There are magical moments when two creative minds meet and truly complete each other. The partnership between Gemma Burgess and Meredith Glynn which produced Prime Video’s new rompy-pompy supernatural comedic take on history, My Lady Jane, is a perfect example.
Speaking with Geek Girl Authority via Zoom, Burgess and Glynn responded to questions in a collaborative voice, often completing each other’s sentences and building on each other’s ideas. The energetic enthusiasm for their show was palpable, shining through as they described the production. Clearly, this labor of love has been a delight as well.
The following transcript has been edited for clarity.
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Diana Keng: Can you take us back to the seed of inspiration that created the show?
Gemma Burgess: I was on the subway in New York City about six years ago with my kids and I saw a girl about seventeen or eighteen reading [Hand, Ashton, and Meadows’s book] My Lady Jane like this (holds hands close up to face) and if a girl is reading a book that closely and that intensely, you should just always buy it and read it because it’s probably good. So I didn’t know anything about it at all. Bought it, read it. Came to it as a fan and immediately thought, ‘This should be a television show.’
Glynn and Burgess Have Two Love Languages
Meredith Glynn: And then when Gemma was looking for a partner to run the show with, it became really clear … First of all, I read her incredible pilot … But when we were first chit-chatting, it became clear that we had two major things in common. We both loved movies from and were inspired by movies from the 80s and 90s tonally – and early 2000s –
Together: Like The Princess Bride!
GB: Buffy the Vampire Slayer…
MG: A Knight’s Tale…
GB: Yeah, Ladyhawke, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves…
MG: A little smattering of Black Adder…
GB: Bit of Black Adder, bit of Willow, bit of Labyrinth…
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MG: Definitely Willow…
GB: Some Monty Python…
MG: Of course!
GB: So that was kind of like our shared love language. And our other shared love language …
MG: … is Jane Grey herself. A character we were obsessed with when we were thirteen when you love everything that’s beautiful and DAMNED. (GB cracks up laughing) And then you look back on it and you realize, ‘No, that was a huge tragedy.’ She was one of History’s great victims and what an exciting opportunity…When I read the book, I was just so inspired by the opportunity to give her a different story.
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Who Doesn’t Love a Codpiece?
DK: You take some of the characters from history and combine the visual humor and the brilliance of the comedic performances to create a totally new beast. No pun intended. Can you speak to some of the visual cues that you took? Specifically, the Dudleys’ costuming?
MG: Oh, yeah! Shakespeare in Love!
GB: Shakespeare in Love was a big costume inspiration for us. We love a codpiece.
MG: Love a a codpiece. Who doesn’t love a codpiece?
GB: It’s funny. The first day that you’re on set and everyone’s wearing codpieces, you don’t know where else to look. And then by like Day Three, you’re just, ‘Ugh, another codpiece. It’s fine.’ You just don’t think about it anymore.
MG: Another day, another codpiece.
The Secret Awesomeness of Jane’s Gown
GB: In Episode 105 where there’s a ball, Jane wears an incredible gown and we were talking to our costume designer and we said, ‘Y’know, we want it to feel like the moment in Shakespeare in Love when Gwyneth Paltrow wears the incredible gold ruff and she came back a couple weeks later and said, ‘I found the ruff.’ We were like, ‘Oh, you got it made?’ She said, ‘No, I found the ACTUAL ruff. In a costume house.’ And so, Jane is literally wearing the Gwyneth Paltrow ruff from Shakespeare in Love.
MG: Jane is wearing an incredible gown designed by Stephanie Collie and then the iconic Shakespeare in Love ruff.
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DK: While the settings are still far cleaner than Tudor times would’ve been, you still manage to incorporate the ‘ick’ of the times.
GB: Yeah, ick is important. Jane’s fingernails are dirty.
MG: We like the ick. We wanted everything to feel lived in. We wanted the world to feel real.
GB: We had two people whose entire job was to make costumes look worn out at the sleeves and the elbows and to make the hems muddy.
MG: To take these beautiful costumes and break them down.
GB: And Jane always has dirty fingernails and people needed to have dirty hair. We wanted it to feel real. And Will Hughes-Jones who was our production designer designed these incredible sets. They’re slightly sanitized and some things are not practical to do in the modern times like Tudors had rushes of hay and herbs on the floor to kind of hide the smell of unwashed homes. It’s really hard to do when you’re filming so we just didn’t do that. But he did a beautiful job making this sexy …
MG: … sexy Tudor…
GB: … warmth. Yeah.
All eight episodes of My Lady Jane drop on Prime Video on June 27.
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