THE QUEEN'S STATE OF MIND | SERPENT QUEEN

For the past few months, we have been excited for STARZ's The Serpent Queen as it tells us the story of Catherine De Medici. We caught up with Samantha Morton who plays Catherine as she fills us in how she approached it and why this show spoke to her.

ATHLEISURE MAG: What drew you to want to be in the Serpent Queen and obviously, being Catherine Medici?

SAMANTHA MORTON: I think that firstly, it’s an incredible role to play as an actress and to be given the opportunity to play her. To play somebody that goes from being an orphan, the daughter of a shopkeeper and to be put in a convent to then marrying a prince, be sent off to a different country – child trafficking basically. Them having to be an adult, a child in an adult’s world. To then becoming Queen of France to then becoming Regent is incredible. And so, that is what drew me to the role and I had been playing another fantastic role for a very long time which is Alpha in The Walking Dead and now the spin-off that we have, Tales of the Walking Dead. That again is another incredible character to play. She’s very complex and it’s a juicy role and I wanted to do something that was going to challenge me as much as Alpha had. You know, when you’ve played that role, the next thing you want to do is something different, but equally as exciting.

AM: Very true and I love that the format of this show between breaking the wall and this modernized version and being able to see Catherine as an adult and also as a child, how did you prepare to play this character?

SM: Firstly, Justin Haythe (The Clearing, Revolutionary Road, Bohemian Rhapsody) who is the showrunner, the writer and the director – I was speaking to him and he sent me the scripts and the synopsis and just getting to grips with what this show was going to be. Then I listened to the audio book about her because it is based on the audio book. That was just fascinating and really really interesting. Then, I tried to find portraits of her – photographs because I wasn’t able to travel everywhere. I was in NY so whatever I could find online and also trying to understand the time that she lived in. How things were different then and what her world was like, but ultimately, I had to go back and to rely on the scripts because that’s my launch pad – that’s my Bible if you like. That was my everything. And also spending a huge amount of time, thank you very much Justin! I asked a lot of questions and making sure that I understood the dialogue. Looking at who’s who and because I don’t play the younger Catherine, I had to make sure that I was really aware of what Liv Hill (Three Girls, The Great, Serpent Queen) was going through so when I inhabited the older Catherine, that I carried that history.

AM: I like that because seeing you and Liv go back and forth, how much did the two of you work together? We see bones of how she will be when she is older and then we see certain uncertainties in the beginning – how much work was that between the two of you?

SM: We had quite a few conversations where we talked about our interpretations with the character, falling in love because of her relationship with Henry and my relationship with Henry. And then we were trying to talk about – a little bit about ourselves personally. This way, I don’t know so that we had a connection which we did and we’re both from a very similar part of the world and so we had a similar approach to acting. We have a down to Earth way of acting and about inhabiting the character from the heart – the inside out – rather than the outside in. So that was really nice and we had a voice coach Nia who I had worked with before who then came on board to help Liv understand some of the way that I spoke and things like that. That way, we could have a bit of continuity and likewise, me with her. I had done a lot of period things before so I was used to wearing the corsets - you breathe differently, you walk differently and so just having those conversations!

After talking with Samantha, we took some time to chat with Liv Hill. She plays the younger Catherine and we wanted to know how she approached this role and how she sees this royal.

ATHLEISURE MAG: What drew you to wanting to play in Serpent Queen and playing Catherine Medici?

LIV HILL: I remember reading the script and having a visceral reaction to it and I just felt that I must play this character. It’s a gift for any actress. She’s so multi-layered, she’s vulnerable and also emotionally available and at times she isn’t. She’s weak, she’s strong – all these things and very compassionate, but stoic when needs be. The idea to play her and then to be able to be surrounded by these really talented people as well in every department. I would be so stupid if I didn’t take the opportunity to play her.

AM: I love the subject matter and I remember reading about her in school, but the format of the show is next level and your facial expressions when you’re breaking the 4th wall is so good!

LH: Oh thank you!

AM: It’s so modern. How did you prepare to play this character?

LH: Well I started reading the book Catherine De Medici: Renaissance Queen of France by Leonie Frieda which was really dense with information, but I didn’t finish reading it before we started shooting because it was really thick! But it was very very good! After that, I went to the director, the writer, the producers and a bit with Samantha (Minority Report, The Walking Dead, Tales of the Walking Dead) as well! Just to discuss motivations, intentions – I think that the main thing that I remember is that in playing her with the intentions to survive. I just kind of – literally that’s it! So I dialed that up and down depending on what the scene required, but that was always a state of being.

AM: What’s that like because we’re constantly flashing back and forth between the younger and older self of her. How much work did you do with Samantha when you’re looking at where you need to go or the nexus of where this was going to start?

LH: I mean, we didn’t talk as much as I thought that we were going to which wasn’t a bad thing either. We talked a little bit about Catherine and our interpretation. The main thing I remember her saying was that I needed to trust myself and that she was very happy that I was playing the young Catherine and that felt like a really generous and kind thing for her to say to a young actress. I think that she knew that I felt a little bit overwhelmed to fill her shoes. So, that gave me that relief and it made me do my own thing and I didn’t feel too overwhelmed and imitating Samantha. I just focused on who I thought that Catherine was.

AM: What do you want everyone to take away from in watching this. It’s beautifully done, I love how modern it is, the style of the music! People may not know the story, but what is it that you want audiences to feel in coming to the premier of this?

LH: Well the Serpent Queen has that connotation of being evil and manipulative and two-faced and all that stuff. Even if you don’t know Catherine beforehand and she is known notoriously in history as being this “evil” Queen, you would kind of already have this idea going in – this is what she was. But I hope that audiences take away is that this show debunks that. It shows her in all her glory and in all of her weaknesses as well.

I think that the fact that she remains so resilient and has this unwavering self-belief in herself despite this emotional and physical abuse that she receives throughout her life is very inspiring and I think I think that’s what I hope that most people will take away. Just that inspiration to be resilient in their own lives.

AM: In playing her, how was it to wear the corsets and learn how to do the things that you would normally do in such a constrictive garment?

LH: Yes, I mean that’s exactly it – it was restrictive. That corset was made to keep women restricted in that aspect! Those costumes were some of the most amazing garments that I have ever worn and what it did do for me is that it gave me a different posture. It made me feel more powerful and strong. I gained a confidence that Catherine desperately needed because she was somewhere that she didn’t belong. She needed to keep her strength and it really helped in playing that.

IG @samanthamorton

PHOTOGRAPHY CREDITS | STARZ/The Serpent Queen

Read the SEP ISSUE #81 of Athleisure Mag and see THE QUEEN’S STATE OF MIND | Serpent Queen in mag.

THE LEGACY CONTINUES | TITUS WELLIVER

We've been fans of Prime Video's Bosch where we follow along as Harry Bosch solves a number of cases regardless of how many feathers he ruffles in the process. On May 6th, the story continues on Amazon FreeVee with Bosch: Legacy. We see how Bosch continues to fight for victims as his daughter Maddie Bosch continues to walk in her father's steps and how he will reconnect with former nemesis, Honey Chandler.

We enjoy the way Titus Welliver leans into his characters and draws us in. Whether it's his work in ABC's Lost, FX's Sons of Anarchy, HBO's Deadwood and countless other TV shows and movies, we know that Titus is going to leave quite a memory with us in the characters that he plays.

We talked with him about becoming an actor, working in the industry and taking on Bosch which comes from a series of books written by Michael Connelly.

ATHLEISURE MAG: What was the moment that you realized that you wanted to be an actor?

TITUS WELLIVER: Oh boy, you know, I think I was born acting. I don’t know about that, I think it’s difficult or I can say, it was right after I realized I didn’t want to be a firefighter or a policeman anymore like all little boys do.

Actually, there was a filmmaker named Rudy Burckhardt and he made some films and he asked me to be in a film of his when I was about 5 and it was a very simple little bit where I played a little boy that had a shiny penny in his pocket and he was walking down a road. He had a hole in his pocket and he lost the penny and the penny was stolen from him by this stingy old man. I remember sort of thinking that it was kind of fun, but I didn’t really consider it any further than that. I did some little bits in school plays and things like that.

I really was initially trained to be a painter – a fine artist, that’s really what I wanted to do. But I always had an interest certainly in film and I watched a lot of television. I was spending a summer with my mother – she was living in Boston, but I didn’t go to school there so I didn’t have any friends there and I didn’t know any kids there. She was living in an area where there just wasn’t that kind of accessibility and I was sort of left to my own devices which meant I was just going to the Cineplex – to the movies all day long. She signed me up at a place called The Actors Workshop in Boston and I was 14 years old. I was reluctant, I wasn’t a camp kid, I liked sports camps and things like that. I went and after the first day, I came back to my mother and asked her if I could do more days of that. I ended up doing 5 days a week and it was a professional school for both adult and kid actors. I did that and I spent the summer doing that, but I still stayed on the trajectory that I was going to go to art school and I painted and I studied and studied.

I did a few productions in high school and enjoyed doing that and after a year of art school, I was left kind of cold to a certain degree and I had a conversation with my father who very directly said to me, “you know, when you’re not thinking about girls and drinking beer, what do you think about?” I said, “I think about acting.” My father said, “so not painting?”and I said no. He told me that I needed to be an actor. That was kind of it!

AM: What’s your process like when you’re thinking of attaching yourself to projects? We’ve enjoyed seeing your in Deadwood, Sons of Anarchy and of course Bosch – what are you looking for?

TW: Well, when you’re starting out, it’s about paying your bills, but also gaining experience. I mean, I did a lot of teeny tiny parts in plays, in short films and things because I was just trying to learn and gain that experience. So there’s that, but I think that more then anything, it starts with the writing. I've read a lot of bad scripts and I have acted in a few. But when the material is good, then it’s on! Then you realize that you’re in the presence of some material that’s going to challenge you and also that it will hopefully teach you something. Because I always say, I like to be in a constant state of learning and getting better. I think that with time, age and experience, the hope is that we evolve and certainly as artists, otherwise, you get kind of bored and you go and do something else. I’ve been extraordinarily fortunate that I have worked with great writers, producers and directors over the years – David Milch (Deadwood, NYPD Blue, Hill Street Blues) and Steven Bochco (NYPD Blue, Doogie Howser, M.D., Brooklyn South) to name a few and here I landed with Michael Connelly (The Lincoln Lawyer, The Dark Hours, The Poet) and Eric Overmyer (The Wire, Boardwalk Empire, The Affair) and Tom Bernardo (Bosch, Bosch: Legacy) – a very gifted and dynamic group of people. To be given the opportunity to play this very iconic character, he’s kind of like Santa Claus for an actor, he goes down the chimney every time that I go to work and it’s nice.

AM: We’ve been a fan of Michael Connelly books for a number of years so when Bosch went to Prime Video it was exciting and then that you were going to play the title character, we knew that it was going to be so good. How did that come together for you to be part of this?

TW: Well, I was initially sent the script and I read it very quickly. I had only read one of the Bosch books many many years prior to. Unbeknownst to me, my younger brother had read and re-read the books and to this day possesses a kind of encyclopedic knowledge of Bosch as well as everything that Michael has written.

Through a series of mishaps, I kept trying to meet with Michael and the meetings kept getting pushed off and I was shooting Transformers: Age of Extinction which had me traveling all over the place in Chicago, Michigan and then Hong Kong. We just kept missing. I got a call a couple of months later from my manager who told me that I had a little window and Michael Connelly was in town and I would be able to meet with him. At that point, I thought that that boat had sailed as it had been a couple of months that had passed. I went in and met with him and the producers and the director and I was – as my grandmother would say, I was blessed at that moment. I left that audition feeling good, but you know, I have been doing this long enough and have enough humility to know that that’s all you can do. I got the call from my manager that I had been cast as Bosch and to say that I was thrilled was an understatement. It was just more realized after the first day of shooting that I knew I was part of something that was different. I’ve played other cop characters and I’ve done lots of procedural cop shows. Look, when you’re doing something from the ground up, it’s tricky but, when you have source material, like Michael Connelly’s books, you have to work really hard to mess it up. You know, in less capable hands, it could be very very messed up. The temptation to sex things up for a lack of a better word – to have him wearing Brioni suits, driving a fast car and jumping in and out of bed like James Bond, I was relieved that there was never any kind of consideration to do anything because I have always felt that if it ain’t broke, there’s no need to fix it.

Because of the ways that Amazon and the executives work which is at the beginning of the studios, they have a prime directive which is to get the material, but then to delegate the process to the creative people and not to micromanage. They delegated to people that they knew that they trusted. They really did that and they stood behind the show. When we needed things, they always showed up. Because we had such a great group of writers and producers, we were excited by the acceptance and the invitation into people’s homes for the show and the success of the show. But I think that we always felt that it speaks back to what I said in evolving and learning. I felt that the show just continued to get better and better and here we are now in Bosch: Legacy which is a continuation of the work we have been doing for all of these years.

AM: For those who might need a refresher, where did we leave Bosch in season 7 and where do we pick up with him again as we continue his saga in Bosch: Legacy?

TW: Well, Harry’s you know in the last season of Bosch, he’s so completely fed up and disenfranchised that he gives his badge to the Chief of Police and says he’s done. There’s a great line that Irving (Lance Reddick – Bosch, John Wick franchise, The Wire) says to him in that moment, he says, “who are you gonna be if you’re not a cop and you don’t have a badge, who are you going to be?” Harry says, “I guess we’ll find out.” In the final scenes for a little Easter egg scene, we find Harry filling out his paperwork to become a private investigator.

We pick up a little over a year later after that season and Harry is working as a private eye, but he’s doing divorce cases and things here and there. It’s not like he’s got this bustling business and Maddie (Madison Lintz – The Walking Dead, Bosch, Bosch: Legacy) has joined the force and has been on the force for awhile. She’s still working with a training officer, so she’s a boot and she’s trying to find her own legs, but she’s Harry’s daughter and it’s really in her DNA, she carries a lot of the work ethic and the same characteristics and has the same moral compass as well as independent thinker which places her at odds, but she’s out there doing it. We find Chandler (Mimi Rogers – Mad Men, Bosch, Bosch: Legacy) sort of reeling from the very serious PTSD from almost being killed and the person who orchestrated her attempted assassination and Maddie’s looks like he’s going to go free.

You find that everybody is in these states of being kind of fractured and broken. You know, Harry is untethered, he's kind of wandering and he's always been a kind of an isolated character, but he's more isolated than ever now. Maddie, as she’s navigating it, she’s also trying to come into her own because Harry’s legacy has cast a very, very big shadow and that’s not all great! Harry’s reputation was one of being a closer and a great detective, but he pissed a lot of people off because he was a very direct guy and not exactly user friendly. The name Bosch on her uniform is not necessarily a great thing and she doesn’t use her father’s reputation as commerce within the department. So we find these characters really navigating things at the same time and interacting so it doesn’t necessarily feel like it’s a triptych, everything intertwines. But it’s also not like you have Maddie, Chandler and Harry having dinner at the house together – it’s not contrived like that. They’re all living their different lives and they’re all finding their way.

AM: How excited are you in being able to continue this story?

TW: I’m very excited and the idea when we were shooting the final season of Bosch, there was a heaviness for everyone involved. We had become very very close like a family as productions do and we were all invested and were very, very connected and committed to our characters and to the show and so when the opportunity presented itself that we would continue, obviously with a smaller ensemble cast and the ability to focus more on 3 central characters, but still bring in the characters that people know and love that populate the Harry Bosch universe – it’s a thrill! I’m very excited for the show to come out there because the fans of the show that have been so incredibly supportive over the years are really eager and hungry and they want to see what it’s going to be like. I have confidence that we will meet and surpass their expectations.

IG @tituswelliverofficial

PHOTOGRAPHY CREDIT | PG 46 - 51 + 55 Prime Video/Bosch | PG 52 Amazon FreeVee/Bosch: Legacy |

Read the APR ISSUE #77 of Athleisure Mag and see THE LEGACY CONTINUES | Titus Welliver in mag.