How the My Lady Jane showrunners flip the historical script and defy the trend of sexual violence in fantasy

Warning: This article contains spoilers about My Lady Jane.

If you've heard of Jane Grey, you likely know one pertinent fact about her — that she was beheaded.

The real Jane Grey was used as a pawn in a plot to maintain the throne of England under Protestant rule. She was crowned Queen following the death of Edward VI, and then was promptly executed after only holding the title for nine days. But new Prime Video series My Lady Jane says "f--- that" (literally) to historical record.

Instead, Jane (Emily Bader) is a fierce young woman, thrust into a marriage to Guildford Dudley (Edward Bluemel) against her will. In this version of Tudor England, it's not religious strife that divides the country but rather hatred between Verities (pure-blooded humans) and Ethians (humans who have the ability to transform into an animal). When Jane's beloved cousin Edward (Jordan Peters) dies, she is crowned Queen and embarks on a mission to make England a welcoming space for Ethians — all while trying to sort out her confusing feelings for her husband (who is also a horse, whoops) and keep her head.

The series is based on a novel of the same name written by Brodi Ashton, Cynthia Hand, and Jodi Meadows. Gemma Burgess, co-showrunner of the series and a former author herself, came to the book through a bit of kismet.

"I was on the subway in New York City and I saw a young woman reading it incredibly close to her face," she recounts. "She was really into it. She missed her subway stop, and I figured if a book was that good, I should read it. So I bought it and read it without knowing anything about it and fell completely in love. I thought it was The Princess Bride meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It was so rich, so funny, so sharp. It hit all of my bliss points, and I wanted to see [it] on television, so I figured I should try and make it."

From there, Burgess partnered with Meredith Glynn, who was in between seasons of The Boys and actively looking to find a partner to showrun a series with. "We wanted to have that swashbuckling, action-adventure where there's romance and comedy, but the bad guys are still scary," Burgess says. "And to keep that sense of intelligent optimism that we felt desperately in need of right now."

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The series, which is now streaming all eight episodes on Prime Video, delivers on that romantic, adventurous tone. Plus, it leaves us hungry for more. Burgess and Glynn walk us through some of the major changes from the novel and what could happen next if they're to get a second season.

Even more so than the novel, you made the Ethian and Verity conflict such a powerful metaphor for the Protestant-Catholic conflict in Tudor England. What made that a valuable touchpoint and why did you want to dig even deeper into those parallels? 

GEMMA BURGESS: Part of it is that we are leaning on the fantasy genre, to an extent, but we wanted to take the genre and subvert expectations where there is this divide in the kingdom. When you really drill down, it's completely arbitrary, like almost all divisions that humans have ever erected. We love to point the finger at somebody else and say, "You are different." It was such an elegant metaphor in the book, and we felt that by leaning into it, we could explore it more. We're really interested in ideas of power and identity. We never wanted the metaphor to overwhelm the narrative. We don't want to become a polemic about other-ism, but it's a really rich backdrop that we can play with as all of our characters come to terms with who they are and what they want and the choices they have to make.

MEREDITH GLYNN: We also think that it's one of the responsibilities of great storytelling to say something important about the world that we live in. So while the show is about this wonderful character in Jane, it is also saying something about our world.

In the book, Jane transforms into a ferret and discovers she's an Ethian. Why did you change that? And if there's a season 2, is there still a possibility for that storyline?

BURGESS: It's always a possibility. We wanted to really lean into the visual storytelling of taking a woman up to the point of being beheaded. It seemed like an opportunity too good to pass up. I used to be an author. When you're an author, you can do an awful lot of first person present tense thinking, but when you are on television, you have to have conflict and action and something to look at to lead to the drama. 

This started as a YA novel, but here, it's very sexy and steamy and there's lots of swearing. How do you strike that balance in tone where you're making something that's perhaps geared for teenagers or a younger audience but contains these more adult elements? 

BURGESS: If those teenagers are watching Bridgerton, they can handle our show. I always say this is something you should be able to watch with your 14, 15-year-old daughter. We're very sex positive, but we always do everything from the female gaze. For example, we don't have any female nudity. We wanted to keep our women empowered, and we are objectifying men, also in a very loving way, by the way. We just wanted to show sex being fun and funny. There are sex scenes and people are talking the whole time. It's all very character led and we wanted to age it up a bit to welcome more audiences in.

Speaking of that female gaze, you have this great scene where Jane walks in on Guildford in the barn when he is bathing. Was Edward super game? It's shot in such an intimate, lovely, female gaze-focused way.

BURGESS: He was completely game. He came outside after the first shot, took a look at himself, and said, "Wow, I'm juicy."  Our director and intimacy coordinator, we would all meet and talk about exactly what shots we'd be doing. If it was an intimacy scene, even a kissing scene, we would make sure that everybody felt safe, everybody knew what was going on. No surprises.

GLYNN: When it came to our sex scenes, all of the actors were really involved in crafting them, blocking them, figuring out exactly what was going to happen when.

BURGESS: And when it comes to female gaze, we were an all-female EP team. We had a female DP. So. it was just inherent. It's automatic when the people behind the camera gazing are women.

This soundtrack is very contemporary and fun. Were you inspired by A Knight's Tale, Bridgerton, and things like that?

BURGESS: No, actually this started because we're obsessed with '60s and '70s British invasion bands. In all the scripts, we put the songs in. But then those songs are awfully male. They're all male voices. So our music supervisor had an absolute brainwave that we could put modern British female artists doing covers and also get in some modern songs. Female swagger was our brand for music. Because we're retelling British history with a female voice, we're retelling British musical history in the female voice.

Should we understand that the ending suggests that Guildford has figured out how to change at will?

BURGESS: Yeah. We wanted to put them kissing in that sunshine for a reason, which by the way was a miracle to shoot because it had been cloudy for two weeks in England, and we were betting on this one morning. We got there at four in the morning and waited for the sun to rise. And thank goodness it did. That's a miracle shot.

You also upended Edward's story. He has this relationship with Gracie in the novel, and instead now he's queer and has this connection with a man. What prompted that change? 

GLYNN: We love love, and we wanted to represent all different kinds of love. It was really, really important to us, but it was also really important to us to, even though it is a journey of self-discovery, it's not a typical coming out story. We want to give a same-sex couple the same swashbuckling romantic storyline that heteronormative couple would typically get in a movie like The Princess Bride.

You bring in Thomas Seymour, who isn't really in the novel, but is historically important. Were you tempted to go down the rabbit hole of his marriage to Catherine Parr or his relationship with Elizabeth I?

BURGESS: The stuff with Elizabeth I is a bit triggering, and we really want the show to be a safe space. The Seymour character that we write is an amalgamation of two of the Seymours who were both dead by 1553. They were both Machiavellian characters, but they're really bad at being Machiavellian. They just kept getting caught. They were so unbelievably turned on by power. The friction between the Dudleys and the Seymours is just extraordinary. Any man that would marry his sister to King Henry VIII, just after he's beheaded his previous wife, that's a man who's interesting.

I'm glad you left out his relationship with Elizabeth. It's such a twisted piece of history.

BURGESS: Yeah, exactly. We have no sexual violence, nothing like that. It's about joy for us, it's about communication, connection, and fun. Personally, I get very upset when I watch something that seems to be having a lot of sexual violence or sexual threats against women as entertainment. That rules out a lot of fantasies. But I love fantasy shows. So, this is an optimistic, safe fantasy show.

You've given Jane really complicated relationships between her and her mother, Frances (Anna Chancellor), and her sisters. First off, can the bond between her and her mother ever be healed? Or is that last scene in the Tower a true breaking point for them? 

BURGESS: Everyone has a relationship with their mother that goes through breaking points. But you keep going and both of you grow up and learn. We hope that the same happens to Jane and her mother.

GLYNN: Though Frances might never agree with us, we're saying that she does have a lot of growing and learning left to do herself. These are two characters who are more alike than they are dissimilar. So they have to figure out a way to see one another as people.

What might be in store for all of them? Catherine (Isabella Brownson) gets secretly married in these final moments.

BURGESS: If we are fortunate enough to get a season 2, then we are going to be exploring all of them growing up and moving on and figuring out how to survive in the world where Jane is free, but the kingdom is not. Because Mary's still on the throne. There's a lot more work to do before things are right.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.