The Big Picture

Season 2 of
The Serpent Queen
jumps ahead by 10 years to explore Catherine de’ Medici’s challenges with her children & political adversaries.
Filming in Catherine’s real homes added depth to the process of Season 2.
Catherine’s antihero status showcases her need for love and power, but Season 2 also delves into her emotional vulnerabilities.

When creator Justin Haythe’s The Serpent Queen initially premiered on Starz, it quickly asserted itself as being far from any traditional period drama. Sweeping us up into the world of 16th-century France, we’re brought into the inner circle (and the fourth-wall-breaking confidence) of the utterly complicated and compelling Catherine de’ Medici, played by Samantha Morton. Season 1 allowed Catherine to tell her story in her own words, tracking her origins, her marriage into the French court, and her later rise to power.

Season 2, however, jumps forward by a decade, where a now-widowed Catherine is still orchestrating things even though her now-adult son, Charles IX (Bill Milner) sits on the throne. (And that’s not even getting into all the antics she has to deal with from the rest of her children!) Meanwhile, as tensions between the Catholics and Protestants start to spill over into the political realm, there may be an even bigger threat that lies ahead by way of England’s queen, Elizabeth I (Minnie Driver).

Ahead of the Season 2 premiere, Collider had the opportunity to speak with Haythe and co-executive producer Erwin Stoff about the series’ return. Over the course of the interview, which you can read below, Haythe and Stoff discuss the reasoning behind jumping forward by 10 years, Catherine’s biggest problems this season, the impact of filming on location (sometimes in Catherine’s real homes!), building a show around a female antihero, and more.

The Serpent Queen Series based on Leonie Frieda’s book “Catherine de Medici: Renaissance Queen of France.”Release Date September 11, 2022 Cast Samantha Morton , Amrita Acharia , Barry Atsma , Enzo Cilenti , Sennia Nanua , Kiruna Stamell Main Genre Drama Seasons 2 Creator(s) Justin Haythe Writers Justin Haythe Network Starz Showrunner Justin Haythe Expand

‘The Serpent Queen’s Justin Haythe Explains Why Season 2 Jumps Forward by a Decade
Image via Starz

COLLIDER: In terms of the time jump between Seasons 1 and 2, it’s 10 years as revealed in the first episode. Was that always the plan, in the beginning, to put in that time jump between seasons?

JUSTIN HAYTHE: To be honest with you, I always saw her life in these chapters because to tell Catherine’s story, you have to start with the 14-year-old — 11-year-old girl in reality — who was dragged out of the convent by her hair and suddenly found herself fighting for survival in the French court. You needed to see that journey, her struggle to get pregnant, her realization that the man she loved was never gonna love her. Then all of Season 1 was about her going from that girl being dragged through the town square to crowning her own son, pushing the Cardinal aside, and holding the crown. Now, the question is, what’s she gonna do with that power?

When we meet her in this season, she’s had 10 years to rule the country as the Regent, and now her son is finally of age, and it’s time for him to take over. It becomes a generational clash. If Season 1 had a long, extended period of time, meaning we had to start with her young and end up with her… This is a much more compact period. It’s a period of time where her vision of the country is going to be challenged by not only her usual adversaries and the other adversaries around Europe but by her children, the people for whom she’s ostensibly doing this. So it goes from the grand tour, which she did, she took the king to meet the people, which was basically unheard of — it was like taking God to meet the people — and it ends in the most notorious, bloodiest day in French history, which is the opposite of the grand tour.

I’m glad you touched on the tensions that are not just political but familial. Catherine’s children could have come in and just been in the background, but they’re their own strong presences in the show and characters in their own right. What’s the fun of getting to really flesh out this royal family and make these kids distinct in their personalities?

HAYTHE: Erwin made a great point that was, she’s always saying, “I’m doing this for my kids,” in true Corleone fashion, right?

ERWIN STOFF: What she never thought about is what she was doing to her kids.

HAYTHE: Right, in order to do that. And this is classic, right? It’s the person who built the empire, the person who came from nothing, the person who had the steel to do it, and now she has these kids who are raised in a completely different environment, and she’s doing it for them. But all of our children are mirrors, right? They hold up a mirror to us, for good or bad. You see your best sides and your worst sides in the way that your kids react to you. So, these are very different characters. She had 10 children and was only survived by one, which seems to me like a fairy tale curse, and there is a fairy tale element to all of this. But I wanted those characters of her kids to be deeply modern and recognizable with all the challenges that young people have today — their sexuality, their resentments, their jealousies, their discomfort with the power that they’ve been born to.

‘The Serpent Queen’ Season 2 Filmed in Catherine de’ Medici’s Real Home
Image via Starz

I wanted to ask about the locations for Season 2, and using Catherine’s actual residences during filming. What impact or effect does getting to be on location have?

STOFF: First of all, it certainly has an impact on you, and it certainly has an impact on the actors. There was a whole story point in Season 1 about the design of Catherine and Henry’s signet that they were gonna have, which was ultimately designed by Diane de Poitiers. We were filming in locations where that was all over the place. So, the thing that Catherine kept feeling she was gonna be shamed by, there we were 500 years later, and she was still being shamed by it. So, that certainly also had an impact. You can’t help but be influenced by the larger-than-life, insane grandeur of all of this, feeling that these people felt they were gods, but at the same time, all of the deep-seated insecurities, fears, and so on that anybody has today.

HAYTHE: Absolutely. From a director’s point of view, when you walk into these palaces, Chateau Chambord has 490 rooms, and the man who built it maybe spent two nights there. It was his hunting lodge. They’re built to be over-the-top, and anytime you put a camera on it, the production value is just so far beyond anything you could invent. The lesson is to shoot those locations the way that people experienced them, meaning they didn’t stand back and look and say, “My god, here’s a postcard shot.” They lived. That was where they hung out. This is where they had their garden parties. This is where they bullied each other or fell in love, and it’s all just a backdrop. But as Erwin says, they’re constantly being reminded A) they’re supposed to be gods, and B) they are just like everybody else. That’s the central tension they live under.

In Season 1, you could speak to Catherine as an antihero pretty significantly, but Season 2 really pushes her a little bit further in that vein, especially in terms of trying to juggle the religious tensions and play both sides of that. What feels really refreshing is we don’t get to see many women in a role like this. We obviously know the more notorious antiheroes of television, the Tony Sopranos and the Walter Whites of the world, but I was wondering about writing a character like this who is a woman and getting to have her embrace characteristics we don’t often see in women on TV.

HAYTHE: I’m thrilled to hear you say that because, in Season 1, that was my battle cry. I know they exist, but I couldn’t think of an antihero in the same vein. Mad Men and these shows I admire enormously — Breaking Bad and The Sopranos — the reason they work is because even if you don’t agree with what they do or how they do it, you understand. For me, the opportunity was, when I was first approached with this book, and [executive producer] Francis [Lawrence] came to me with it, royal shows weren’t a thing I was necessarily interested in, but I read this book, and it was about somebody who was not supposed to be there. She was not royal, everyone told her she was ugly, nobody fell in love with her. All the things we thought were supposed to happen in royal shows did not happen for her, and yet she basically won the game for 50 years.

What’s relatable to me is, what happens to the smartest person in the room if you tell them they don’t count because they’re female, because of where they’re born, whatever it is? You stick them in the corner, they’re gonna figure out a way to win because they’re the smartest person in the room. We understand, and we empathize with them because the power system has said, “You don’t count.” That’s what makes her so relatable and why we’re willing to watch her do anything to succeed. It becomes more complicated when it comes at the expense of her children. That’s the more complicated quality of this season.

‘The Serpent Queen’s Creator Teases More Than One Romance for Catherine
Image via Starz

In terms of romance for Catherine this season, there are those moments where we see more vulnerability from her. Do you feel like there’s real emotion there for her, or is it more of a need for close comfort?

HAYTHE: Look, I think there’s a “I need the close comfort” kind of office romance where, in proximity, why not? It’s often a cover for a real emotional need. Catherine’s vulnerability and Achilles’ heel is that she was never loved the way she wanted to be loved. She fell in love with a man who was in love with somebody else. That’s her story. I wanted there to be the possibility. I wanted it to be another road she could go down, and it’s complicated.

There are two love interests — one of whom is someone who walks into her life, she has never imagined, who’s a family member. There’s all kinds of complicated feelings about that, but there’s this possibility. So, the question is, if she were to give up all this power, could she have this other life? The question really is, what does she really want? Does she really want to be loved? Does she want to be loved more than she wants to stay in control? I think that’s a pretty universal question.

The Serpent Queen Season 2 is available to stream on Starz, with new episodes premiering Fridays.

Watch on Starz