Thursday, March 28, 2024

Jodie Turner-Smith Channeled Motherhood to Play British Queen Anne Boleyn

Jodie Turner-Smith
Jodie Turner-Smith (Photo by Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic)

*Jodie Turner-Smith opens up about playing British queen Anne Boleyn, a role she has received major backlash over. Turner-Smith is the first Black woman to play Boleyn onscreen, and the racist trolls can’t stand it. 

“As an artist, I saw an opportunity to tell a story in a different way, and I fucking jumped at it,” the actress told Vulture.

We previously reported… the “Queen & Slim” star plays Anne Boleyn in a three-part drama that will air on the ViacomCBS-backed U.K. broadcaster Channel 5 U.K. 

Directed by Lynsey Miller, the psychological series details the final months of the life of King Henry VIII’s second wife, EW reported. 

“The drama will explore the final months of Anne Boleyn’s life from the eponymous queen’s perspective,” Channel 5 said in a statement. “The psychological drama follows her as she struggles to survive, to secure a future for her daughter, and to challenge the powerful patriarchy closing in around her.”

READ MORE: Jodie Turner-Smith Reacts to Racist Backlash Over Her Portraying Queen Anne Boleyn

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Jodie Turner-Smith (@jodiesmith)

King Henry VIII split with the Catholic Church in 1533 to marry Anne Boleyn after divorcing Catherine of Aragon. The day after he had Anne beheaded, Henry married Jane Seymour.

Natalie Portman, Claire Foy and Natalie Dormer have previously portrayed Anne Boleyn.

Vulture chatted with Turner-Smith on Zoom about channeling her new experiences with motherhood into the role. Check out excerpts from the conversation below.

What drew you to this project?

I knew our director Lynsey Miller, and when they came to me with this offer, I was like, Wow, that sounds really freaking exciting! Then I read the scripts and really loved them. As an actress, there are so many variables in filmmaking, but what’s exciting to me is when it starts with the page. I just hope I get the chance to do something like this again, but with lots more money. [Laughs.]

What did it mean to you to be the first Black actress to portray this white historical figure onscreen? Were you worried given the initial backlash?

I try my best to insulate myself from the comments because they’re not helpful in the grand scheme of things. That, and social media tends to amplify negativity. I had to turn off people’s ability to send me messages because, girl, I get inundated. But I got to a place where I realized I had to keep going because people will always find something to be mad about. They were mad because of the way Queen & Slim ended, mad that my husband is white after I did this great Black love story. Now they’re mad that I played this white queen.

But I also know that people will be upset because they feel protective of things, protective of the characters Queen and Slim and of Anne. People have very strong feelings toward this woman, of course, because she’s amazing. But we’ve been seeing things given to us in a certain way for a very long time, and people are uncomfortable seeing things exist outside of what they feel it should look like — and that is their right and prerogative. But as an artist, I saw an opportunity to tell a story in a different way, and I fucking jumped at it, because why not?

Given that this is a true story — or as the creators say, “inspired by the truth” — how did you prepare?

The first thing you do is touch on the history, so we worked with an amazing historian and created an Anne Bible: what we do know about her, how she was raised, where she went to school, and the time she spent at the French court rubbing elbows with artists. Knowing that, I asked, What kind of person would that create? This is a woman who was around all these powerful women growing up. She would come back to England and have a little spice. She was not doing it like everybody else, and that made her attractive to Henry. It also made her threatening to the traditional British monarchy. Clearly, she was even more threatening in the fact that Henry left the Catholic Church because of her. Religion is one of the most divisive subjects in humankind, and she disrupted England’s religion.

I also learned there is so much mystery around her. We don’t have any record of Anne in her own words. No diary entries or journals. Now, we have many letters from Henry to her, but not a single letter from her to Henry. There’s not even an official portrait of her — whether Henry destroyed them all when he had her killed, all of her pictures and portraits we see now were done years after her death with people guessing her look. That mystery is the very thing that makes her such an interesting character to jump into. We had a lot of license to imagine who she is.

Did you take your experiences as a new mother into the role?

Playing Anne and nursing my daughter at the time, I definitely channeled that energy. I could put my feet in the shoes of a woman walking this fraught path of a desire to mother your children, but they’re pulled away from you because that’s what they did at that time. And the deep passion you feel for wanting your child to be successful and safe in society and also wanting your child to be ambitious — Anne was so openly ambitious and people hated that about her. I could relate to that as a woman, a Black woman, and a Black mother in this day and age.

As a Black woman with natural hair, I loved that Anne had kinky curly hair instead of 2B, blown-out, stick-straight hair. And most importantly, she wore a satin scarf at night. Did you have a say in that?

It was important that my Anne had Afro-textured hair and that she’d been growing it her whole life. Julie Kendrick, who was the head of our hair and makeup department, was already on board, so we created all these looks with the help of my personal hairstylist and the team. My Anne will wrap her hair because she is a Black woman. Honestly, hair is the thing that takes me out when I watch things. If the hair is raggedy, I’m like, “What’s going on? Curl her wig please.”

Read the full Q&A here.

We Publish News 24/7. Don’t Miss A Story. Click HERE to SUBSCRIBE to Our Newsletter Now!

YOU MAY LIKE

SEARCH

- Advertisement -

TRENDING