War, plague, murder, sex, violence —The White Princess’ EPEmma Frostand directorJamie Paynehave a lot to handle when it comes to adaptingPhillipa Gregory’s historical novel for a modern eye. But after having seen the first four episodes, I can confirm they absolutely pull it off.The White Princessis a follow-up to 2013’sThe White Queen, and recounts the conclusion of the Wars of the Roses, where the houses of York and Tudor are joined together through Elizabeth (“Lizzie”) of York, played byJodie Comer, and King Henry VII (Jacob Collins-Levy). The series also delves into the machinations of the young couple’s murderous mothers, the Dowager Queen Elizabeth (Essie Davis) and Margaret Beaufort (Michelle Fairley), as they struggle to regain or keep their power.
On the set ofThe White Princessin Bristol, England, Frost and Payne sat down with us to talk about the historical miniseries’ unconventional love story, how they dealt with the sexual violence that shows up in Episode 1, as well as what viewers who haven’t read the book can except to see from a story that takes very seriously its female-centric perspective (of note: you do not have to have seenThe White Queento dive into this new miniseries). Be aware there are some light spoilers:
QUESTION: The book is obviously very much from Lizzie’s point of view, but the miniseries, I assume, is going to expand that?
EMMA FROST: It’s very much her story still. But in the same way thatThe White Queenhad pretty much three really strong female characters in play at all times, apart from the first episode, I’ve tried to do the same thing. So we have Elizabeth, Lizzie, Maggie, we have the Duchess of Burgundy, who is referred to in the novel but you don’t actually meet in the novel. Michelle, obviously, as Margaret, who is just wonderful. The whole show is driven by the female point of view. There are almost no scenes with just men. There’s only a scene with only men when it’s absolutely essential to the storytelling. But count them, you’ll probably find less than ten, across the show? Across eight hours? Yeah.
So there’s a female always driving everything, and there are very distinct stories for each of the key women in each episode. They’ve got a proper beginning, middle, and end in every episode, and they are owning the story. What I would say is different – well, not different, but you know, a novel and a TV show of course has to be a very different beast, and the thing about a novel is it’s very internalized, you can have the interior monologue, you can have what Lizzie’s thinking, you can’t have that in the TV show. So to make Lizzie properly occupy and drive the story, and the same for the other women, you have to step away from other parts that Philippa has done.
So for example in the book, Elizabeth, her mother, is very present for quite a long time, and actually it almost feels like it’s still Elizabeth’s story. That isn’t what we’re making, we’re making Lizzie’s story. So I had to very consciously reduce Elizabeth in the mix and actually just do a different thing narratively, and separate them much quicker from each other. Elizabeth’s very present, but she’s no longer driving Lizzie’s story. Lizzie’s forced to actually grow up and occupy her own story.
It’s so interesting there are few scenes with men, especially in a historical drama, because history is written by men.
FROST: Yeah.
So what’s it like to bring that kind of female perspective to the screen?
FROST: The thing about history is that history’s written by the victors. It’s written by the white men, and anybody that isn’t the person who won and isn’t a white man is excluded from history. What Philippa does brilliantly is she excavates those women who’ve been overlooked by the history books, she brings their stories to the light, she really goes back to the original documents, and she tries to present it as historically true as she can with some poetic license. So Philippa’s done the hard work. She brings all the history to the surface, then I get to go, okay, how do I want to play with these real historical facts and turn them into something which is a living, breathing TV show? So it’s brilliant. I mean, [Jamie Payne] should speak about it. How do you feel? You’re a man. [laughs]
JAMIE PAYNE: I mean, I knew this is a part of history I was fascinated by, but I enjoy it so much more being told through the female perspective. I think, also from a director’s point of view, when you’re working with performance, when you’re working with creating a world that holds these stories, I think the events and the kind of arc that affects these characters, being born out of the female perspective is just dramatically more interesting than the history that’s been told before. I think even though it’s told through the female POV, it universally makes it more interesting and entertaining. It doesn’t belittle history in any way, it doesn’t betray history in any way, it kind of reinforces it, and it makes you question history. And the most important thing, it’s a wonderful, evocative, emotional journey for the audience.
I read this andThe White Queentogether, so I had an opportunity to look at the series and go, what would you do to make it better? And of course the truth is we have nothing if we don’t have good scripts. So for me, I was able to read – Emma sent me a draft of all eight scripts to sit and read. So those arcs, I mean I have to say for any character, male or female, the story arcs for the central characters are probably some of the best that I’ve ever read, let alone ever seen. And I think that’s without a doubt male or female. So from my point of view, I just want to watch and direct good drama, and this has given us a chance to do both.
FROST: And it’s interesting as well because, as Jamie said, we worked together onThe White Queenand there was never any question that I wanted to work with anyone other than Jamie on this because we work really well together, we share the same vision.
Did you direct all the episodes?
PAYNE: No, of this I directed five of the eight. There’s a female director –
FROST: Alex Kalymnios.
PAYNE: Alex Kalymnios, who’s done the middle three. So I did the first three and the last two. But I had to – so I was thinking aboutThe White Queen, even though thrilled it did so well, that it was a bit of a mishmash in tone. The system within television gives the director autonomy, really, and certainly creative autonomy as far as how the thing is made, certainly not within the scripts. And that’ll produce an inconsistent tone, and Emma and Starz felt strongly that this year, in order to make it better and kind of protect the tone, that someone be brought in to actually create that tone and protect it.
FROST: But also it’s interesting, the question you asked about the particular female history. The show is about a gender battle, and so for me, and I’ve been asked, actually, weirdly, to write a show which is entirely women, and I don’t want to write shows entirely women, what I want to write is gender battle. That’s what I think is interesting, so what’s interesting for me is the male characters have to be really strong and the male perspective has to exist as well, because otherwise there’s nothing to – there’s no battle, there’s nothing to sort of rub up against. And it’s also important to have a really strong male vision and voice in the mix as well, because when it sort of just turns into women going, you know, “it’s all about the women,” there isn’t that balance. So it was really important to have Jamie for that reason as well.
After reading the book, I didn’t get the sense that it was really a love story, but after talking to all the actors, it seems like this adaptation is.
FROST: It’s a love story. It is.
Can you talk a little bit about the arc that Lizzie and Henry go through?
FROST: Yes. So these are two people who hate each other for historical reasons, for political reasons. They’ve never met each other and they’ve got ten reasons to hate each other. We actually call Episode One “10 Things I Hate About You.” [laughs] We’ve got contemporary references in almost every single episode and every single part of the story, because you’ve got to keep it in a way that the audience is going to feel it’s immediate and get it. What Philippa does and does brilliantly is she follows the history as she believes it to be and interprets it. She adds a bit of poetic license, but she’s based in the history. I’m interested in making a great show with great character arcs that the audience is invested in and understand.
So for example, in the novel, Henry falls in love with Cathy Gordon, and according to the novel, for the first time ever he’s in love — that’s actually the line. For me, that was a piece of storytelling that was unsuccessful, just because I just invested. [Lizzie and Henry] had walked through fire together, and they’ve just found each other, and the threat is going to come from this boy who might or might not be Lizzie’s brother who is the rightful king, if he’s who he says he says. And I’m like, “Oh my God! This is going to tear them apart.” And suddenly Henry’s in love with someone else! And it’s kind of like, what’s this other story going on here?
Now, it’s perfectly possible that is what happened historically, and Philippa likes to stay as close as she can to that and that’s great and brilliant. For me, for the show, that doesn’t work. So we have Cathy Gordon as a key character, but Henry and Lizzie’s love for each other is never questioned. By the time they find each other, he’s trying to f-ck with the boy’s head, he’s trying to, you know, he’s pulling political strings, so he flirts with Cathy and he lets people think he’s having sex with her, but I’ve got rid of that whole extra narrative loop. So there is a streamlining. Actually the show, the core of our story is it’s quite a tragic love story, that these two people fall in love with each other against the odds. Lizzie has to change sides, she has to turn against her mother, she has to turn against the house she’s been part of her whole life, she realizes once she has a child, her life is here with this man and these children, and she will fight for that. And in the end she has to make the hardest choice anybody could possibly make, which is she realizes all of her naive, idealistic dreams at the beginning that she will rule in a good way and she’ll be kind and she’ll be compassionate and that’s how you be a good queen. She realizes in the end, these people die or these people die. Someone’s going to die, and whichever way you cut it they’re people she loves very much.
And so she grows up and she makes the pragmatic choice, and for me to get to that end point, we can’t earn that if somewhere in the middle they’re not in love with each other. Because then you go, “What are the stakes? I don’t really know.” The book works brilliantly in its own terms, as of course all of Philippa’s books do, and she does what she does fantastically well and I couldn’t do it, but a TV show has to have a different internal logic. So I think for the audience, if you lose people on the love story then it just becomes, “Here’s stuff happening.” So there was some conscious choices made on that.
In the book their relationship starts – I mean, they hate each other, but also, I mean, it starts really violently because he essentially rapes her. So how did that translate into the show?
Has it been kind of massaged?
FROST: I had a very particular response to that, which is, no 21st Century woman will accept that a man rapes a woman and she falls in love with him, end of. Now, it’s possible and probable that it happened historically, but it’s one of those moments where I don’t care if that’s what happened historically. We’re telling a love story, and the whole audience will just go, how could I like this guy? I have nieces. We’re in a world where rape is on the increase. There ain’t no way I’m reinforcing that. So what I felt I was able to do was stay true to the spirit of what happens between them, but I’ve totally flipped it.
So the scene now is that Henry’s been told by his mother that he has to find out first if Lizzie can conceive before he marries her because he needs an heir, so she said, “Go and have sex with her!” So Henry sort of turns up, he’s got to have sex with her, and Lizzie goes, “Oh my God, you’re going to rape me.” And it’s only in that moment that he thinks, “F-ck, thatiswhat my mother’s asked me to do.” And actually, it’s heinous to him, it’s not who he is, it’s not what he wants to do. So the way the scene plays, you realize that he doesn’t want to do it and he backs right off and he’s not going to do it. But in that moment, Lizzie sees his weakness and kind of despises him, and she’s more sexually experienced because she’s had this big love story with Richard III, and Henry’s probably only f-cked hookers in roadside taverns, and she kind of taunts him with that, and she effectively, emotionally,sherapeshim. So the power dynamic in that scene – Jamie should talk about it because Jamie directed it absolutely brilliantly. One of the best scenes.
PAYNE: It’s also the scene that, probably more than any other scene, we knew we had to make sure we had a responsible balance in how that was done. And we shot it, we edited it, Emma and I sat down, and we looked at it with stars and we said, “Emotionally, have we achieved the balance that we wanted to?” And we shot more material to make sure that what Emma just pitched you is actually protected.
The lovely thing is, the emotional intensity for both of them there, and what Lizzie had to do in herself to find the strength to do that, we show the aftermath of that. It’s not like she then swaggers down the corridor going, “Hey, I got this!” It just rips her apart to do it, but she basically says, “I am not gonna let him beat me.” And that’s who Lizzie is, I mean, she’s extraordinary. They knew that marriage wasn’t made out of love, it was a political arrangement, and that was how it was in that day. And the truth is, you go to bed on your married night as a king and a queen, and it’s a party, because you’re there for one reason, you’re there to produce an heir. And there’s a party in the bedroom and they go, “Go on, you go and do it now.”
The fact is, in our story, they’re saying “unless she’s fertile, we ain’t marrying her.” And that was a cold and hard, brutal fact. So that was where that story came out of, we just needed to ensure – and Emma had written it so beautifully – that the emotional consequence for both those characters was properly dealt with. Because yeah, you’re right, there’s nobody – and I didn’t want to, and Jodie and Jacob certainly didn’t want to, you know, someway portray that scene irresponsibly.
FROST: It’s one of the moments where real history and 21st Century sensibilities just – yeah, you have to find a different way through it.
