'My Lady Jane' on Prime Video is 'Bridgerton meets The Boys,' squashing damsel in distress tropes
"We're subverting all those tropes and [showing] the full female experience," Emily Bader said
Making a splash in the popular period drama genre, alongside shows like Bridgerton and The Buccaneers, is the Prime Video series My Lady Jane, starring Emily Bader, Edward Bluemel, Anna Chancellor and Rob Brydon. Described by the show's creator, Gemma Burgess, as "Bridgerton meets The Boys," the show based on Lady Jane Grey, who was Queen of England for nine days before being beheaded in the Tudor period, with the series operating as a reimagining of this woman's tragic tale.
"She was just such a tragic but romantic heroine, historical figure that when you're young captivates your imagination, but when you're older you look back at her tragically short life and you say, 'Wow, she was dealt a poor hand,'" creator Burgess told Yahoo Canada. "So the opportunity to rewrite her story and to give her a perhaps more heroic editing was too good to pass up."
"But in terms of tone we were inspired by so, so, so many things that we love. ... The Princess Bride, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and [A] Knight's Tale.
To tease where the tone of the series stands, My Lady Jane (based on the book by Brodi Ashton, Jodi Meadows,and Cynthia Hand) starts with a sassy narrator, Oliver Chris, leading us to a scene where Jane, described as a "rebel" and "pain in the ass," is putting salve on a maid's vagina, with one shot showing us what's happening from the perspective of that woman's private area.
Watch My Lady Jane on Prime Video with a 30-day trial then $9.99/month
What is 'My Lady Jane' about?
At its core, My Lady Jane takes this damsel in distress and crafts a world where she takes charge of her own destiny.
At the request of her mother Lady Frances Grey (Chancellor), Jane is set to marry Lord Guildford Dudley (Bluemel), the son of Brydon's Lord Dudley. Jane has no interest in being married off and her rebellious streak is absolutely at play as she tries to get out of this situation.
Bader highlighted that as an actor it's a "rare opportunity" for her to see a female character with "so many layers."
"Jane is such a full character, she's flawed, which is something that I love that we were able to show about her," the actor said. "She has this sort of naivety, but it's that good type of optimistic that I think people really like, and it's something that I can kind of relate to."
"In moments she's really fiery and earnest, and I think to just to have a character that I can do so much with ... is really special."
For Bluemel, who spends much of the series having quick, witty back-and-forth banter with Bader, he explained his character's journey is one of "self-discovery."
"She's sort of the key to him saving himself," Bluemel said. "I think it's so fun to have a character that on the surface is this obnoxious, arrogant sort of posh boy, and then underneath there's an incredible vulnerability that only Jane really can open up."
While Brydon, the Gavin and Stacey star, really puts his superb comedy skills on display in My Lady Jane, often making his fellow cast break out in laughter with his improvisations on set as well, the actor stressed that the script really grabbed him from the beginning.
"Scripts can be quite hard to read if they're not grabbing you, but this one, I was with it from the start," Brydon said. "Then you see the character and you think, 'Well I know what I could do with this.'"
"But it's a little bit different, because he's scheming and he's manipulative. And I don't normally get offered those kinds of roles."
"These scripts, they were just so fun," Chancellor added. "The language was very good. ... The use of languages is vital."
Gwyneth Paltrow's 'Shakespeare in Love' costume piece used in 'My Lady Jane'
In terms of how things look, My Lady Jane very much leans into the "castle porn" of the genre, but different than some other shows with the same feel, the goal was really to create a lived-in world for this show.
"What was most important to us is that this world feels real," Burgess said. "We had two people, in fact, whose entire job was to break down [costumes] and make them look worn."
"We have mud on hems, we have dirt under fingernails. Everything needs to feel real. We're not making some imaginary pristine, perfect world. We're making a dirty real world."
The detail went all the way down to getting Gwyneth Paltrow's actual ruff from Shakespeare in Love for My Lady Jane.
"We were looking for a ruff and our brilliant costume designer, Stephanie Collie, called us and said, 'I've tracked it down,'" writer and producer Meredith Glynn revealed. "And she had ... a holy grail sort of tone of voice."
"We said, 'Can you make us something like Gwyneth Paltrow's from Shakespeare in Love,' and she got us the actual thing," Burgess added.
'Good people can do bad things, and bad people can do good things'
It's a similar approach, in a way, to how villains are crafted on the show, really exploring the grey areas of each character.
"I think it comes back to that old saying, good people can do bad things, and bad people can do good things," Brydon said. "It was very nice, especially in an age now that's so polarized, so binary, to say, well see my character Dudley does some pretty despicable things, but he does some nice things too. That's enjoyable to play."
"I think our writers, Gemma and Meredith, are interested in that side of human nature," Chancellor added. "They like the villain and they like them sometimes very tender and capable of great love, and that interested them as writers."
"That becomes quite evident in the show because Lady Jane Grey isn't always well behaved herself."
'The full picture of what it really means to be woman'
Ultimately My Lady Jane tries to make its mark as entertainment that pushes against the "damsel in distress" tropes that many of us grew up with.
"Jane was a victim, the ultimate sort of damsel in distress, and the reality is we really don't necessarily know what happened at the end of her life, because people basically had to get out of there and abandon her in order to kind of save face," Bader said. "So I think we're subverting all those tropes and [showing] the full female experience."
"I think that's so important right now, to not just only have more female stories, but different types of female stories. Show women enraged and flawed and funny, and beautiful and charming. ... To show the full picture of what it really means to be woman nowadays, and I think that's just a great thing."
"I think part of the benefit of making this show with an all female EP team, a female ... director, Jamie Babbitt, who is such a genius, ... [is that] we always think that every female character in this show is unique and interesting and flawed, and can do terrible things, and we still love them," Glynn said.
