Minnie Driver joins the ranks of acting greats who have played Elizabeth I

It is not true of every role, but some roles, when they are shaken hard and the sound stage lights are turned upon them, reveal artistic ghosts hidden within. For Elizabeth I, the last Tudor monarch, who ruled England and Ireland until her death in 1603, there are many such ghosts lurking in the shadows.

They include some of the greatest actresses of all time: Glenda Jackson, who played her in Elizabeth R (1971) and Mary, Queen of Scots (1971); Judi Dench, who played her in Shakespeare In Love (1998); Helen Mirren, who played her in Elizabeth I (2005); and Cate Blanchett, who played her in Elizabeth (1998) and Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007).

Minnie Driver as Elizabeth I in The Serpent Queen.Credit: Starz

“Queen Elizabeth comes to meet you very, very specifically. It’s not about going and finding her; it’s very much about her approaching you,” says Minnie Driver, who takes on the role of Elizabeth I in the new season of The Serpent Queen, as she and the French Queen, Catherine de’ Medici (Samantha Morton), establish themselves as political rivals.

“I know it all sounds a bit mad and woo-woo, but essentially acting is. You are making all this stuff up in your head, and you’re playing make-believe that feels very real. I think it’s an enormous honour to play her, and [to understand that] Glenda Jackson and Judi Dench and Helen Mirren and Cate Blanchett met her in the same way.

“If anything, I’m haunted by the queen herself, rather than the other actresses, for whom I feel immeasurable love and respect, but it’s really the queen who’s there haunting all of it, which is exciting and amazing, and you feel a bit chosen. I’ve never felt that about anything else I’ve ever done.”

The Serpent Queen, created by Justin Haythe, is an account of the life of Catherine de’ Medici, who emerges from an arranged marriage to become one of the most formidable women in European political history. The second season of the show takes an ambitious step by bringing Catherine into conflict with Elizabeth.

Catherine de’ Medici (Samantha Morton) with Elizabeth I (Minnie Driver) in The Serpent Queen.Credit: Starz

Critically, there is no historical evidence that such a meeting took place. But the series takes some dramatic licence in bringing them together in a way that allows two extraordinary women from the pages of history to share a stage.

As one of the show’s producers quipped to US media when quizzed about smudging the historical record: “There’s no award for truest screenplay, only an award for best screenplay.”

Driver says that tinkering with the history books is a delicious choice. “It’s delicious to be able to fabulate [imagine]; the notion that where history ends, historians sometimes fabulate what might have happened,” she says.

“What Justin has done is asked what would happen if these two women met? Because it’s not a huge stretch. It’s literally the English Channel that kept these women apart,” Driver says. “Politically, they had to be separate, but what if they had met and if they had, I think this is very much what it would have looked like.”

Though she has a wide range of credits to her name, including an Oscar-nominated performance in Gus Van Sant’s Good Will Hunting, and a dazzling turn in the film adaptation of the stage musical of The Phantom of the Opera, Driver has established a credential playing wild women.

In Will & Grace, the 54-year-old London-born actor played the scheming (but hilarious) heiress Lorraine Finster, who lurched into scenes with a great sense of physical comedy. And in Absolutely Fabulous she played a selfie-selling, clothes-stealing version of herself.

As you might expect, in the hands of an actor with Driver’s range and instinct for self-parody, Elizabeth I becomes both a sensual and sexual figure, and also very, very funny.

“It was, honestly, one of the things that I said to Justin about her ... I was so interested in the woman because there is a woman behind the rough, behind the leaded make-up, behind all of that,” Driver says. “Who is that, and where does it fray, and where do you start seeing this woman come through?

“In The Serpent Queen there is this image of who she is, and she’s wily, and she’s slightly feral, and she’s watching, and she’s incredibly powerful ... and then there are these moments, it’s really shocking when you see her with her hair down and pearly skin and getting naked, but there’s a total veracity.”

The role took a physical toll on Driver, not just because of the demands of the script, but because parts of the second season were filmed on location in France’s Loire Valley during a brutal heatwave. At times, Driver told US media, she wore ice packs under her skirts.

“You know when you’re phoning it in, and you know the things that you could do standing on your head, and you are often just glad for the work, and so you will do those things ... and then there are those jobs that are extraordinarily physically challenging, and they do take their toll,” Driver says. “But it was worth it.

“That’s part of the fun of it. That’s the extension of going into the dressing-up box and putting on the outfit. It’s like you change yourself. It asks something of you that is difficult. And a high degree of difficulty at this point in my career is, essentially, what I’m looking for. I have no interest in phoning anything in ever.”

The political lesson in the series, Driver says, is that female leadership is substantial. “There should be more women in power,” she says. “If we had as many foremothers as we had forefathers, history would probably look a bit different.

“We so rarely revisit the lives of women in the way that we constantly revisit the lives of historical men, be they American presidents or Shakespearean characters. We need to revisit these powerful women from history in order to at least have a shot at learning. We don’t seem to be doing a very good job of learning it from any of our history, but I think women need a crack at changing things.”

The second season of The Serpent Queen is streaming on Stan.

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