary & George stars Julianne Moore as a bossy mother
One of the original momagers, Mary Villiers knew how to use her son to get wealth, power and prestige.
In Mary & George, Julianne Moore plays the white ruff-wearing, pushy mom who took advantage of her son George's charms to win favour in the court of King James I in 17th century England.
“People who do that are using their kids as proxies, right? They're living through them,” says Moore. “She sees in George what she would like, a kind of access to the world. You know, he's male, he's good looking, he's charming. And she really believes that that's how you succeed. She sees a way forward. She has a way to the top.”
Billed as a psychosexual drama, the seven-part period piece launches in the U.S. and Canada April 5 on Starz.
Moore and Nicholas Galitzine, who portrays George, sat down to discuss how this family duo set out to captivate the crown in Mary & George — while admitting that they probably wouldn't have succeeded in the Jacobean era as well as their real-life counterparts.
Q How do you think you would have done in that time period, in that society?
Moore: I don't know that I am as inventive as Mary Villiers was, you know? She's someone who kind of grabbed at every opportunity and lived in a place that was, as a female person, relatively low status. So she only had agency through her marriages and children. What she did was really crazy, I might have just rolled over and died.
Galitzine: I think most of us would feel the same way. That's what's so unique about the story. We are not all those people who have that nous and that want to ascend in that way. So yeah, (I'd) probably die of some horrible disease myself.
Q Your character George is an LGBTQ icon.
Galitzine: He does exist, yes, as an icon. And I hope will continue
to be so after the show comes out. That was actually a really interesting thing to discover. Him being from the 1600s, you know, you might doubt his relevancy today.
But he's actually mentioned in the book of a movie I did, Red, White & Royal Blue, which is a really interesting sort of tether between the two. So that was personally very gratifying.
Q I need to talk to Julianne about the accent, which is perfection.
Moore: Thank you. I just had one wonderful coach named Majella Hurley, who was there with me every day.
I got very, very attached to her. We'd see each other in the weekends, go through the week's work, and then she was there and would listen to me. And I listen to people on the street, and I listen to my co-workers and I, you know, and I lived in a state of abject terror, thinking that I would get it wrong and hoping that someone would tell me if it was wrong.
Q Also, swearing in an English accent.
Galitzine: I think it's a little bit better than swearing in an American accent, maybe. I think we do it a bit better, if I'm honest, sorry.