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Michelle Fairley has more than earned medieval mother of the year status from her work on Game of Thrones, where she tore our hearts out as Catelyn Stark. Now she's returning to the source of Game of Thrones' inspiration, the War of the Roses, in The White Princess (premiering Sunday on Starz), where she plays a devious queen mother, Margaret Beaufort. On the surface, Margaret is a godly woman, who quotes from the Bible and wears crosses, but religion is her justification for her true ambition—putting and keeping her son, Henry VII, on the throne, and influencing his rule.
Fairley chatted with ELLE.com about her take on playing the show's baddie, getting all laced up, and the games behind the thrones. Plus, see an exclusive new photo from the show below.
How big of a history buff are you? Did you learn a lot about the War of the Roses in school, or more through doing projects like this?
A bit of both, actually. When you're at school, the history you learn is pretty broad, so whenever you're fortunate enough to work on something historical later in life, you get to go into much more depth. You end up learning and discovering stuff you never would have learned in school, ever, specifically because of the depth that you go into researching your character, the people they were involved with, the world, what life was like. And usually, the history is from the male point of view, and not the female point of view.
That's what is so refreshing about this series: learning about these women who were relegated to footnotes, and seeing how much they were actually involved in shaping events.
And they also had to provide children for the kings of the country, so they had heirs. A woman had a certain kind of currency—not only her dowry and the connections of her family, but also the children that she provided, so the line would continue.
For Margaret Beaufort, that started when she was thirteen. She was a teenage mom.
Yeah! And she was first betrothed when she was three. That's extraordinary. That was an arranged marriage, but Margaret used her other marriages to her advantage. She was married four times, and she used marriage as currency. She needed to get back into the court, because that was the only way she could have any power, to help her son. And her son...Margaret nearly died during childbirth. Margaret's mother actually instructed the midwives when Margaret was giving birth, that if it came to a choice between the baby and her daughter, that they were to save the baby, not Margaret.
Some people might perceive Margaret as the villain of this story. But she doesn't perceive herself that way.
No, absolutely not. Margaret is a very religious woman, and she totally believes that her family has been wronged, that a wrong has been done, and she's righting that wrong. God is on Margaret's side, or so she believes. She believes that she has the backing of God. She believes that what she is doing is purely for the benefit of her son, because she's an ambitious woman at the same time. Very, very ambitious.
So the question is, how do you want to play a woman who, as you said, could be the villain of the piece? Well, you can't play a villain as a villain. It's not a comedy. It's not a parody. These are real people, and their convictions, their beliefs are what drive them. And Margaret believes her son is the rightful heir to the throne, and that God guided kings and queens, and God was therefore on her side, and that justified anything she would do, in order to obtain that.
Even perhaps kill little children? Where do you land on the various Princes in the Tower theories? Do you think Margaret had anything to do with their deaths or disappearances?
I think [The White Princess author] Philippa Gregory puts up a very valid point....In order to make sure Henry stayed on the throne, you had to get rid of any valid opposition that could come knocking on your door, going, "Excuse me, I think that throne belongs to me." [Laughs] She would not leave many threads hanging. She would tie up everything she possibly could. But I don't honestly know. From my point of view, as an actor playing Margaret, I believe she was prepared to do whatever it took.
There is an element of how Margaret presents herself that is so restrained and laced up, that it's almost dominatrix-like.
Well, that's exactly what we were trying to go for. [Laughs] Because Phoebe De Gaye, who is our costume designer, we got to be more collaborative as the job progressed. The whole lacing, the restricting, lacing someone in so much that it's suffocating—it's sort of S&M and domineering, dominating, as you said.
And Margaret is like that. Margaret isn't just what you see on the surface. She's not about repression. And whatever angle you want to take on her, you can. She had to play several roles, take different paths to achieve what she wanted to achieve. Margaret was not just one human being. She was many different people. She's like a snake. She twists and turns. No matter what is put in her way, she finds a way to get around it. And she uses the cloak of being a religious, god-fearing woman to get away with it.
On 'Game of Thrones,' you had to dye your hair every three months. Is this closer to your natural color?
[Laughs] Or what was my natural color! You do whatever you need to do for the part, to achieve the right look for the character. There are very few paintings of Margaret around, and mainly, she was wearing what looks like a nun's wimple. It's hard to come up with an idea of what she would look like, but she wasn't adorned. She's pared back, and that's functional, but it also creates an impression: strength. And as she aged, she wore it like armor. As the years progressed, she distilled that, to even more strength. I love all the powerful women on this show, and the games that they play with each other. Knowing what the other was up to, and not being able to prove it. So it was about completely outsmarting the other, without humiliating the family. It was the most amazing, life-or-death game of chess that these women played.
The White Princess premieres on Starz at 8 PM on Sunday, April 16.
