Samantha Morton Drew on Her Homeless Past to Play ‘The Serpent Queen’
Samantha Morton’s affinity for playing complex, richly layered mothers—an 18th century brothel madam in Harlots, the leader of a group of post-zombie apocalypse survivors in The Walking Dead—is a genre-crossing body of work for the actor’s actor, and a rich, years-long gift to TV fans. Morton’s latest entry in this category of formidable schemers and strategists is Catherine de’Medici, the Florentine orphan who became Queen of France in 1547, in Starz’s historical costume drama, The Serpent Queen.
Having survived the snobbery and ruthlessness of the French court—who was this tacky foreigner, who might also be a witch—in the first season, Season 2 has been all about Catherine trying to settle into her Regency while her son Henry III attempts to navigate a still-treacherous court. It all sounds so promising, but things start badly and get worse quickly.
Fending off potential challenges to the Crown from both the Roman Catholic Guise family and the Protestant House of Bourbon, the tragic death of her son Hercule, and a dizzyingly tactical Queen Elizabeth of England (Minnie Driver, having the most fun at every moment)—it’s exhausting! In the end, Catherine decides half-measures are useless, and deploys another son, Anjou, alongside her Flying Squadron of female spies, to assassinate nearly every one of her religious and political rivals.