HEADER BY YOSEF PHELAN

“I mean, is it the queerest thing I’ve done?” Julianne Moore says of Mary & George (it is, by the way) after we highlight the rainbow tint of her filmography, from the Academy Award-winning The Hours and trailblazing The Kids Are All Right to cult favourites such as Far From Heaven and Freeheld. As a result, Moore is one of a privileged few (thousand) who have been inducted into the Queer Hall of Fame as a “mother!”. “It’s about female power, right?” she says of the term of endearment. “I’ll take it!”

Directed by Oliver Hermanus, Mary & George stars Moore as Mary Villiers, a “fierce and ambitious” widow who recruits her “teenage naif” son George (Nicholas Galitzine) to seduce King James VI of Scotland and I of England (Tony Curran) to become his right-hand lover and rise up the social and political ranks. The real-life story of a scheming mother who uses her son’s aesthetically pleasing features to boink the king and conquer the Court of England is married with pitch-black humour (the hanging scene, for one) and a plethora of ferocious sex scenes (name any).

“I’ve never had to choreograph as many sex scenes in my career!” laughs Hermanus. The historical psychodrama is part of an exciting new wave of queer projects that are reviving horniness in a rather sanitised and sexless era for the industry, alongside All of Us Strangers, Fellow Travelers and Saltburn. And, refreshingly, compared to other films and series in the predominantly heterosexual-heavy historical genre, queerness isn’t presented as “scandalous” or “salacious” in Mary & George. In fact, as Moore tells GAY TIMES, ‘every character is pretty fluid’.

Read ahead for our full interview with Julianne Moore and Oliver Hermanus, where they discuss how the sex scenes are integral to the character development in Mary & George, the former’s aforementioned “mother” status and collaborating with the “wonderful” Nicholas Galitzine of Red, White & Royal Blue fame. Hermanus also teases the “fire” chemistry between Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor in his upcoming gay romance, The History of Sound. So, yeah, lots of gay stuff ahead.

Julianne, Oliver. You are giving the gays everything they could possibly want with Mary & George. What is it like to see the anticipation from the LGBT’s online?

Oliver: I haven’t seen it!

Julianne: I know… Tell us, what’s going on?

They’re ready. Every time we post anything about this show… Yeah, they need it.

Julianne: Well, we’re here to give it to them.

This series is dark, salacious and gay as hell. Oliver, this is your first TV gig – why was the story of Mary & George the right one for you to adapt for your first TV project?

Oliver: It was the whole package. It was the writing, it was the actress, it was the opportunity to work at this scale. It was all the things that I was wanting to try out and television is this interesting space at the minute where you have bigger landscapes to tell human stories. It was all attractive – and scary!