Starz's Next Royal Drama Becoming Elizabeth Will Tell the Story of a Teenage Elizabeth I
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Elizabeth I's life is hardly unexamined on film. From Dame Judy Dench's Oscar-winning performance as the Tudor-era royal in Shakespeare in Love to Margot Robbie's depiction of the historical monarch in 2018's Mary Queen on Scots, Lizzie's seen her fair share of screen time. But a forthcoming series from Starz hopes to offer a new perspective on the so-called Virgin Queen.
Aptly titled Becoming Elizabeth, the show will imagine Elizabeth I's teenage years during which she "becomes embroiled in the political and sexual politics of the English court on her journey to secure the crown," per Deadline.
Here's everything we know so far.
The series will premiere this summer.
Starz has announced that the new series will make its debut on Sunday, June 12, 2022.
Watch the full trailer below:
The series will explore power and consent.
When playwright and series creator Anya Reiss was first approached with the idea of telling the story of Queen Elizabeth's, she was reluctant. "I thought, ‘Well, that’s been done before.’ Then he told me the story and I realized it hadn’t been,” she said during the show's TCA Press Tour panel in February. “I never knew what went on during her brother’s reign.
"I never knew about this relationship she had with Thomas Seymour, which seemed to touch on such relevant things now such as consent and gender imbalance and power imbalance within relationships. And just the idea of people running around using children as shields and this family drama playing out in the center of government felt like really new territory to me."
A German actress will portray the Queen this time.
Alicia von Rittberg, who is know for the 2014 World War II film Fury, will play the iconic ruler.
Romola Garai (Atonement, The Miniaturist) will play the future Queen Mary I, and Jessica Raine (Call the Midwife) will play Catherine Parr. Tom Cullen, Bella Ramsey, Oliver Zetterström, John Heffernan, Jamie Parker, Jamie Blackley, Jacob Avery, Alexandra Gilbreath, Olivier Huband, Alex Macqueen, Ekow Quartey, and Leo Bill round out the cast announced thus far.
The series serves as a coming-of-age story for Queen Elizabeth.
Reiss will serve as an executive producer on the project as will George Ormond and George Faber. Deadline also notes that the show will have an all-women writing team, which, in addition to Reiss, will include Emily Ballou, Anna Jordan, and Suhayla El- Bushra.
Becoming Elizabeth, as the title suggests, focuses on Queen Elizabeth I before she became the icon we all know her as. "We all think we know who Elizabeth I is. She's a total icon. But actually, we really don’t," executive producer George Ormond said at the TCA panel. "This story is really contemporary, it's shocking, it's provocative. It’s about a young, teenage girl who thinks she’s an adult, who thinks she’s equipped to deal with adult things and is thrust into this world that’s dangerous and finds herself drawn into this relationship, which raises all sorts of questions about consent and power. We couldn't believe that this hadn't been dramatized before, but it hasn't."
Becoming Elizabeth fits right in to Starz's current lineup.
Between Outlander and The Spanish Princess, women-centric period dramas have been a core component of Starz's programming lineup in recent years. In September 2020, Starz President and CEO Jeff Hirsch revealed that targeting women was core to their business plan.
"We saw as we got more of our data capability that women are really driving our business. Women and African-American women, and we know it's working. We see it in the explosive growth of our OTT service," he said, per the Hollywood Reporter.
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