It’s Tudor history, but not as we know it. Welcome to Prime Video’s retelling of the life of forgotten Queen Lady Jane Grey, where instead of tragedy there are happy-ever-afters, rampant swearing and noblemen turning into horses when the sun comes up,
The real Jane Grey is somewhat of a historical enigma. Elevated to power after the death of her cousin Edward VI, she only reigned for nine days before being beheaded for treason by her successor, Mary I.
However, her story was rewritten as a magical, feminist romp by author Cynthia Hand in her 2016 book My Lady Jane. Niche it may be, but for scriptwriter Gemma Burgess, adapting it for the small screen was a no-brainer.
“I saw a girl reading the book in the subway in New York,” she says. “And I'm really nosy. Whenever someone reads a book, I just write it down and buy without reading about it because I just want to have the experience that they're having.”
This time around, the novel in question was My Lady Jane. “I bought the book, and I literally remember being like, I know exactly what I want to do.”
In the book – and the show – Jane lives in a fantasy version of Tudor England where Catholics and Protestants have been replaced by Ethians and Verities. That is, people who can change into animals at will (and are persecuted for it), and those who can’t. Jane’s new husband Guildford Dudley, for example, happens to be able to change into a horse.
Burgess cites The Princess Bride and cult hit Everything Everywhere All At Once as inspirations, and the show’s cast and crew insist that My Lady Jane is well worth a watch. Despite the magical themes, it is very relevant to 2024.
“The Protestant-Catholic thing that was going on way back when was really about otherism. And in 2024, there is so much otherism,” says director Jamie Babbit, best known for directing the 1999 satirical queer comedy But I’m a Cheerleader, as well as episodes of The L Word, Russian Doll, Only Murders in the Building, and A League of Their Own. She cites sexism and homophobia as some of the reasons she connected to the story in the first place.
Despite being grounded in British royal history, My Lady Jane’s star is California native 26-year-old Emily Bader, who will be making her on-screen debut as Jane after a global casting call. Though she’d never visited the UK before, Bader managed such a good accent on set that her co-stars did not realise that she wasn’t English until the cameras stopped rolling.
“I really have to give all of my credit to Keira Knightley,” she says. “Me, my mother and my sister have probably watched 2005’s Pride and Prejudice maybe 7,000 times… I just copied her my entire life. And when I got this audition, I was like, ‘That's how I speak.’”
This is not a run-of-the-mill historical adaption, she adds, but a chance to spotlight a forgotten woman’s story. “She's a tragic heroine. We idealise the idea of monarchy, and this royal time of Tudor England and the 1500s. And the reality is, she was a young girl that was forced into a position… and then killed for it.
“I think [the show] is giving Jane a second chance: giving that version of the woman in this time period that never really had any chance to have a life, or make any decisions of her own. The heart of the story is giving her power and identity.”
If talk of feminism and modern relevance makes the show sound more like Bridgerton than a traditional period drama, that’s not entirely by chance. In addition to continuing Bridgerton’s trend of colour-blind casting (and penchant for steamy sex scenes), the show’s set designers, Will Hughes-Jones and Gina Cromwell, also worked on creating the sets for Shonda Rhimes’ hit show.
“When you watch Bridgerton, there's just such a life and such a fun joy to the design,” Babbit says. “So what kind of fun, sexy, sexy and warm things did [the Tudors] have?”
One example she cites is stained glass windows, which have been liberally used in the sets to add sprays of colour to walls – another is the huge, embroidered throw cushions, made for lounging in front of fireplaces that we pass on our tour. “We can find joy and lightness in these dark rooms: that's been our challenge, to make it more Princess Bride, less like a BBC historical thing.”
Indeed, a walk around the show’s cavernous sound-stages reveals Jane’s room (full to bursting with elaborate embroidery and drying bunches of herbs), a council chamber, an Ethian jail and even a Tudor honeymoon suite, decked out with flowers and elaborate flower frescoes.
The crowning glory is the great hall, which has been decked out with arches of golden flowers. It is being sprayed with fake candle smoke as we pass through.
Sounds opulent? Spot on. “The whole scale of it is new for me,” Kate O’Flynn, who plays Princess Mary, says. “My first day was a night shoot. I was on the bridge over the moat on a horse with metal armour, wearing an amazing dress, with my army behind ready to take the crown. The scale of it was what took me a while to go, ‘Whoa, okay.’”
But where the show’s sets and costumes feel plush and expensive, the visual effects are decidedly less so. Unlike other shows, which might rely on CGI to create the Ethians’ animal alter-egos, My Lady Jane is going entirely old-school: all the animals portrayed here are real.
“We really do love the Eighties and love Princess Bride, and love really simple CGI. We wanted this to feel lo-fi and analogue,” Burgess says.
“We didn't want it to feel like magic,” Babbit adds. “I always relate it back to queerness: being queer is just one part of who I am. But it's not a magic thing. So the transformation from person to animal is just a very natural thing that happens.”
In addition to Bluemel and Bader, My Lady Jane also boasts a surprising number of stars in its line-up. This includes Jim Broadbent (who plays the Duke of Leicester), Dominic Cooper and also Rob Brydon, who takes a break from filming to answer questions while clad in gold leather pantaloons and a gold-braided doublet.
As he puts it, his character, Lord Dudley, is “different to the character I played in Gavin and Stacey. So that's quite good. He's a bit more scheming, so it's very appealing.”
His main inspiration for the role? “Jacob Rees-Mogg, in as much as he stays infuriatingly calm and sort of oily. That was a beginning point,” he says, “but it’s just going to be an aspect of yourself, really.”
But Brydon’s comparisons to Jacob Rees-Mogg aside, the creators are clear.
“There's so many ways that this [show] is applicable to modern life,” Burgess says. “But at the end of the day, we are a fantasy action adventure show that's romantic and funny, and it's supposed to be escapist. And” she adds, “it's got a sharp tongue and a warm heart.”
