As far as I know, the actress portraying her this time (many many movies have been made of her, all white of course), wasn’t forced to do the role.
“What attracted me to the role was [that] I felt like I really was seeing that element of her story. Not so much what was sensational about her, but the fact that how cool she was as a woman and a mother doing the best that she could to ensure the survival of her children. Having filmed five months after giving birth, I had a connection to this idea of delivering a child stillborn that I wouldn’t really have had the scope of reference to in the same way [before giving birth]. As artists, we understand grief, we’ve all grieved. But this particular horror felt different to me having just been through a live birth, and I wanted to handle that with as much sensitivity and care as possible.”
You portray Anne Boleyn in a unique way; the pain she felt after losing a child is rarely placed at the center of her story. But you also portrayed her as a woman who had a lot of power and a lot of pull. How important was that for you to capture?
“It was very important for the filmmakers [all three parts were directed by Lynsey Miller]. They really wanted to show that element of Anne, like how she was politically involved and how she wanted to have a say, and even just the religious elements, bringing an English-language Bible [to the royal court]. This idea of her trying to really push forward the conversations around culture and art, how she wanted to use money from monasteries to push England forward in a different way, and how that made her threatening.”