What initially attracted you, and what were your reactions to the episodic scripts?
Alicia von Rittberg:It’s being allowed to have a look behind the curtains.
to get to do so, there is no better way than going back to their youth.
There is no black and white.
She never forgot that they were family, no matter how difficult it must have been.
Tom Cullen:I agree with what Alicia said.
It felt so contemporary and so relatable.
What Anya’s done so well is that she’s really zoomed in on the characters.
It’s a show about a royal family, but it’s not.
It’s a show about a complex family in the same way that “Succession” is.
It’s actually about relationships.
That’s definitely what the show is about.
[It’s] something that I actually haven’t seen that well talked about.
As Alicia said, the characters … there’s no black and white.
Everything is very gray.
No one’s a hero.
Everyone’s a villain.
But everyone’s everything all at once, just like humans.
That’s what blew me away when I first read it.
Could you take me back to that filming experience and what that collaborative dynamic was like?
Cullen:When I first met Anya, I hadn’t met her before.
I knew her work, [and] knew some friends that knew her and said she was amazing.
I also knew that she was 28 when she wrote this.
And was she 29 when she was show-running, Alicia?
von Rittberg:Yes.
Cullen:Actually, she might have been 26 when she started this.
She’s this really rough-and-tumble woman from Brixton.
The first time I met her, she was wearing this all Adidas tracksuit.
And I was, “Who’s this ball of energy?”
Instantly, I was blown away by her speed of thought.
The show is very much a reflection of her.
She’s got this incredible, fierce female energy, and [the show] is so female.
That’s what’s so exciting about this show …
It’s happening more and more.
In some ways, this show is about a young woman.
[Anya] started writing when she was 17, 18.
Elizabeth is Anya in many ways.
To work that closely with her was thrilling.
von Rittberg:It was definitely the same for me.
And that says basically everything.
That is what we kept on coming back to.
It was absolutely special and amazing to work with them.
That was something that’s very important.
What I did not want to do is take a stab at find a male way of leading.
That is still very predominant nowadays.
I wanted to give [Elizabeth] something like that.
Because at the time, it was incredibly dangerous.
Every wrong decision could mean your head on a spike.
Cullen:You said it it’s nuanced, and it’s complex.
[Their] dynamic is that.
It felt very contemporary and very important.
That was the only way I could play him without any kind of judgment.
I didn’t want him to be a bad guy.
I wanted him to be a human being.
That’s what that dynamic is.
And let’s not beat around the bush I’m not defending him.
He is a powerful man who is using Elizabeth, arguably.
But I also think that he did love her, so that’s where the complexity comes in.
So much of what we witness is a retelling of history.
But with a show like this, we get additional layers.
von Rittberg:Well, for Elizabeth, it is that.
She has probably grown beyond her years.
She’s very mature, but because she needed to be.
She grew up without a mother and lost her father.
She fell in and out of favor, basically.
One day, she’s in line for the throne, and one day she’s an orphan.
Seeing that taken away from her is incredibly painful.
At some point, you will break.
That was so poignant in that kind of character development, which we don’t see often.
von Rittberg:Yes.
I think it is … “The hunter is not the lion.”
Tom, did you say that?
No, I don’t think it was Tom.
Cullen:No, Thomas isn’t smart enough to say something so poetic and well-observed as that.
von Rittberg:to survive, you have to play by the rules.
But it’s difficult to follow who is the person who’s making the rules at the moment.
“Becoming Elizabeth” will debut on Sunday, June 12 at 9:00 pm ET/PT on STARZ.
This interview was edited for clarity.
