Jodie Turner-Smith is every inch a queen in her fierce and passionate portrayal of Anne Boleyn in a gripping new television drama about the second of Henry VIII’s six wives.
Turner-Smith’s colour-blind casting is an ingenious move by producers Faye Ward and Hannah Farrell, because it accentuates her position as an outsider — and makes us more aware of the perils she faced at the hands of her husband and his scheming courtiers.
With writer Eve Hedderwick Turner and director Lynsey Miller, the aim in Anne Boleyn was to ‘challenge the perception’ of the doomed queen — ‘and even what was taught in schools’, said Ward, the creative director of Fable Pictures and a force behind Sarah Gavron’s acclaimed film Rocks (now streaming on Netflix).