Helen Mirren has portrayed both Queen Elizabeths and Queen Charlotte, and she’ll soon take on another famous monarch, Catherine the Great. The Hollywood Reporter confirms that the Oscar winner will star as the Empress of Russia in a four-part miniseries from HBO and Europe’s Sky. Mirren will also exec produce.
Produced by Jules Hussey (“My Mad Fat Diary”), “Catherine the Great” will “explore the politically tumultuous and sexually charged court of the most powerful female monarch in history,” the source details. “The series will follow Catherine toward the end of her reign and her passionate affair with Grigory Potemkin … Unable to publicly marry and famously promiscuous, they develop a unique and devoted relationship, overcoming their adversaries and together shaping Russia as we know it today.”
“I am very excited by the possibility of embodying a woman from history who grabbed and then wielded great power,” Mirren commented. “She rewrote the rules of governance by a woman, and succeeded to the extent of having the word Great attached to her name, Catherine the Great.”
“Catherine the Great” will reunite Mirren with a couple of her previous collaborators. Writer Nigel Williams penned the 2005 HBO miniseries “Elizabeth I,” in which Mirren starred in the Emmy-winning title role. Director Philip Martin helmed an episode of Mirren’s “Prime Suspect” in 2006.
Production on “Catherine the Great” is expected to begin later this year.
“Helen Mirren came to me with the idea for ‘Catherine the Great’ when we were working with her on ‘Woman in Gold,’ saying it’s a part she’s always wanted to play,” said producer David M. Thompson. “I’m delighted we’re now making the series and indeed, we can’t think of anyone better for the role.”
Mirren won an Oscar for playing Queen Elizabeth II in the days following Princess Diana’s death in “The Queen.” Her previous television projects include “Prime Suspect,” “Elizabeth I,” and TV movie “Phil Spector.” You can catch the self-proclaimed “nastiest of all nasty women” next as a gun heiress waging war against the ghosts haunting her family in “Winchester,” in theaters February 2, or as one half of a road tripping couple in “The Leisure Seeker,” out March 9.
“I have come to understand that feminism is not an abstract idea but it’s a necessity if we — and really by ‘we,’ I mean you guys — are to move us forward and not backward into ignorance and fearful jealousy,” Mirren said in her 2017 commencement address at Tulane University. “So now, I am a declared feminist and I would encourage you to be the same.”
