TV studio or national heritage site? Wandering around a former distillery in east London, it’s hard to tell. “We had horses in here the other day!” a set worker shouts as we walk through a wood-panelled grand hall. In the next room, study the intricate 18th-century wall murals closely and – oh! – titillating depictions from the Kama Sutra are hiding in plain sight. Gold candlesticks and fake flames are everywhere. Women strut past in huge corset dresses, while bored extras dressed as serfs wait in the shadows and scroll on their phones. I’m led to another ornately decorated bedroom, with a huge map of imperial Russia pinned on the wall, and take a seat at the end of a familiar four-poster. It is the bed in which I have seen Catherine the Great romp with her lovers many a time.
This is the extraordinary set of Tony McNamara’s racy and radical period comedy-drama, The Great – a very fictional take on Peter III and Catherine’s rulership of Russia, starring Elle Fanning and Nicholas Hoult. Now in its third season, filming is well under way when I visit on a sticky summer day, but that doesn’t stop this close-knit cast and crew from having afterwork fun – tonight it is an 80s-themed roller disco that Hoult has organised.
Considering a single scene has just had at least 27 retakes, the energy this giddy group have is admirable. “I know!” says Fanning, 25, still in costume (a surprisingly casual tennis outfit). “We have a read-through later and then we go. That’s how we roll!” This blindingly sunny disposition doesn’t fade for a single moment during her lunch break. Such good fun with her colleagues is the norm, she says, when they film in London up to six months at a time. McNamara is a “huge foodie” and he introduced Fanning to two of her new favourite restaurants: Brawn and Westerns Laundry. “I love London, I could definitely live here,” she says.
When I speak with Hoult, 33, over the phone while he is filming in Los Angeles a few weeks later, he admits that “mixing alcohol and wheels on your feet with people who mostly can’t skate” wasn’t the smartest idea: “There were, err, not many broken bones … but it’s nice to get out when everyone is working that hard.” He and Fanning clearly see it as their responsibility to keep spirits high.
“It’s joyous, really,” says Gwilym Lee, who plays Peter’s longsuffering best friend Grigor. “They set the precedent at the top. They have zero ego and approach everything with a sense of play and fun, and that trickles down.”
“Nick is so bonkers!” adds Adam Godley (Archie the archbishop with a “raging libido”). “The riffs that Tony gives him, he does so well. It’s all so outrageous!” This cheery atmosphere translates on screen. The Great is a show in which the entire cast are very obviously having a hoot.
That said, things were deadly serious when we last saw Catherine and Peter. Catherine had been keeping her husband as a prisoner in the palace as she prepared to give birth to their child. Her feelings were complicated: she started to fall in love with Peter as he proved to be a doting father to baby Paul, yet she needed him dead in order to seize control of the rule of Russia. The final straw was learning that he had had sex with and killed her mother Joanna (gloriously played by Gillian Anderson), and so Catherine stabbed Peter to death. She was instantly remorseful and wailing until … he stepped out of the shadows after watching his wife kill his double, Pugachev. The final shot of them nervously staring at each other was inspired by The Graduate: what the hell happens now?
Season three picks up 24 hours later, with Catherine and Peter in couples therapy after having makeup sex over the breakfast table. The court is in disarray, with Catherine’s prisoners hoping she’ll end the brutal “bullet or the bear” death penalty they’re awaiting. Locking herself in a closet while she makes a decision on her next steps, Catherine is scared that she is starting to see herself in Peter. “Those tyrant ways? She has those as well,” says Fanning. “It’s an internal battle for her this season: what she thinks she is and who she wants to be. Can she face who she really is?” Peter, meanwhile, continues to be his same old barbaric buffoon self – although the series attempts to explain why he and his friends are such awful people. “There are some amazing scenes that show why they have the bond that they do,” says Lee. “They were terrorised [by their parents]. So now they look out for each other – they’re like damaged animals taking care of each other.”
In keeping with the chaos of the show, the cast only find out what’s next for their characters a few scripts at a time. With McNamara writing as they film, everybody knows that anything goes – and they have total faith in his unpredictable vision (he did co-write Oscar-winning film The Favourite, after all). “In the first season, I found out I had a son,” says Belinda Bromilow, who plays Peter’s progressive but strategic aunt Elizabeth. “Then I found out he drowned. Then I found out my sister actually killed him. Then I found out that I’d been sleeping with my brother-in-law and it was his child … At the start, I didn’t even know I had a kid!”
“We’ve crossed so many lines that everything is now completely open,” says Godley. “Tony’s heart is always in the right place, so we completely trust him.”
The show’s nine Emmy nominations and one win (outstanding period costume) prove there is a method to McNamara’s madness. Fanning and Hoult bagged best actor and best actress nominations in 2022, with Hoult receiving the news while he was driving: “I called my partner [the model Bryana Holly] asking why I had so many messages saying ‘Congrats!’. I’d forgotten the nominations had come out. I called Elle right away – we both screamed down the phone.”
“We have become some of the best friends,” adds Fanning. “Nick and I love to challenge each other – those scenes with him are my favourite to do. We love each other so much and we like that battle.”
Towards the end of the first season, which aired on Channel 4 during the 2020 winter lockdown, a cruelly timed smallpox episode reflected the pandemic. This time, another real-life global terror runs parallel to the story: Putin’s invasion of and ongoing war with Ukraine. Was playing another power-hungry, violent Russian leader ever too close to the bone for Hoult? “I wouldn’t want to muddy the waters too much by mixing it up with history,” says Hoult. “But at the same time there are so many moments when you can’t help but feel that history forewarns. History does repeat itself.”
Most of us know how Catherine and Peter’s story ended, but there’s no hint about when this retelling of their story will. Originally pitched as a film adaptation of McNamara’s 2008 play of the same name, it is perhaps already stretching its limits with a likely fourth season.
While Hoult and Fanning adore the show, there are even bigger projects on the horizon. Already a child actor turned Hollywood movie star, Hoult recently starred opposite Anya Taylor-Joy in The Menu and Nicolas Cage in Renfield. Since this interview, he has also been asked to audition to be the next Superman. Fanning – also a child actor and younger sister of Dakota – starred in and executive produced last year’s Hulu series, The Girl from Plainville. But this has been her biggest and longest production so far. “I did the pilot when I was 20,” she says. “That was four years ago – I feel emotional because this has been my 20s. I don’t even want to think about what happens when it’s over.” And with that she skips off to wrap things up so she can go and get her roller skates on.
