Everyone knows that Lady Jane Grey — brilliant, Protestant, and a legitimate claimant to the throne as a niece of Henry VIII — was queen of England for nine entire days, deposed to make way for Henry’s eldest surviving child Mary Tudor, and subsequently beheaded for treason. What My Lady Jane presupposes is, maybe she wasn’t?
Jane surviving and possibly thriving isn’t even the most surprising of My Lady Jane’s gleefully deployed ahistorical features (the series is based on a popular YA novel of the same title by Jodi Meadows, Brodi Ashton, and Cynthia Hand). Yes, we’re talking about shapeshifters. In this world, humans are divided into two groups: Ethians, who discover in adolescence that they can transform into an animal at will (objectively cool, fun, and handy), and Verities, who are stuck in their human form forever (pitiable). Verities have convinced one another that Ethians are evil and enforce genocidal laws against them.
But rather than collapse under the weight of its recognizable but perhaps-too-fantastical world, the series from showrunner Gemma Burgess triumphs. Genre tropes abound, including an arch, profane narrator; a zingy, believable enemies-to-lovers plot; and a cliffhanger-rich structure. They’re held aloft by note-perfect performances from series leads Emily Bader and Edward Bluemel as Jane and her husband Guildford Dudley, and from veteran British character actors including Anna Chancellor as her relentlessly scheming mother, Lady Frances Grey, and Kate O’Flynn as Jane’s increasingly unhinged nemesis-in-chief Princess Mary. And Bader — who, it turns out, is a California girl, not at all the upper-crust Oxbridge alumna her crystalline accent work suggests — encourages viewers to lean into the weird of it all. “It’s just so committed to what it’s trying to do. It’s a bit camp, it’s sexy, it’s coming of age, it’s alt-history, all things I love.â€
It’s very appealing and refreshing to watch you and Edward Bluemel instantly have absolute bonfire chemistry. How did you prepare for your love scenes together? Â
It was all very intentional. We had a lot of conversations with the writers and our amazing intimacy coordinator, Ita O’Brien. We wanted it to be sexy sexy, because there’s nothing worse than when you see a bad kiss onscreen. Gemma, our showrunner, asked in her Instagram Stories, “What are the best kiss scenes that you’ve seen on TV?†And then she put them all on her Stories. We watched them together and realized, Okay, so people like when it’s a little more real. They don’t want it to be perfect and staged like a Casablanca moment — no shade to Casablanca; it’s amazing. But with real people, it feels a bit messy, people are laughing through those moments. We wanted to make that come to life.
Did the intimacy coordinator make any particular suggestions that helped with these scenes?
We rehearsed everything — sometimes they would even have storyboards of scenes, because it is choreography, like a fight scene or a dance. It has to be shot for comfortability, for safety, for camera. And then she would have conversations with everyone, before and after, telling us, “These are your words you say if, at any point, you decide you’re uncomfortable or feeling stressed.†And afterward, because it’s very vulnerable, she’d say, “Okay, now break, get all of that stress of the day, if there was any, out.†Those scenes are very vulnerable, and she’s the right person to compliment you because otherwise it might come across kind of weird. She made us feel really confident. It’s just another day at work, and everyone is laughing, recognizing that this is a weird job that we do!
One of the most fun aspects of this series is seeing face after face of beloved British character actors on screen. Did you learn any lessons from them across the shoot?
Anna Chancellor, who plays Jane’s mother, was so important in my journey, because it was all so new to me. I’d never done TV at this level, as a lead, shooting for something like 135 days, and sometimes I can really get in my head. Anna would always remind me: “We’ve got all day, we’re gonna figure it out, don’t put such pressure on yourself to have to have all the answers at eight o’clock in the morning.†That, coming from somebody who is so seasoned, makes you feel better, because it can feel like there should come a point when everything becomes easy, and that’s just not true. I don’t think that will ever be true. It’s new every single time, every single day.
I also got to work with people like Kate O’Flynn, playing Princess Mary. She’s incredibly humble, but every time we would do a scene together, I would always be there, mouth agape, because I don’t know how she comes up with the way she says things — not in my wildest dreams! She’s also just hysterically funny. I know she and Dominic Cooper, who plays Lord Seymour, led a full-on rock concert at maybe 3 a.m. with the piano in the lobby of the hotel.
I didn’t know until embarrassingly recently that you’re not English, because your accent is so good. What was your process preparing to sound so crisp and posh?
I’m just a movie freak and I’m a big mimic, so I started from an okay place. I’ve always been in the corner of my room pretending that I’m different movie characters. Elizabeth Bennet from Pride and Prejudice — Keira Knightley’s performance was a big reference for me. I basically copied that, not from a technical space, just from listening and repeating. I don’t typically work that technically, which our dialect coach, Louise Jones, understood very quickly. Most people might want to learn where you move your tongue in your mouth, and how to change the phonetics of a dialect, but I work better on a listen-and-repeat basis. She was like, “Perfect. I’m gonna make you watch some really weird British TV and listen to these people.†She was telling me to watch Fleabag, because Phoebe Waller-Bridge is a great reference, with a sort of neutral-ish posh accent. And I’m like, “Say less. I’ve seen it, and I’ll watch it again.†Also, I was the only American in the cast, so being constantly surrounded by the people I needed to sound like made it a lot easier.
What other shows were on Louise’s list of recommendations for your accent development?
She just told me to watch what was on TV, and there was this one very interesting show that stunned me at two o’clock in the morning, Naked Attraction. And oh, it’s wild. It’s a show that would never exist in America. It’s a dating show where a man or woman has four people to choose from to date, and those people are naked behind screens. They just slowly reveal more of those four people’s bodies, and then the person choosing has to eliminate people. It’s the most savage thing I’ve ever seen.
Are there films or TV shows you feel My Lady Jane is specifically in conversation with, that people might find surprising?
People like to compare it with The Great, and I think it’s pretty different, but there are similarities there. It’s got a little bit of Clueless in it, The Princess Bride is a huge reference for us, Monty Python is there in some moments, and a little bit of Pride and Prejudice, too. It’s got a little bit of everything, but it’s tricky because I don’t know if I could directly compare it to any one show. There’s even some full-fledged fantasy in there, a little bit of Dark Crystal–ness in some moments.
What aspects of The Dark Crystal are in the mix?Â
Well, this world sparkles! I mean, we have a giant moon, which is not realistic, but we didn’t want it to be. It feels like you’re opening up a storybook, and we’re just going for something kind of weird. I think overall, people are just surprised by how fun it is. The fact that it is so fun, with the satisfaction of it being sexy and romantic, might be scratching more than one itch than, say, the typical show that focuses on just one of those things. We’re going for something kind of weird. There’s not enough weird stuff in the world. I think a modern audience is thirsty for that right now.