Hulu's 'The Great': Elle Fanning on playing Catherine the Great, severed heads and 'fully clothed sex'

Hulu's "The Great," a cheeky historical drama from the writer of "The Favourite," can be summed up in two words: severed heads.

Early in the new series (now streaming), a young Catherine the Great (Elle Fanning) begrudgingly attends a dinner party hosted by her loathsome, abusive husband, Peter III of Russia (Nicholas Hoult). To her disgust, he orders lemon sorbet for dessert – served on platters with the maimed, bloodied noggins of his enemies.

"Would you like mine? It matches your hair," Peter says to Catherine, shoveling a head on her plate. "Just happy to be happy together, is it not?"

"It is marvelous – you are marvelous," Catherine responds bitterly. "You gave me a bear (as a gift) and have ceased punching me. What woman would not be happy?"

"That scene really sums up our show tonally," Fanning says. "When we were doing it, the dummy's hair would be completely in the lemon sorbet. I remember looking over at Nick, and he was just eating mouthfuls of hair and trying to say lines."

"It was pretty grim," Hoult adds with a laugh.

"The Great" is based on Tony McNamara's stage play that premiered in Sydney in 2008. He's tried unsuccessfully to make a film version for years, but finally captured Hulu's attention for a TV series adaptation after co-writing 2018's "The Favourite," a tragicomedy about Great Britain's Queen Anne that snagged 10 Oscar nominations, including best picture. (Olivia Colman won as best actress.)

"'The Great' is a little more heightened in tone and much bigger in scale than 'The Favourite,'" McNamara says. The 10-episode first season begins with Catherine's arranged marriage to Peter and shows her gradually "trying to work out how to take power when you're a fish out of water learning about politics, learning how tough she needs to be and what it's going to cost her."

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Before "The Great," Fanning knew very little about Russia's longest-reigning empress, who was also the subject of last fall's HBO miniseries, "Catherine the Great," starring Helen Mirren. She had heard the popular myth that Catherine died having sex with a horse but never learned about her in school.

"I was fascinated by how she became this feminist icon and took down the man," says Fanning, 22. "She brought art, science and female education (to the monarchy) and she also invented the roller coaster. That explains how fun of a woman she was. So (the series) really shows her developing as a leader and learning about herself, even though she doesn't always have the answers."

Hoult, 30, co-starred in "The Favourite" as a conniving member of Queen Anne's court and instantly jumped at the chance to work with McNamara again.

"His dialogue is unlike anything I've ever read before," Hoult says. "Peter is such an odd character: so horrible and senseless and na?ve, but also a joy to play because he's unknowingly funny and bizarre. There's no limits playing him because he's so mercurial and can kind of switch and flip on a dime."

Like "The Favourite," "The Great" plays loose with the facts, as characters constantly spout scathing, mostly unprintable insults at each other. Sex scenes are similarly clinical and strange: The palace doctor sometimes coaches Peter through the act to improve the chances that Catherine will conceive an heir.

"The vulgarity is all in our words and there isn't much nudity, aside from a few butts," says Fanning, who worked to create a safe environment for actors as an executive producer. "Tony and I would joke that we have all this fully clothed sex, which I find even more funny. Honestly, it was so hard to get all the corsets off. It was like, 'Alright, girls, just pull up your skirt. We can't show them unlacing your corset.' "

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'The Favourite' writer puts saucy spin on Catherine the Great on Hulu