Mary & George & Me | Part One | Who are the Villiers?

Mary and George Villers the most fascinating mother and son duo in British history that you've probably never heard of Mary a down andout Aristocrat with a cunning wit and insatiable desire for power and George her impossibly beautiful son who proved the Ultimate Weapon for penetrating and then dominating King James's Court the two Rock the foundations of 17th century England performing an astonishing display of social climbing to reap political havoc and sees a terrifying volume of power as someone with a lifelong obsession with iconic women and something of a ponchon for Niche trivia I want to know more about this tumultuous period of jacoban history and about the lives of the courtiers and Royals as they romped their way on Horseback obviously through the early 1600s so I'm here to meet the new wave of historians unraveling these complex messy emotional versions of our past and the creative force is responsible for bringing it all back to life this is jacoban history but not as you know it this is Maran George and me the audacious historical Psycho Drama Maran George has resurrected these formidable characters to portray a twisted Battle of sex love and power but in order to fully grasp the societal structures that Mary so elegantly dismantled I wanted to know a little bit more about jacoban times and King James I's English Reign which is where my new best friend author scholar and low-key genius Katherine Randell comes into play so to begin with do you mind giving us just a kind of broad overview to what's so fascinating about this section of British history if you picked up the jacoban court and turned it upside down and shook it out of it would fall so many schemes and love affairs and a thousand machinating Souls it was a time where if you could not strategize you fell by the wayside and it was also incredibly glamorous it was a moment where people were moving away from the more strict chal code of Elizabeth and towards something a little bit looser and a little bit Wilder cart hold it there okay so short intermission for those who slept through history class the jacoban era Jacobus being Latin for James spans from 1603 to 1625 and is best known for its cultural bangers namely Shakespeare guy Fox's Gunpowder Plot and King james' V popular translation of the Bible which remains one of the most widely read texts in the world starting life with a bang pun intended in 1567 barely out of nappies James aged 1 becomes king of Scotland after his mother Mary Queen of Scots was forced off the throne and imprisoned in 16003 when Queen Elizabeth the first died without an heir James inherited the English crown to become King James the 1 of England and 6th of Scotland a step towards unifying the two Nations and now back to the main event what can you tell us about James I first and how he rose to power shortly after he became king a secretary wrote to the Doge of Venice that he seems to have forgotten that he is King except in his kingly pursuit of Stags to which he is much dedicated wow he also had terrible table manners his tongue was slightly too big for his mouth so when he drank he used to dribble there's this version of the king a literal dribbling idiot but then there's a reimagining of the king the scholar King and is there a particular way that James the first ruled that we can see now was he any different to other monarchs James's Court was more fluid a little bit more open everything was a little bit looser and newer and we have these fascinating letters written by people who had been prominent and Elizabeth's Court panicking that they no longer understood the rules and are utterly dismayed at what they're experiencing as a kind of sneak pit so it was clear from the beginning of James's Reign that he was going to rewrite the rule book of British aristocracy fast forward 20 years and you find Mary ready to take advantage of this new loose Society for her own gains I'm here at the National Portrait Gallery which is my favorite place in London it's very exciting today because apparently there's a portrait of Mary Vilas here in the archive that they've agreed to uh you know get out and dust off for us follow Mo obviously she's absolutely stunning where does she normally live she's part of our our reference collection so she's normally kept in the archive basement how many other images have you ever seen of Mary Villers well I guess the most beautiful one is a fulllength uh painted portrait but we haven't seen that since it was sold at Chris's in 1938 no one knows where it is now so someone's just got that hanging in their house potentially I hope so yes do many people come asking to see images of Mary Villas no that's really sad it is given the significance of her life and her achievements eyes fresh from the real deal Mary it was time for a with Julianne Moore to find out how she brought her version of this devious woman to life on screen Mary's character was outrageous in a sense here was this person who had absolutely no agency of her own no autonomy didn't own any property had such a strong sense of self and a and a directness and a kind of an ambition for herself and particularly for her children and when you think about what she managed to achieve she really left everyone set up very very well and can you describe this relation ship she has with her children in particular of course there's George what was it about him that she saw that she felt she could sort of manipulate more than her other children in her educating them she learned that George was like utterly charming and a great dancer so he wasn't great at academics but he was great at entertaining people she sees his charm and his Beauty and how attractive he is to other people especially to someone like King James The Who kind of her like main prize her idea is to find a way to you know after the death of her first husband who we portray as a brutal and difficult man she's looking for a way to educate her children and keep herself alive and the only way she's able to do that is through her relationships with powerful men and she herself therefore becomes powerful but she's quite a complex character how did you go about playing someone like Mary Vilas there was something so so outrageous about her something so direct she seemed to have her own desire for power in a situation where she might possibly have none it felt really unusual unclever I think she's written brilliantly DC Moore Dave our writer I think wrote a really interesting compelling very funny ambitious woman if I go later when I'm older you could but if you miss this chance you'll fail us all and live like your father father smear the unwashable excrement of Eternal shame B voage do you have an opinion about what was motivating Mary Villers I think ambition right just raw kind of like thirst well I think yeah yeah but also um survival yeah you know when you have no autonomy you have no agency all you have is really you know through who you're married to and and realizing that she has to wield her own charm or sexuality to gain that agency so it's either going to be through someone that she marries or someone that her sons are aligned with and so she did manage to do that really pretty well no it's so impressive as you say like women obviously were completely disenfranchised at that time there were very few options it's pretty impressive stuff she's like a chess master maneuvering her men around like porns I'm personally intrigued to find out what it's like to be on the receiving end of her powers what is George's relationship with Mary like and how does that kind of evolve it's a very complex relation ship he's the Second Son Mary sees the potential in him chooses him out of all her children to really put her faith in and and back he's just desperate for her validation and her love and he'll do anything to achieve that she really manipulates him there's obvious genuine love there but it's it's it never really comes unconditionally which is a very difficult thing for a child to have it's interesting as well your character is kind of raised like a girl it's things we've seen in other Series where they're playing the piano or whatever or it's kind of using their WS it's very interesting I I think it it lends some level of femininity to this this masculine character and I think you know what we're obviously in this this really interesting time nowadays where where the sort of borders between masculinity and femininity are kind of blending a little bit there is something within that that modern audiences I think will really appreciate and be able to connect with this is a woman operating in a male dominated world and no family Rose this quickly in in in such a high trajectory during this period of time and her power and and you know Julianne's performance in portraying Mary it's hard not to admire it took a team of creatives to excavate this dark and twisted history where it seems to have Lain hidden for the past few hundred years that's until exec producer Liza Marshall got involved it's kind of your fault all of this I suppose so yes I was reading an article about 5 years ago and I saw a little piece about James the first being gay I started doing loads of research and tried to find a really interesting way into his story and then I came across Ben Wily's book The King's assassin then took it to Dave who then wrote the brilliant scripts obviously you read Ben's book what happens next how do you approach fictionalizing this text the amount of information there is about Mary for me is perfect there are glimmers of this astonishingly powerful and influential person working behind the scenes and as a writer that really appeals to me because it means I get to make a lot up but I also can sort of Return To The Well of Truth every now and then for the general curve of it when you're writing the scripts you're like how do I give this person an agency and intelligence and wit that she must have had so Thomas Compton afraid so you your next wife sorry love don't be she clearly had enormous ambition but that doesn't show up in the historical record basically until later in her life when people start to get annoyed with her they're very puzzled how this woman from a relatively lowly Gentry background managed to achieve this enormous influence in james' cour there was kind of Scrabble to understand who she was and where she came from I do not own my home or any asset my children are unwed if the king's affection for you curdles we have nothing what was it about Mary Vilas in particular that you found so compelling what I always want to do is try and put women at the center of History cuz too often history's been written by the men in fact entirely history has been written by men she's a minor character in the book but I just think the idea that she essentially pimped out her Ray hot second son to seduce James the first was a brilliant jumping off point for a story her behavior is complicated in the sense that it's hard to know whether she's this iconic woman managing to find her way to power or whether she was just using someone and is kind of a bit of a dark lord how do you view her um I think without doubt she was the smartest person in the room so I think to go from the outer reaches of the Gentry she was essentially a serving woman so not quite a servant but was working in service you know as a sort of gentle woman to a lady and to go from there to become the closest woman to James the first is such an extraordinary rise at time when women had virtually no power do you see Mary as a feminist it depends what the definition of feminism is I mean if it means supporting other women I think probably the answer is no because she's definitely prepared to throw other women under the bus if you know if it helps her rise to power she's not a sympathetic woman but she's doing whatever she can at that time to survive so I think you like her despite the fact that maybe sometimes she does some dark things yeah she doesn't have to be a nice person for us to be compelled by her journey what do you think the value is of portraying these amazingly kind of complex female characters because that's how women are in real life yeah you got it correct I think these stories are really important I think you need to refocus history and remember all the powerful women that were there and even though it's a slightly heightened world that we're in and that Dave has created with his scripts pretty much everything you see in their drama is true yeah so she really did do all of these crazy things I think it's pretty astonishing that Mary Vilas is someone that's kind of ostensibly been written out of history but actually her actions and her gumption and this kind of repulsion she had to like better her life and that of her families has led to very meaningful history hisorical events and yet it's someone that we've overlooked think of how many more women there are in history to explore that have had this butterfly effect on the way we are