Minnie Driver Loves the ‘Roundness’ of Elizabeth I’s Power on ‘The Serpent Queen’
“I think it’s a really fun era,” Minnie Driver told IndieWire of her career. “This is my chaos era. This is great!”
Driver has been popping up in delectable supporting roles for the last few years, from the hard-as-nails agent on “Starstruck” to the CIA director in Jason Statham action flick “The Beekeeper” and the Penguin on this summer’s animated “Batman: Caped Crusader.” But nowhere does she sow more chaos than as Elizabeth I on Season 2 od Starz’ “The Serpent Queen,” where she offers a dazzling new spin on film’s favorite Tudor.
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Equal parts Alexis Carrington and Patsy Stone, Driver’s Elizabeth is flirty, flinty, and all-together formidable — even as those she encounters underestimate her at face value. Always a fatal mistake, and for many in the second season of the Samantha Morton-starring show about Catherine de Medici, literally so.
“Everything about Elizabeth was about the presentation,” Driver said. “She could not afford to have who she was as a person and as a human revealed to the countless people that wanted to see her downfall and that never believed a woman should have been in charge of the country and the new religion. So everything, for me, was like the mask. You underestimate her. It seems like it’s about the clothes and it’s about the face and the makeup and the pomp and the ceremony.”
The result is the canniest political operative outside of “House of Cards,” a woman who presents a hall of mirrors of personalities, picking and choosing which approach best serves her in the moment. For this Elizabeth, it’s all a game she’s sure of winning — which makes the climactic showdown between Catherine and Elizabeth in the seventh episode of “The Serpent Queen” so powerful.
Elizabeth is departing the castle in France where Catherine and her brood of children live and fight — but she has a few choice words for the so-called Serpent Queen on her way out the door. For the first time, Driver reveals the true Elizabeth, dropping the affectations to deliver some home truths.
“[Elizabeth and Catherine] both have to have a brand in order to get by,’ Driver said of Elizabeth’s thought process in that moment. “You’re a witch and I’m a virgin. And those are our brands. And those are the masks that we have to hide behind because it is a male-dominated world. And like, you idiots are not understanding that. And not only that, but I think there’s a real disappointment of like, ‘Fuck, I thought that I was gonna have a mate. I thought I was gonna have a friend. I thought there was gonna be someone I could talk about this shit to. And it just turns out you’re another idiot who’s getting swept away by what they think is their power.'”
The moment is one of very few that finds Catherine on the back foot. She usually has the best of her opponents, even if she must improvise in the moment. But here, the truth of what Elizabeth is telling her (that her family is out of control, that she’s in danger of losing the country, that she’s dangerously underestimated her enemies) is too starkly obvious. “Great moment for Catherine de Medici, too,” Driver pointed out. “It’s a great moment for their show. Somebody has to best her, because she has to have something to come back and fight for.”
Perhaps the most shocking aspect of the Elizabeth that exists within the world of “The Serpent Queen” is that, well, this Elizabeth fucks. For political gain, to be sure, but this is a Virgin Queen in reputation only.
“You see a woman using everything that is available,” Driver said. “She is the queen and therefore, you know, ostensibly to the uneducated British public chosen by God. So there’s something deified about her. And she’s, yes, all of those things. And also a woman who can take her clothes off and have sex with a man to get what she wants. I like the roundness of her power, how much it encompasses, and how ready we all are right now for that. It feels like the answer to the female rage that I think really justifiably exists right now. I want to see women fully embodying their power, I’ve been longing to see that.”
In Driver’s adroit hands, Elizabeth becomes the kind of scene-stealer we crave in historical epics. Not that “The Serpent Queen” is a stodgy retelling of history; the tone of the second season is even more conspiratorial with the audience, now that Morton’s Catherine turns to the camera to address us directly. And Driver couldn’t be more thrilled.
“It should be Patsy Stone and Alexis Carrington!” she said. “And then also be able to drop into the most connected, dark, deeply dramatic [tone]. The Queen deserves that paradigm, but also, I think audiences want that. They want to be entertained, and they want it to be authentic at the same time. They want to feel, they want to be moved. So they’re laughing at how ridiculous you are and how dramatic, but then also buying the fact that you really will cut someone’s head off when you need to. That’s the stuff that I want to see. I don’t just want grim medicine in my drama. There has to be levity. That has to be there because that’s what life is.”
That extended to Elizabeth’s elaborate costumes, as well. Costume designer Karen Muller Serreau discovered in her research that Elizabeth wore amulets and symbols sewn into her clothes and promptly added them to the exteriors of the gowns. (The dress Elizabeth wears while traveling to France, for example, was covered with fish for sea travel.)
One costume piece was particularly memorable for how well it encapsulates Elizabeth’s oddball energy. While on a hunt with Catherine and her family, Driver appears wearing what seems to be an elaborate comb framing her face. Except it was initially intended to fit more like a crown.
“When it arrived, it had been made differently to what Karen had designed, and everyone was in a bit of a kerfuffle because it didn’t really fit on my head,” Driver said. “I pulled it down and I was like, ‘Well, what if it became like a weird sort of face/head sculpture thing?’ And it was so cool because Karen and hair and makeup, everyone was like, ‘Fuck yeah, that’s it, that’s it, right there.’ That’s when you know they’re really creative people. And my god, that is the stuff that I love.”
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