‘Mary & George’ Bosses on the Mother-Son Duo That Infiltrated King James’ Royal Court

[This story contains spoilers from the series premiere of Mary & George.]

In 2018, while flicking through the LGBTQ+ section of a copy of Time Out magazine, television producer Liza Marshall found a listing for a lecture about the sexuality of James VI and I, who reigned as the king of Scotland from 1567 to 1625 and, following the death of Queen Elizabeth I, also became the first Stuart king of England from 1603 to 1625. Despite having studied history during college, Marshall was surprised to discover that James had three significant relationships with men in his lifetime — the last of which forms the basis of the new historical drama Mary & George, which premiered Friday on Starz.

“It’s fair to say, at the beginning of the process, nobody wanted to make this show. No one knows anything about the Jacobean era,” Marshall tells The Hollywood Reporter of the 22 years that James spent as the ruler of both England and Scotland. “We know about Elizabeth I, Henry VIII, Queen Victoria, but people don’t dramatize this reign. It was quite a short reign, and I think because of his love for men, it’s been written out of history a little bit.”

James’ sexuality is a secret no more. Inspired by Benjamin Woolley’s nonfiction book The King’s Assassin and written by D.C. Moore (Killing Eve, Not Safe for Work), the seven-part limited series tells — with some artistic license — the unbelievable true story of Mary Villiers (Julianne Moore), an unremarkable aristocrat who grooms her beautiful second son, George (Nicholas Galitzine), to seduce King James I (Tony Curran) and break into his royal court.

While he is initially hesitant to utilize his charm and good looks to improve his family’s social standing, George gradually transforms into a formidable political figure — and Mary, despite accruing the wealth and influence she always wanted, is eventually forced to reckon with a monster of her own making. “George obviously starts off as a callow youth and then ends up becoming completely corrupted by power,” Marshall says.

“In the last [episodes], six and seven, I think he really represents what power can do to you and how it can loosen you from your old self,” adds D.C. Moore. “That young guy who feels too much becomes hardened and probably doesn’t feel enough by the end.”

Below, Moore and Marshall — who developed the show together as executive producers — explain the real-life history behind Mary & George, the creative team’s approach to choreographing the striking sex scenes, and how the mother-son duo’s outrageous scheming transformed them into some of the most titled and influential players the English court had ever seen.

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Considering that there have not been many historical dramas set in the Jacobean era, what made you think the story of Mary and George Villiers was worthy of the miniseries treatment?

D.C. MOORE I read a lot of books to adapt, and you’re always looking for some sort of kernel that you can build a show around. And there were three things that really struck me.

The first was the undeniable evidence that King James’ love and lust for men was at the center of court — and it was an open secret. George, who became the Duke of Buckingham, was known colloquially as the Duke of Fuckingham. People at the time knew what was going on. If you read books about James, even into the ’90s and early 2000s, they’re very resistant to say [he liked men]. If guys in taverns in 1600s London can make jokes about it and know it’s happening, you could maybe lean into understanding this is what happened [in modern times].

The second thing that struck me was Mary and George, a mother and son. I think if someone was projecting back this story or creating it, they would never think that she would be so comfortable with pushing her son into the king’s orbit and using his looks to get close to the king. [I was interested in] the moral cost of that — actually wanting it to happen, encouraging it to happen, forging her son to be this powerful tool at the heart of the English nation.

In my first email to Liza, I talked about I, Claudius because that’s a show that I love and I’ve watched a lot of times. What I love about it is it’s all the normal relationships — mother and son, father, husband, daughter — but under the pressure of being at the center of the Roman Empire. This felt like a similar story. The third thing that appealed to me was that no one has told this story before. Mary Villiers is not famous. George Villiers isn’t very famous, even though he was the favorite of both James I and then was under [James’ son] Charles I.

LIZA MARSHALL [George] was one of the only commoners to ever do that — to move between reigns. So he was a hugely significant figure that everyone’s forgotten. 

MOORE As an example, in Shakespeare in Love, there’s the moment where Judi Dench’s Elizabeth turns up in the audience. It would never be James turning up in the audience because we just don’t keep him [in mind]. Even though he was around when Shakespeare was around, we don’t have him as an English cultural hero.

MARSHALL Most of Shakespeare’s players were written for James, like Macbeth. It was under James’ reign, not Elizabeth’s reign, so it’s a really interesting period in British history. But it’s not taught in schools [or] at universities. 

MOORE But what you also have, through all of this, is the spirit of the age. I’m going to use another really bad word — King James called his female coterie his “cunts.”

There’s one thing I only found out from the reviews in the U.K.: The first time the Archbishop of Canterbury saw George, [the Archbishop] had a wet dream that night. He wrote in his diary: “In my dream, he visited me in my bedroom, and he was most kind of a gentleman to me,” or something to that effect. And this is the Archbishop of Canterbury! [Laughs.] You find all these nuggets and you go, This is a story that is not well-behaved. It’s dynamic, exciting, rude, coarse, and it’s all the things that I want drama to be. There’s so much brilliant story. The difficult thing is [deciding] what not to tell. There was some great stuff that we couldn’t do.

Mary & George begins with two darkly comedic scenes that help establish not only the tone of this show but also the relationship between the titular characters. In 1592, Mary gives birth to George and does not immediately want to cut his umbilical cord, despite believing that he is of no human value. In 1612, Mary cuts a different kind of cord — the rope that George tries to use to hang himself. Why did you want to start the show that way? How do you feel those two scenes are indicative of the arc of their relationship?

MOORE She doesn’t want to cut the umbilical cord, and that is tying into this sense of ownership between them. She wants to be attached to him for a little bit longer, and that is a theme through the show. There is a point where that chord breaks metaphorically later in the show.

It felt like we could tell a lot of the story about this young man who feels too much, but also a mother who knew, from the moment he was born, he didn’t have any intrinsic value. In this culture, second sons offer nothing. You’ve got no inheritance. You don’t carry your family name in the same way as the firstborn. So the stakes of who you are are true from the moment you come out of your mother. It felt like a dramatic way of representing those things. … But also, it suggests we’re not going to be in drawing rooms having boring conversations. 

MARSHALL Exactly. The very first draft of the very first episode always had the baby falling on the floor as the first moment in the show. I think that just sets our intentions; it’s a marker of what we wanted to do.

In the premiere, George is noticeably uncomfortable with his own body and does not know how to act upon his own desires — sexual or otherwise. But upon arrival in France, where Mary sends him to “learn the ways of refinement,” he is immediately confronted with an orgy at his temporary place of residence. By the end of his stay in France, he has sex with two men for the first time. How does his time abroad change him as a person?

MOORE In some ways, it’s the difference between French and English sensibilities. We’re playing on the joke of that, but [there are these] stories you read about when George did go to France — both in the first episode, and they went to France in episode seven. We haven’t been able to include that [part about going to France again] in the show. But the courts there were licentious and indulgent, and there were orgies there that happened. Wherever he’d have gone, just having a year on his own away from his mother or a couple of years to develop as himself — it’s around the age 18, 19 — when you come back, you are a different person. George really did go to France to learn how to be refined.

MARSHALL He really did have a voracious sexual appetite for both men and women, and that is documented fact. He definitely sowed his seeds, as it were, right across Europe. [Laughs.]

MOORE Some of that stuff in how he was and held himself isn’t tracked in the history. But as a dramatist, you know where he’s going to end up, so you need to see change. So going from that awkward, on some level repressed young boy to a man who absolutely is not afraid of his indulgences — that’s the story.

The choreography of some of the sex scenes in this show is unlike anything I’ve ever watched on television before. How do you feel those scenes help to move the plot forward? Do you have any examples that come to mind?

MARSHALL For us, all the intimacy work is really important and really carefully scripted, and in no way do we feel it’s gratuitous. It always advances the plot. Sex was power. It’s such a key part of the story.

MOORE With the orgy at the beginning of [episode] three, there was a dramatic reason for that. [James’ lover] Somerset [played by Laurie Davidson] is fearing George, and he wants to put on a spectacular sexual show for his king to say, “You are mine, and I will give you the most pleasure.” He even gets George to be there to witness it, to sort of emasculate him. So it is, on some level, lascivious and indulgent, but there is a dramatic reason for it. That would be a really good example for me.

There’s a really lovely moment in episode five where there’s no sex involved, but it’s just the king and George when they lie on the floor together, and [George] persuades him to do what he’s going to do. … I think, because of the sex and the intimacy in those moments, you really feel these two men who love each other and have been on a journey together.

I think the sexual intimacy is vital for our story, and we couldn’t really look away from it. I also think it is important because people have not wanted James to have had sex; they don’t want him to have had sex with men, historically. For us to shy away from it would be continuing that denial and erasure of his story.

Mary and George are certainly both attracted to power, but they don’t seem to realize just how far they are willing to go in pursuit of that kind of influence until they repeatedly come face-to-face with James himself.

MOORE When Mary first sees the king [in the premiere], I think there’s an immediate understanding that — again, I’m going to use coarse language, I do apologize — she says, “He’s so cockstruck, it’s like a curse,” and she can see his obsession. It’s something she would’ve heard about, and she says in the episode she knows about it, but actually seeing it and then seeing that, “Oh, he and Somerset are in quite a tricky situation. They squabble like a man and a wife. Maybe there’s an opportunity here.” That is the window of opportunity that she sees, so that moment is really important.

When George first sees the king, he’s in a service position, and he’s seeing more of the court and the intimidation of it, so his journey is much harder. He has to go into that court and stand up and be seen.

MARSHALL She’s always five steps ahead of everybody else, so she can see it all laid out in front of her.

MOORE From the historical record, that really seems like the real Mary. Whatever she could use and utilize, she did.

MARSHALL Because women had obviously no formal power at that time. They couldn’t hold property. They couldn’t have any money. It was just soft power, really. You had to manipulate people, and I think she was the master manipulator. 

MOORE I think it’s in episode fuve where [Mirren Mack’s] Katherine Manners and George stay in the same room overnight, and Mary really did that. [Mary] knew that if they stayed in a bed together overnight, [Catherine’s] father couldn’t resist the marriage, and her father was one of the richest men in England. So that’s what she did.

When you see [Amelia Gething’s] Frances Coke crying at her wedding at the end of [episode] four, that really happened. She really did cry. If you read the real, historical account of what Mary did to make that marriage happen, there were, like, 50 more things she did. I included more of them in the first few drafts, and everyone was like, “It’s too much.” It becomes farcical because so many people died, and so much blood was spilled, and so many tears were spilled in order to make that marriage happen.

So everything you see of Mary, she’s just this determined creature of force. That moment where she first sees the king is the seed of the show. [She’s] like, “Wow, this is my chance. I have this strapping young man, and this is a window of opportunity. Let’s go.”

At the end of the premiere, Mary tells a dejected George, who, after acting out in the royal court, was pardoned by James: “Kings do not pardon men for crimes done in their sight against their lovers’ say unless they yearn for the new.” How does this set up what is to come for the Villiers in the next six episodes?

MOORE We know that the seed has been planted. He’s spotted him, and he genuinely wouldn’t have pardoned him unless there’s something behind that. So as we go into the rest of the show, Mary just has to make sure that [George] can be seen again so that she can then take advantage, and then Somerset becomes the antagonist that they have to get past in order to survive.

MARSHALL The stakes in this world are life or death. If you get it wrong, you’d be put to death. So there’s high drama.

MOORE Shakespeare didn’t write any contemporary plays. He didn’t write anything about his contemporary time because he didn’t want to be cut open and hung. That would’ve happened. And this was a pretty brutal time.

MARSHALL It was a divine right of kings, so [James] had all the power. He really believed that he was selected by God to be the ruler, and everything funneled up to this one person who was in charge of absolutely everything. So that’s why everything was all rotating around the king. 

MOORE They all rotated around his passions. There were three big love stories [for George] — one in Scotland and two in England. This transition did happen where he went from loving Somerset to loving George, and we are just tracking the reality.

Given that Mary & George is one of the few historical dramas to present the Jacobean era to a wider audience, how do you hope this series will shed light on the legacy of these real-life individuals?

MARSHALL James was the man who commissioned the translation of the Bible that’s in all of the motel rooms in America, so it’s quite interesting to look at him in this light. He was involved in the founding of America, really. The beginnings of empire were under James’ reign, so he’s a hugely significant monarch who affected the course of modern history. I think it’s interesting to look at history afresh, to put women and queer characters back at the center of the narrative. 

MOORE But we’re not putting them at the heart of it; they were at the heart of it. The king wouldn’t have called himself queer, and he wouldn’t have that sense of his own sexuality. But he is a queer king, and Mary really was at the center of the court pulling lots of levers, potentially implicated in his murder. So, we are telling a story that’s true and really happened. So, on some level, we’re centering them, but we’re also just not erasing them as they have been erased before.

Mary & George airs Fridays on Starz at 9 p.m. in the U.S. and 10 p.m. in Canada through May 17. New episodes will also be available to stream every Friday at midnight on the Starz app.