Anne Boleyn star Mark Stanley has defended the casting of Jodie Turner-Smith as the doomed Queen after she became the first black actress to play the historic role.
The actor, who plays King Henry VIII in the three-part drama, insisted such colourblind casting needs to be the way forward to improve representation, and said Jodie s performance was more about capturing the energy of the Queen.
It comes after fans were left unimpressed and bored on Tuesday night when they tuned into Anne Boleyn s first episode, with many quick to point out historical inaccuracies in the Channel 5 drama. Moving forward : Anne Boleyn star Mark Stanley has defended the casting of Jodie Turner-Smith as the doomed Queen after she became the first black actress to play the historic role
Yet despite viewers praising Jodie for her brilliant portrayal, show watchers were left unimpressed by the historical inaccuracies during the first instalment.
Channel 5’s Anne Boleyn is corny and forgettable This historical drama is full of inert dialogue, cheesy props and stapled-on proto-feminism. Most people would say that Hilary Mantel has rewritten the Tudor playbook to the degree that there’s little point in revisiting the story of Henry VIII and his disposable wives unless your approach is unimpeachably radical; Jean Plaidy (her soapy historical novels were much loved when I was a teenager) and
The Tudors (the dire 2007-10 Showtime series starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers) are a long way behind us now, thank God. But at Channel 5, they seem to disagree. In its universe – not to mention that of Eve Hedderwick Turner, the writer of its new drama,