On Becoming Elizabeth , Catherine Parr is so much more than the wife who survived
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Catherine Parr has spent centuries being reduced to a single word: "Survived."
The final wife of Henry VIII, Parr has had her life and accomplishments compressed into a nursery rhyme — "Divorced. Beheaded. Died. Divorced. Beheaded. Survived." — that celebrates her greatest achievement as outliving the famously bloodthirsty king of England.
But Parr was so much more than that — a spirited theologian, a keen political mind, and an author. On Becoming Elizabeth, we get to see more of the reality of Catherine's life, expanding beyond the one-word moniker that has come to define her existence.
This was what drew actress Jessica Raine to the role in the first place. "She's very much reduced to the rhyme of the one that survived," she tells EW. "And she's got this really rich history that I was completely unaware of. She was married twice before she married Henry VIII. So, she's been in three loveless marriages. She is the first woman to have an original work published in England, ever. Henry VIII trusted her to hold the fort while he went away to fight. You get the sense that she's got so much more to offer than just being the wife that survived."
But Parr's life is perhaps most complex after she often disappears from the history books, i.e. the segment of her life after Henry's death. "This period that you pick up on in the series is another really rich part of her history that we're just completely unaware of," Raine adds. "She's released from this marriage, and can finally get together with her lover. Because her and Thomas Seymour were together before Henry plucked her from court and decided that she was going to be his wife. It's this love that's really deep and has a lot of history. She can finally have a life where she's the queen and she's got someone that she loves by her side who listens to her. I am really excited for audiences to meet a Catherine Parr that we're not necessarily familiar with. Because the way our history books are written, we'll reduce women to one word and write volumes on Henry VIII, who was a psychopath."
Starz Jessica Raine as Catherine Parr
In the process of her research, Raine says she also learned a fun fact about Parr that she immediately connected to — their shared propensity for swearing. "I read Catherine's biography and I loved a sentence that alluded to the fact that when she got angry or passionate, she had a really foul mouth," Raine says. "Which I thought was really un-queenly and cool. I could relate to that because I've been known to have a bit of a potty mouth myself. It was a window into a woman who was very passionate."
After the death of Henry VIII, his children — Edward, Mary, and Elizabeth — became pawns in court intrigue as the battle for the throne and the religious bent of the country spiraled. But Parr had been a stable mother figure to them all in their lives, which were marked by tragedy and uncertainty. That is what further complicates Parr's role in the storytelling.
"Catherine never sees [Elizabeth] as a rival," Raine reflects. "She, at this point, has not had children herself, and embraces the fact that Elizabeth could be a daughter to her. But what Catherine does is massively underestimate Elizabeth. She sees her as a child, and therefore, not as a threat at all. That can happen when you know someone from very young and they blossom in front of your eyes. You almost don't notice; you still see the child."
But this is the Tudor court after all, which means Catherine has plenty of her own ulterior motives and bids for power. "I loved how Catherine wanted to educate her," she says of the relationship with Elizabeth. "On one hand, she wanted to help Elizabeth through the machinations of court, and on the other hand, she wanted to manipulate her and control her for her own good. There's two things going on at the same time, and Anya's writing does that a lot. There's a lot of duplicity in the relationships, where you're on a knife's edge of — is she helping or is she damaging?"
To get the answer to that question, you'll have to watch Becoming Elizabeth, which premieres on Starz on June 12.
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