‘Mary & George’ Creator Defends The Show’s Many F-Bombs As Period Authentic: “They Definitely Used ‘F***’ at the Time”

Starz‘s new TV-MA historic drama Mary & George certainly doesn’t shy away from the scandalous parts of the Jacobean Age. We watch as King James I (Tony Curran) cavorts with bedchambers full of beautiful boys, the likes of Mary Villiers (Julianne Moore), the Earl of Somerset (Laurie Davidson), and Francis Bacon (Mark O’Halloran) set off deadly schemes against each other, and even see a hanging or four. However, the part of Mary & George that might have even the most seasoned period drama fans clutching their pearls has nothing to do with sex scenes and everything to do with dialogue. Mary & George is chock full of f-bombs that explode onscreen. It gets to a point where you have to wonder if there were ironically no f*cks given over all the curse words that pepper Mary & George‘s otherwise flowery language.

“I mean, there were some f*cks given,” Mary & George creator D.C. Moore admitted to Decider with a smile. “I have to say, in the edit process, I did take some ‘f*cks’ out. Occasionally, I was like, ‘Maybe there are a few too many?'”

British writer and playwright D.C. Moore created Mary & George after reading Benjamin Woolley’s 2017 The King’s Assassin, which details the affair between James I and George Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham. The show’s focus is less on the royal and his favorite than it is on the toxic, co-dependent relationship that the handsome George (Nicholas Galitzine) and his scheming mother Mary share. In fact, James and George don’t even meet in Mary & George Episode 1 “Second Son.” Instead that episode is devoted to showing us how George became a polished, cosmopolitan courtier in France while his newly married mother stumbles upon a plan to position her son in the king’s orbit.

Nevertheless, if you catch the premiere of Mary & George today, you might find yourself wondering if the nobles of 1610s England really had a similar vernacular to the characters of a Quentin Tarantino joint.

“They definitely used ‘f*ck’ at the time. The Duke of Buckingham was referred to as the ‘Duke of F*ckingham,'” Moore said, referring to a common jeer leveled at Villiers later in his life. “And the real King James really did swear. Even though he also gave lectures on not swearing, he was a swearing guy.”

Although he admitted that “the way we use ‘f*cking’ is different,” Moore explained that it still fit his vision of the time period, where profanity was commonplace. It was more important for Mary & George to stay true to the “spirit of the age,” especially since the contemporary curse words of the day would make little sense to a modern audience.

“Like it’s,’You’re a lizard pizzle’ or whatever,” Moore said. “It’s the reason why a lot of Shakespeare’s jokes don’t land because [we] just don’t know the same references.”

“But I did really try to balance using key phrases from letters, things that really genuinely survived,” Moore said, before launching into a detailed explanation about how the title of Mary & George Episode 3 “Not So Much as Love as by Awe” was plucked directly from a letter James I wrote to Somerset.

“So I was continually dancing, not just with profanity, with all of it. Between things that really were said or really done or happened. And then being deeply aware that people need to better understand it now. So it’s a bit of a dance.”

Although some scholars have lauded Mary & George for the way it includes profanity, Moore admitted that “some people in England have slightly felt that we’ve gone too far with it.”

“But I think the unapologetic nature of Mary and George means we have to have a similar spirit,” Moore said.

“We’ve made some stuff up, but there’s an awful lot that we haven’t. So I’m pretty comfortable where we are.”

Mary & George Episode 1 “Second Son” is now streaming on the Starz app and will premiere on Starz at 9 PM ET tonight, April 5.