RUSSIAN ROYALTY

She has played Elizabeth I and Elizabeth II… now Helen Mirren draws on her own Russian heritage to portray Catherine the Great in a sumptuous Sky Atlantic series about the most powerful female monarch the world has seen.

Catherine the Great, a German princess by birth, deposed her husband Peter III in a coup in 1762 and wielded supreme power as Empress of Russia for 34 years.

‘From the very beginning I wanted Helen for this part,’ says the series’ writer Nigel Williams. ‘We worked together on Elizabeth I and she was uniquely qualified for the role.’

Helen was born Ilyena Vasilievna Mironov, into an aristocratic Russian emigré family. Her grandfather was a Tsarist diplomat and was negotiating an arms deal with Britain when he and his family were stranded in London by the Russian Revolution. He then became a London cabbie. She has said in the past, ‘I’m very proud of my Russian ethnicity.’

The series focuses on the latter years of Catherine’s reign and her affair with Grigory Potemkin (played by Australian actor

Jason Clarke), who became an influential military leader.

Filming took place in palaces in Russia, Latvia and Lithuania, including Catherine’s gilded summer residence at Tsarskoye Selo, near St Petersburg, that used to rival

Versailles. The costumes, designed by Maja Meschede, are magnificent and include a suit of breeches made for Catherine to wear at a transvestite ball.

Helen says, ‘To be in

Catherine’s palace, in her clothes, was extraordinary... to feel you’re in history.’

Sky Atlantic, October

Fit for a ball, in a suit of breeches

Helen Mirren in full regalia as Catherine

Catherine and Potemkin were thought to have secretly married

Helen Mirren as Catherine the Great with Jason Clarke as Grigory Potemkin