Rainbow Crew is an ongoing interview series that celebrates the best LGBTQ+ representation on screen. Each instalment showcases talent working on both sides of the camera, including queer creatives and allies to the community.
Next up, we're speaking to Mary & George stars Julianne Moore and Nicholas Galitzine.
Bring to mind the Jacobean age. You may picture dark, drab rooms with oak panelling, populated by figures in tightly-boned bodices, rigid collars and exaggerated sleeves. Mary & George has all of that, but with the addition of a torrid affair between the king and a social climber's chiselled son at the centre of this slice of the 17th century.
Think The Great or, for a film flavour, The Favourite. The Sky drama's dialogue alone is packed with plain-talking, salty language. Take, for example, the description of King James VI and I as a "dead-eyed, horny-handed horror". And what of the company he keeps? They are "well-hung beauties" and "Scottish semen guzzlers". It's not a show for the pearl-clutchers.
The show's approach to sex, and queer sex in particular, is similarly provocative for a period most will assume was stuffy and conservative. The premiere episode thrusts George, played by Nicholas Galitzine, into the midst of a French orgy. Somehow this is all supposed to prepare him for England's court, which may seem preposterous, but once we get inside those royal realms, it is indeed much the same.
In what was her first period drama for television, Julianne Moore relocated to London to shoot the seven episodes in various beautifully austere estates around the UK. Each day of filming entailed a couple of hours getting Mary's Jacobean face on in the make-up chair, before the costume team poured Moore into an assortment of 70-odd gowns and bodices to bring her charismatic, devious matriarch to life.
Moore tells Digital Spy how Mary recognises in her son someone she wishes she could be – "If I were a man and I looked like you, I'd rule the f**king planet," she tells him. But since she can't have that, she settles for moulding George into a meal ticket out of her powerless sphere of society.
Meanwhile, Moore's co-star Nicholas Galitzine is fresh off his princely turn in Red, White and Royal Blue last summer. Between this and Cinderella, he admits there's a running joke on the number of princes he's played. But with a scene-stealing turn in Bottoms also among his list of credits, Galitzine has carved out a varied filmography telling LGBTQ+ stories.
Julianne, this is your first TV period drama. It required you to do accent work and we understand the costume team built these gowns and bodices onto you every day. What was that experience like?
Julianne Moore: I have done period drama before but not in television. So this was massive, because it's seven episodes. I think I had maybe 70 costumes or something. There haven't been many movies or television shows about this period, so there was no stock. Our wonderful costume designer [Annie Symons] built everything and everyone in the workshop built everything.
So that was a lot. There were a lot of costumes. But it was fascinating and it was interesting for me to be immersed in this very different world. To be in the UK and to be surrounded by all these wonderful British actors. It was an exciting experience.
Nicholas, you're coming off the huge success of Red, White and Royal Blue, which fans fell in love with. This is another sex-positive, queer story with a proximity to royalty. What was it like stepping into the role of George after playing Henry in RW&RB?
Nicholas Galitzine: There was another movie in between those two, but we were joking that all my roles have been princely.
JM: I didn't know he'd played so many princes.
NG: Yeah, my history of playing princes. I think there is a large difference between George and Henry. They're very, very different people. George isn't born into royalty by any means. He's elevated there through the sheer will of his mother in a lot of ways. So they felt like very different projects.
In two separate scenes, we see what we assume is both of your characters' first queer sexual experiences. Can you walk me through the approach to filming those scenes?
JM: I don't know that that is Mary's first queer experience. You know, the first thing Sandie [Niamh Algar] says to her is, "Have you been with a girl before?" [Mary] says, "Bodies are just bodies". So I feel like Mary maybe has had a wealth of experience with lots of different people.
NG: For George, it was really interesting because those scenes in France, we actually didn't get around to shooting till the end of the schedule. And for me, that was always a really important part of George's history that I needed to be filled in. I mean, it's his genesis in a lot of ways.
So, getting the casting of Jean [Khalil Ben Gharbia] right was really important – I think that relationship and the charisma that he has in sort of helping really tease the truth of George's identity out of himself.
He was so repressed in some ways, and I'm just really, really proud of how those scenes turned out, especially being so far removed from the rest of what we filmed in the first few episodes at the start of the shoot.
We're seeing a lot more provocative period drama – shows like The Great, Bridgerton and Outlander. What do you think it is about this setting, which many will think of as stuffy or conservative, that lends itself to a frank depiction of sexuality?
NG: One thing we've been talking about a lot is sometimes it's spoken about as if this didn't exist, which was not the case. It just was not recorded. It was written out of history in a lot of ways.
And so, I think we just feel like we're shining an authentic light on the goings-on at the time and King James being a queer man, the same as George.
Most children would squirm at the idea of discussing sex with their parents, but Mary and George have a very unique dynamic, to say the least. What did you make of the nature of their relationship?
JM: I think she's always seen potential in George. I think she sees in him something that she'd liked to be. She'd like to be a man. She'd like to have access to the world that way. She'd love to look like him and be starting her life and have that possibility. So George for her is a kind of proxy.
As he enters adulthood, she sort of takes him as a partner as well. When he comes back from France, she no longer speaks to him like he's a child. She speaks to him like a partner saying, this is what I see for you, this is what's possible. So oddly, it's like she closes that chasm. She stops being motherly in the sense of, this is what we're gonna do. This is how we'll get it done.
Mary & George airs on Sky Atlantic and NOW from March 5.
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Deputy TV Editor
Previously a TV Reporter at The Mirror, Rebecca can now be found crafting expert analysis of the TV landscape for Digital Spy, when she's not talking on the BBC or Times Radio about everything from the latest season of Bridgerton or The White Lotus to whatever chaos is unfolding in the various Love Island villas.
When she's not bingeing a box set, in-the-wild sightings of Rebecca have included stints on the National TV Awards and BAFTAs red carpets, and post-match video explainers of the reality TV we're all watching.
