“It’s one and done,” says creator D.C. Moore.
“We’ve made a lot of noise, we’ve made a lot of mess.
We’ve been dirty and filthy and now we’ve gone.”
Nicholas Galitzine on ‘Mary & George’.Rory Mulvey/Starz
Warning: This article contains spoilers about theMary & Georgefinale,“War.”
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put James back together again…
The limited series barreled toward its bloody conclusion with a one-two punch of murders.
Tony Curran on ‘Mary & George’.Rory Mulvey/Starz
He wins over an ailing James by distracting him with a sexy bower in the woods.
But when James learns the truth of George’s action, he threatens to have his head.
George acts first, suffocating James with his pillow as he suffers from a fit.
Julianne Moore on ‘George & Mary’.Rory Mulvey/Starz
Mary (Julianne Moore) simply looks on, bearing witness to the monster she helped to create.
But George’s reprieve is a brief one.
What drove this choice of this mode of killing and having George be the one behind it?
D.C. MOORE:Not just the book.
A lot of people at the time thought that Mary and George had been involved.
But I do feel like sometimes you want to more lean into the spirit of something that happened.
He killed his legacy.
Everyone’s been trying to f— me over my whole life.
I hate all of it.
c’mon, everyone stop fighting.'
It feels like that came from a very personal place of pique.
So, the more medical poisoning felt a bit too considered.
It needed to be more in the heat of the moment.
You have to adapt things for bring them towards you.
George feels like someone who was a passionate man of the senses.
The dramatic choices aside, do you believe that George murdered King James?
I don’t know, but I’m very interested.
Some things you just have to accept.
I trust [historian and author] Benjamin Woolley’s instincts.
But as a dramatist, you’ve got to lean into different instincts.
All the wars he launched, the many who died for no reason at all.
He really helped us set the groundwork for the English Civil War.
We don’t get to spend a ton of time with George after this murder.
Do you think that this was a difficult decision for him or that he has any sense of regret?
Before, during, and immediately afterwards, there is a sense of regret.
And Nick really sells that.
But I do also think that not very soon afterwards he would’ve shifted his perspective and moved on.
The real George did just that.
The engraving on his tombstone is the most defensive thing I’ve ever read on a tomb.
The subtext is, “Despite all the things you heard, he was a great guy.”
And then you could have done a whole season that was only the three years post James' death.
Why was a one-season arc the way to go?
But if you say, will you do a week or two for us?
it’s possible for you to be more nimble.
You’re much less likely to get someone like Julianne Moore if it’s a returning series.
Initially, we did talk about two or three seasons.
He is born and he dies.
Once Mary has been pushed out [of] the picture, it feels less interesting.
The three of them is the dynamic.
I feel that specialness.
I don’t think any of us think [another season] would be a good idea.
It’s one and done.
We’ve made a lot of noise, we’ve made a lot of mess.
We’ve been dirty and filthy and now we’ve gone.
I’m quite happy with that.
Was there a version where you had one more episode where we got into that a little bit?
Or did you feel like there was too much there?
I’m going to turn this into a sex metaphor, but it felt a bit post-coital.
We’ve come to the end.
It just felt like you’d be starting again, and we didn’t need it.
With Mary and George, we’re telling their story together.
Mary would be less and less involved, and it would become more about wrongdoing.
And I hope the show isn’t just about wrongdoing.
It’s about people playing the only game that is available to rise while the game is afoot.
This was the game of the court and the era.
And once that game is over, I’m less intrigued.
Then, you have George’s murder here at the end.
It’s pretty much exactly what historians know to have happened.
Was that a case of, I can’t make this more dramatic than it already is?
I did add the hook-up quality.
This guy had fought in that exact battle.
He was bitter about it.
He was partly bitter about pay as well.
It had been a disaster.
It had been ill-conceived.
He did stab him to death in a tavern.
But I don’t think that he was letting George think that they might sleep together.
That is not in history books, that is me adding.
But it feels great that George would mistake death for sex.
That feels so part of him.
And then the other thing that is really true is how unmoved Mary was when she found out.
That’s something we’ve really tried to capture.
Everyone knew this would happen.
No shock at all.
Or is her reaction more a function of her being pushed out and his growing unpopularity?
In early drafts, she saw it when she held him after he was born.
She always had a sense that something that burned that brightly would eventually burn out.
But once he’s falling beyond her grasp, she knows where this is going to end.
She can see the way this is going.
There’s a sort of inevitability to it.
There is a bit of Frankenstein’s monster to it.
And it really did.
He really was creating needless wars.
His corruption was off the charts.
So, he was absolutely hated by the end.
She’s someone who knew for five years that this is where it was going to go.
We get to this final shot of Mary where she’s surveying her family and George’s empty chair.
What did you want us to take away from that?
She has her kids, her title, she has a very big house, she’s got heirs.
That family’s still going in various forms.
She created a lasting legacy for her family.
And George’s death was obviously regretful and the manner of it is not great.
The family survived and she created something.
She achieved something, which given what she started with, is genuinely incredible.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
