Minnie Driver plays Queen Elizabeth right on time

Many women have portrayed the first Queen Elizabeth, who reigned for almost 45 years during the 16th and 17th centuries, and now Minnie Driver is wearing her crown.

Many women have portrayed the first Queen Elizabeth, who reigned for almost 45 years during the 16th and 17th centuries, and now Minnie Driver is wearing her crown. Driver spoke with CNN in a recent interview about how she approached portraying one of England’s most consequential monarchs in the second season of the Starz series, “The Serpent Queen.” “I had lots of conversations with Justin Haythe [executive producer] about all the different aspects we were gonna see in her. The playfulness, basically seeing her using her sexuality as power,” Driver said. “I kind of focused on the things that were going to be different about the performance rather than going back and looking at previous ones because it’s baked in, the extraordinary power that this woman had.” It is not lost on Driver that she’s come to the role at a time when there is a lot of conversation about women in leadership. She stars opposite Samantha Morton as Catherine de’ Medici, the queen of France, who was known as “The Serpent Queen” for her cunning and power that many thought she garnered and maintained by being ruthless. While history doesn’t confirm the female rulers ever met in person, they did correspond, and the second season of the series imagines what their relationship might have been. Driver said she’s perfectly fine with taking creative license in the show.