Anne Boleyn lol! I can’t stop laughing.
Jodie Turner-Smith wasn’t surprised that her portrayal of former Queen of England, Anne Boleyn, attracted backlash.
In Glamour U.K.‘s May cover story, Turner-Smith addressed the response she’s received regarding her decision to play King Henry VIII’s second wife. Following the news of her casting, some of those in opposition spoke out over the fact that Turner-Smith — a U.K. native who was born to Jamaican parents — is portraying a historic figure who is white.
“I had just become a mother and that was what really jumped out at me, the story of Anne as a mother,” the Queen & Slim star, 34, told the publication.
“I did know it would be something that people felt very passionately about, either in a positive or a negative way, because Anne is a human in history who people feel very strongly about,” she continued. “More than anything, I wanted to tell the human story at the centre of all of this.”
While filming the series last year, Turner-Smith was nursing her then-6-month-old daughter with husband Joshua Jackson. She, in turn, explained how her journey as a new mom helped to better shape her experience working on the project, which featured an all-female production team with the exception of one man.
“To have the experience of working with people that have so much compassion for where I was in my journey as a mother as we were telling the story about a mother, I feel there was just so much more compassion in the storytelling,” she said.
Anne Boleyn, a show coming to the U.K.’s Channel 5 network, follows the events that transpire in the final months of the former queen’s life before her 1536 execution. Mark Stanley, Lola Petticrew and Paapa Essiedu are also in the cast.
