Helen Mirren is back on the throne where she belongs. After winning countless accolades as both Queen Elizabeths, the 74-year-old is the most powerful woman that ever lived in Catherine The Great, a role which ultimately could only fall to the Oscar winner.
The Sky Atlantic and HBO drama will drop all four episodes next week; a bedazzling retelling of the most important figure in the history books most of us know nothing about.
She was a force, obviously, but she boasted a wicked sense of humour, was unimaginably forward-thinking (investing in female education in the 18th century was unheard of) and unapologetically sexual.
Catherine The Great will no doubt be an education for most. The German-born Empress remains the longest-running female leader of all time in Russia, which is remarkable considering her circumstance. She overthrew her own violent and drunk husband Peter III and built a strength in Russia it had never experienced before, becoming one of the greatest powers in Europe.
While Helen dismissed historic sexism towards Catherine, who was widely reported to have been killed trying to have sex with a horse – a total lie – Catherine The Great celebrates her promiscuity. At one point, while one of her lovers climbs the stairs to her bedroom another is crossing them on the way down.
Helen, who described herself as a ‘liberated’ woman and part of the sexual revolution of the 1960s, admitted she was bowled over by Catherine’s ‘sexual liberation’.
‘We are still coming out of a Victorianism, protestant puritanism,’ Helen explained to press including Metro.co.uk after being carried to her premiere by four men.
‘We’re still as a society coming out of that so we still have certain inbuilt attitudes and I have them even though I think of myself as a liberated woman – I couldn’t get my head around her sexual liberation.
‘I thought, “You just have to think like a man because men don’t have any problem with this.” So obviously it can be human quality if you like, just think like a bloke.’
Naturally, playing such a formidable part has taught Helen perhaps the most valuable life lesson.
‘Women, if they work hard they can do anything – absolutely anything,’ she continued. ‘If they have the capability and the ability to work hard because that was the defining quality of Cath was her ability to work incredibly hard.
‘If women can have the capability and can work hard they can do anything, including becoming the empress of Russia.’
All episodes of Sky original Catherine The Great are on Sky Atlantic and NOW TV on 3 October.
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