Your Next Royal Obsession, 'The Great, Now Has a Hilarious Trailer
Fans of period dramas and royal storylines should put The Great on their binge-watching radars. The satirical, dark comedy stars Elle Fanning and Nicholas Hoult, and tells the story of Russia's longest-reigning empress, Catherine the Great, in her younger years. The series is headed to Hulu in a few weeks. Here's everything else we know so far.
It premieres on May 15.
All 10 episodes of The Great premiere on Friday, May 15, on Hulu. Subscriptions to the streaming platform cost $6 a month with ads and $12 a month without ads.
Elle Fanning reigns in the lead role.
Fanning—whose past credits include Maleficent, The Beguiled, Teen Spirit, and 20th Century Women—stars as Catherine, who arrives in Russia for her arranged marriage. "Hoping for love and sunshine, she finds instead a dangerous, depraved, backward world that she resolves to change," Hulu's synopsis reads. Fanning is also an executive producer.
Hoult stars opposite as Catherine's husband, Emperor Peter—who, according to the teasers, comes off as a dense, arrogant ruler. The English actor has previously appeared in X-Men: First Class, Tolkein, and Warm Bodies, among others.
Further cast members include Phoebe Fox, Adam Godley, Gwilym Lee, Charity Wakefield, Douglas Hodge, Sacha Dhawan, Sebastian de Souza, Bayo Gbadamosi, and Belinda Bromilow.
Who will reign? #TheGreat premieres May 15, only on @hulu.
A post shared by The Great (@thegreathulu) on Feb 4, 2020 at 10:01am PST
It was created by a writer of The Favourite.
Tony McNamara—who received a Best Original Screenplay Oscar nomination for co-writing The Favourite—created, wrote, and executive-produced the series. From the clips so far, it seems The Great exudes a similar quick-witted humor to the 2018 period film starring Olivia Colman.
Joining McNamara and Fanning on the producing side are Marian Macgowan; Thruline’s Josh Kesselman and Ron West; Echo Lake’s Brittany Kahan Ward, Doug Mankoff, and Andrew Spaulding; Mark Winemaker; and Matt Shakman.
The Great started off as a play.
McNamara's The Great originally started off on the stage in Sydney, Australia in 2008. In a review at the time, Variety said the production "plays fast and loose with the facts, triumphing style over substance and wit over accuracy in an entertaining manner its namesake would likely have appreciated."
Before linking up with Hulu, McNamara wasn't sure how to adapt The Great for the screen. "It had been a play and a film, and I was always struggling the fact it was such a massive story for a film," he told Deadline. "I wanted to tell it as a story that goes for years and years."
Things "clicked" when the showrunner met Nicholas Hoult.
By the time McNamara was working on The Favourite, he had already seen a script for The Great, but "wasn’t that enthused about it." But that changed when he started working with Hoult in rehearsals for the Oscar-nominated film—"things started to click."
"Then I met Nick, and as soon as I met Nick, I felt like he could play Peter, who’s a very funny, off the rails character," the screenwriter told Deadline.
"I also knew about Elle [Fanning]’s work, because our managers had a connection, and so I had this idea then about turning it into TV," he continued. "I’d worked in TV a lot. As soon as I thought of that, I thought, Oh, that way I can tell the story properly, finally, because it’s a great, really long story. I wrote a pilot, sent it to Nick and Elle, and they both wanted to do it. From there it all happened quite quickly."
It's not historically accurate.
As the trailer makes known The Great is "based on historical facts ... sort of."
McNamara explained to Deadline, "There have been a lot of Catherine the Great projects around, and there still are I guess, but I think we’ve got an amazing cast and a different point of view. It’s not a straight historical drama. It’s very much my version of what historical dramas should be."
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