‘Becoming Elizabeth’ on Starz is Showing Us How Sexual Abuse Shaped Elizabeth I

Starz‘s new Tudor drama Becoming Elizabeth introduces us to Queen Elizabeth I long before she was one of the most iconic monarchs in British history. She’s not Good Queen Bess or the Gloriana Regina, yet, but a teenaged princess caught up in a web of court politics. Worse, the young Elizabeth (Alicia von Rittberg) is falling for her stepmother’s scheming husband, Thomas Seymour (Tom Cullen).

If the “romance” between the young teen girl and the grown Seymour in Becoming Elizabeth makes you uncomfortable, that’s sort of the point. Historians are well aware that something untoward occurred between the 14-year-old Elizabeth and Thomas Seymour while she was living with stepmother Catherine Parr (Jessica Raine) after Henry VIII’s death. Becoming Elizabeth‘s creator and showrunner Anya Reiss has been looking at issues of consent since her career started. At only 17 she wrote the play, Spur of the Moment, about a 13-year-old girl pursuing a romance with an older lodger in her parents house and she’s known for writing a special 2018 episode of British soap EastEnders about the grey areas of consent. Reiss told Decider that she views Elizabeth and Thomas Seymour’s relationship “very firmly as abuse.”

“At least what we show in our show is definitely abuse,” Reiss said. “One of the defining things about most women is that you can have a relationship that you think you’re totally in control of and then many years later you look back and go, ‘Oh, I had no idea what was going on,’ and you suddenly see everything in the right light.”

German actress Alicia von Rittberg plays Princess Elizabeth as a precocious and ambitious teen unaware of her own naiveté. She believes that she is embarking on a consensual relationship with Thomas Seymour, when really he is abusing her youth and inexperience. Seymour sees Elizabeth as a pawn, if not just a plaything.

Von Rittberg told Decider that she had to believe in Elizabeth’s perspective, that it was true love.

“You have to believe it, you have to go for it. Otherwise you’re just going to judge yourself while you’re doing it and I think that doesn’t work,” von Rittberg said.
“I was so deep in it at some points that when we were discussing a scene yet to come, Tom was like, ‘How do I do this? How honest is this?’ and I was like, ‘Well, he loves her. This is all real.'”

“And Anya and Tom and everyone looked at me and was like, ‘Wow, she’s really like, what’s going on?'” I just wanted to believe it so much that I kind of fooled myself as Alicia as much as Elizabeth was manipulated. I think that’s the only way to be able to play something like that.”

When Decider asked von Rittberg’s scene partner, Tom Cullen, if any part of him thought Thomas Seymour loved Elizabeth, he bluntly said, “He loves himself.”

“When I first read it, it was such a scary idea, playing the storyline, because it’s so complex. But I felt like Anya’s writing is so nuanced and really respects the complexity of that relationship, the triangle,” Cullen said. “I had to really Jedi mind trick myself to do the things that I do and then kind of constantly justify them. Kind of actually to the point where I’d be having arguments with directors about intentions and try and really defend Thomas, who’s actually deeply, deeply misunderstood.”

He laughed at his own efforts. “Obviously not.”

Cullen added that he thought Reiss’s approach to the material was “so smart” because it forces the audience to see the situation through Elizabeth’s eyes. “In some ways, it feels like the audience are being groomed — I think is the word? —alongside Elizabeth,” he said.

Anya Reiss also said that portraying this dark chapter in Elizabeth’s life was important as it explained a lot of the behavior of the future “Virgin Queen” of England.

“It seems like it was a very formative experience for her and I think it makes a lot of sense why she never quite trusted herself. [Queen Elizabeth II] was so mercurial and so changed her mind about people and so distrusting of people that this relationship made so much sense to me,” Reiss said.

“Of course, if you thought you were in love with someone and then it completely messes you up and you get blamed for it, then they go away, and then you suddenly realize all that happened to you isn’t probably what you thought it was at the time…I think that messes you up. It makes sense.”