Samantha Morton Drew on Her Homeless Past to Play ‘The Serpent Queen’

Samantha Morton’s affinity for playing complex, richly layered mothers—an 18th century brothel madam in Harlots, the leader of a group of post-zombie apocalypse survivors in The Walking Dead—is a genre-crossing body of work for the actor’s actor, and a rich, years-long gift to TV fans. Morton’s latest entry in this category of formidable schemers and strategists is Catherine de’Medici, the Florentine orphan who became Queen of France in 1547, in Starz’s historical costume drama, The Serpent Queen.

Having survived the snobbery and ruthlessness of the French court—who was this tacky foreigner, who might also be a witch—in the first season, Season 2 has been all about Catherine trying to settle into her Regency while her son Henry III attempts to navigate a still-treacherous court. It all sounds so promising, but things start badly and get worse quickly.

Fending off potential challenges to the Crown from both the Roman Catholic Guise family and the Protestant House of Bourbon, the tragic death of her son Hercule, and a dizzyingly tactical Queen Elizabeth of England (Minnie Driver, having the most fun at every moment)—it’s exhausting! In the end, Catherine decides half-measures are useless, and deploys another son, Anjou, alongside her Flying Squadron of female spies, to assassinate nearly every one of her religious and political rivals.

Before The Serpent Queen’s second season finale, Morton spoke with The Daily Beast’s Obsessed about how her experiences in Britain’s foster care system inform her performance, and the inspiration she draws from Goodfellas and The Sopranos to play a mother who means business.

(Warning: Spoilers ahead for the Season 2 finale of The Serpent Queen.)

Catherine de’Medici is the latest in a series of performances across your career in which you play a very particular type of mother. I’m thinking here about Margaret Wells in Harlots and Alpha in The Walking Dead. What is it about both these types of characters and these specific characters that is so meaningful to you?

I haven’t ever been asked that question before! It was the complexity of the writing, in every case. Margaret Wells was a dream role on a deeply feminist show, and written so brilliantly. Her relationships with her daughters and the girls she looked after and who worked for her in the brothel—getting to play all of that over the course of three seasons, with all those wonderful actors, was joyful. At first I thought I wasn’t the right age for it in my late thirties, because Margaret’s daughters are in their late teens and early twenties, but the producers pointed out that she’d had her first child at age 12.

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So how about Alpha in The Walking Dead?

Again, the writing on that show is so strong. Alpha was written amazingly well, and her relationship with Lydia blew my mind. I came in for Season 9, and hadn’t seen the show before being offered the role, though I knew it was very famous. So I watched a couple of seasons and thought, “Wow, this is brilliant.” It was always a dream of mine to make television in America, so it was an amazing opportunity.

We were lucky to have these flashback episodes where you see how and why Dee became Alpha, as she’s protecting Lydia. Their relationship blew my mind. And then we even went further when we did Tales of The Walking Dead, a spin-off show where you got to see, you know, Lydia losing her mind, Alpha having a breakdown, and further back, how kind and loving and protective Dee was. She would do absolutely anything to protect her daughter.

The intensity of that is so powerful. How did you arrive at playing Catherine?

So on The Serpent Queen, as we were figuring out if I was right for the role, part of the conversation with the producers and directors was about how some of my favorite films are mafia films like The Godfather and Goodfellas. I love Scorsese. Ray Liotta’s performance in Goodfellas really inspired me, because he breaks the fourth wall at the end when Henry Hill is in the courtroom and about to go into witness protection.

Another part of the appeal is that I had a very tricky childhood. I was homeless at one point, and I grew up in foster care. When I started doing television, I suddenly had a very, very different life, and I've had to fight really, really hard. So I found some similarities there with Catherine that I could draw upon. This idea of prejudice, too.

Oh, tell me more about that.

Catherine was not respected, because she was a commoner. And in the UK, we still have a class system that you don't really have in America in the same way. And that’s another identification I have with Catherine, because I know how that feels, to be unwanted, fighting for everything. She was in convent schools, I was in a children's home, so I had that connection with her. She wasn’t French, either, and I kept thinking about how it must have felt for her the way it felt for my grandparents, who were immigrants from Poland and Ireland, to arrive in a country where she’s not welcome.

There are definitely similarities.

It's phenomenal what Catherine had to go through, being brought over from Italy to marry a French prince. So overall, it was the writing bringing to life these complex women, how they manage loving their children. I wanted to explore within each of them where I could bring a level of truth to a fantastical drama. I mean, let’s face it, even with these historical beats that we know are true in Harlots and The Serpent Queen, they’re fantastical dramas, just as The Walking Dead is.

I’m so glad that you touched on your background as having grown up in the British foster care system. Is there anything else that you would want to say about the way that those experiences have influenced you as an artist?

Yes, absolutely. It’s just very rare that people from my background get to have an opportunity to work in television or theater or music. All those avenues are not available to people from my background or other very disadvantaged backgrounds. So when I received my BAFTA Fellowship, I said in my acceptance speech that it was borderline a miracle that I'm even alive, let alone that I'm receiving the most prestigious award that BAFTA can bestow on anybody. But I still have to fight the class system—I have never been made CBA, OBE, or a Dame, because I’m still not part of that world.

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That’s wild.

I’m lucky that I'm able to have these conversations in support of such an incredible role—if the conversation does get a little personal, I’m able to highlight issues that are very close to my heart that need fixing. As you’ve seen in Season 1, Catherine was married at 12, in 1533. But we still have a problem globally with child marriage in 2024. Men are still marrying 12 year old girls, girls are still dying in childbirth at 14. So even though it's a historical show, we’re touching on things that still exist today.

Let’s talk a little bit more about Catherine and her many masks and personas that she uses to maintain her position. She survives, and is left with allies on the one hand and adversaries on the other, and that’s about it in her life.

It must be lonely at the top. For anybody, whether you’re running a country, whether you’re a superstar, actor, musician, because everybody’s gonna want to be your friend and make you feel good. At the same time, there's always a huge business around somebody at the top. It’s kind of its own little economy. Regarding her psychology, as an actor, all you can do is work from your script. The script to me is sacrosanct, and Justin Hayth’s writing has such depth. I’m learning my lines, and then something will click and I’ll think, “Oh, my goodness, it's that!” I'm so lucky that he got to direct part of season one, and a lot of season two—I was able to work so closely with him to understand the nuances and all of what was going to come in the last two episodes of the season.

By the end of this season, Catherine swings back to being on top after deciding she has to clear the board and have all of her adversaries murdered. It sets up a really interesting situation for a potential third season. Is it even possible for Catherine to lose at this point? Can you envision a time where there would be a real reckoning for her?

Well, maybe when she meets her maker, maybe when it’s the end, and she looks back at the choices she made. Certainly, throughout Season 2, it ain't going so well for her. At all. Everybody wants to be rid of her, her children hate her, based on decisions that she's forced to make, because the men in the room are not making the right decisions. She’s forced to take control yet again. For example, her support for religious tolerance and desire for a secular state, rather than one run by the Catholic Church. That was so ahead of her time to just want peace in that way.

If you’ll forgive the pun, I know you don’t intend to make her sound saintly.

No, she really is all about business—she’s like a mafia don. Whether it's marrying off her daughters, or vengeance, it's still all about business, and that business is running the country. My interpretation is that she’s sacrificing her own happiness, because she sees the bigger picture, and knows it's not about her. She believes her choices are for the good of the country.

Is there anything that you want viewers to think about or hold in their hearts as we look ahead to a hoped-for third season?

The complex family dynamics are so interesting, thinking about these Valois children growing up and becoming who they’re going to be, and how that will affect the globe. If you're into history, this is really fascinating, and if you’re into shows like The Sopranos or if you're into shows like Succession, you have the same level of complex family dynamics going on in The Serpent Queen. The relationships between Catherine and poor King Charles, between Catherine and Anjou are so fascinating and interesting.

Moving forward into Season 3, if indeed we go that way, we have the massive cliffhanger at the end of this season finale—when I was watching it, I just wanted to go on to season three straight away because I need to know what’s happening here, what the comeuppance will be, what the price to pay is, because there’s always a price to pay. And this season is funny, as well! Minnie Driver is so funny as Queen Elizabeth, and, I mean, the Bourbons. They have me in stitches, they're just bonkers!

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They’re my favorite characters! I was so glad they managed to survive Catherine’s very well-orchestrated bloodbath at the end of the finale.

Yes! You know, even though it’s a period drama, the music and the way that the cinematography is allowed to happen makes it feel quite contemporary. You don’t feel like you're watching an episode of CSI, and it won't alienate costume drama fans, but it’s bringing in a younger audience—well, hopefully ones at the right age, because it's kind of a grown-up show, and as Starz says, we're all grown ups here.

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