AMC+ Review: Anne Boleyn

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Who Plays Anne Boleyn?

Anne Boleyn is a cold retelling of the the English queen’s life only given life through Jodie Turner-Smith’s performance. Initially airing in the U.K. and picked up by AMC, creator Eve Hedderwick Turner’s “Anne Boleyn” bills itself as a “psychological thriller” following the second of Henry VIII’s doomed wives. Anne Boleyn (Jodie Turner-Smith) has been Queen for two-and-a-half years at this point, pregnant with her second child after birthing an unwanted daughter.

There’s little new to say about Anne Boleyn, who remains one of the more popular Tudor queens to focus on due to her being touted as an independent woman who openly refused to conform to the standards of queendom. Hedderwick Turner does make the bold decision to eschew Henry and Anne’s courtship and love story, with Stanley’s Henry feeling like a bit player in everything. The couple’s relationship is already on the rocks; they have little interaction outside of Henry’s sporting with his next wife, the shy Jane Seymour (Lola Petticrew).

She has some beautiful speeches and appears to truly understand Boleyn’s frustrations, regrets, and anger. She’s coupled with Paappa Essiedu (“I May Destroy You”) as her brother George, who also has a fantastic rapport with Turner-Smith. That sense of confinement is probably the only way to see this as a psychological thriller.

If anything, the show enjoys pointed metaphors a bit too much. Turning the camera toward an axe being used to end a meeting. Why remind them of how Boleyn dies while removing 90 percent of her history prior to?

Her time in the Tower gives the actress time to stretch her muscles, having a few breakdown scenes that are beautiful in their heartbreak. But there’s little introspection into anything. Boleyn was accused of not just infidelity, but incest, and yet there’s no real insight into how that made many see the Queen as possessed by the Devil.

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Who Was The Doomed Queen Whose Ambition Bound Her To The Chopping Block?

There’s a much larger audience who’s tired of seeing features with only white people, Turner-Smith said. Nearly every generation has their take on Henry VIII and his legendary wives, from Charles Laughton’s 1933 feature “The Private Life of Henry VIII” to Showtime’s mid-aughts series “The Tudors.” Even on Broadway, one can see Henry’s six spouses sing about their lives in an ongoing production simply titled “Six.”

British actress Jodie Turner-Smith, starring as the doomed queen whose ambition bound her to the chopping block, found Boleyn’s story incredibly relevant. “This is the go-to of a patriarchal society: to prosecute women that are disruptive, that are strong, that are challenging, [and] that demand a seat at the table.” The actress said she was drawn to Eve Hedderwick Turner’s scripts, but still wanted to do her own research.

It’s something that, Turner-Smith felt, had to have influenced in how Boleyn lived with the King in England. So it’s like, of course, she will come back to England with some big ideas.” Turner-Smith was similarly astounded by how much of Boleyn’s narrative was either co-opted by men or completely unknown.

It’s one reason the series was so significant to produce, in allowing a woman who has been discussed endlessly to finally tell her own story. “It just goes to show that throughout time, whoever records the history and whatever their agenda is, is what leads to what survives, and that’s generally a man. And we’re finding out it’s generally something that we should think twice about because maybe it’s wrong,” said Turner-Smith.

“You’ve been seeing it in theater for so long, this concept of artists of color playing different roles,” she said. or in a movie theater,” she said. “[Maybe] audiences want it to be closer to something that feels like the exact truth.” Still, it’s not something that feels particularly complex to the actress.

In the end she hopes people focus more on the universal elements than who is playing the character. Human experience, much of which is showcased in “Anne Boleyn,” applies to everyone, she said — though Turner-Smith understands there will always be an audience who only sees Anne Boleyn as a white woman, she feels the tide is turning. “There’s a much larger audience who’s tired of seeing features with only white people,” she said.

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Who Was Henry Viii’S Second And Most Notorious Wife?

Anyone even vaguely familiar with British history will be familiar with that of Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII’s second and most notorious wife. Even now, centuries after her decapitation, she remains a uniquely enigmatic figure: a canny woman who so charmed a king that he threw away generations of tradition to divorce his wife and reject the church to be with her. Anne’s been portrayed innumerable times; even now, she and the rest of the wives take to Broadway six nights out of seven in a sparkly new “her-story.”

Now, writer Eve Hedderwick Turner and director Lynsey Miller bring a new “Anne Boleyn” to life, albeit a rather blunt one that focuses on the bitter end of her reign rather than its salacious beginnings. This three-episode “Anne Boleyn” series, premiering Dec. 9 on AMC Plus after an earlier U.K. premiere on Channel 5, makes obvious efforts to differentiate its portrayal of Anne from any other. It picks up shortly before Anne’s final, damning miscarriage, which was not coincidentally just a few months before Henry decided he was done with her for good.

Still, details such as Lynsey Moore’s lush costumes and the production unfolding in historic locations like Yorkshire’s Bolton Castle lend fitting grandeur to the story, even as it all too quickly unravels. In the context of how “Anne Boleyn” portrays the queen, though, the show uses Turner-Smith’s casting — and that of “I May Destroy You” standout Paapa Essiedu as Anne’s equally doomed brother — to underline how the Boleyns always stood out in Henry’s court. That Turner-Smith’s Anne is notably headstrong comes as no surprise given historical accounts of Anne’s character; that Turner-Smith is also Black, surrounded at court by a bevy of suspicious white people, adds another dimension to this familiar story.

Tasked with depicting Anne’s very darkest days, Turner-Smith does all she can to bring the character to life, even as an over-explanatory opening scroll getting the audience up to speed tries to do her work for her before she gets the chance. She fully embodies Anne’s genuine lust and affection for her husband, grief at absorbing the pain of birthing a stillborn son, and disdain for the sham of a trial that a smugly victorious Cromwell (Barry Ward) steers towards the inevitable conclusion of her death. In tracing the final days of Anne’s life, this adaptation does its best to take her seriously as a woman, mother and, in some of its most interesting asides, as a boss to a roomful of dissatisfied ladies-in-waiting.

Even as “Anne Boleyn” puts one foot in front of the other to get the queen to her terrible endpoint, weighted down by its own gravitas, its most compelling moments come when Turner-Smith gets to embrace Anne’s pettier, more impulsive instincts. For as grandiose as scenes such as her final beseeching speech before death may be, the ones that linger involve Anne displaying some more grounded, recognizable flaws. As Anne falls out of favor, she falls prey to idle gossip, accidentally on purpose insults anyone she perceives as weak, and generally overplays her hand to catastrophic effect.

“Anne Boleyn” is currently available to stream on AMC Plus.

Who Is The Doomed Queen Of England?

As the doomed queen of England, Turner-Smith exudes a presence so powerful it feels almost physical, as if she’s stepped through the screen and is waiting expectantly for your curtsy. If only the series around her lived up to the lucidity of her performance. When the story first picks up with her in early 1536, she’s literally glowing.

Combined with Turner-Smith’s regal bearing, bright eyes and silky voice, these visual cues mark Anne as the sun around which the story revolves. Airdate: Thursday, Dec. 9 Cast: Jodie Turner-Smith, Mark Stanley, Paapa Essiedu Director: Lynsey Miller Screenwriter: Eve Hedderwick Turner Executive producer: Dan Jones Unbeknownst to Anne, however, the clock is already ticking on her life. Before we get to the party, there’s a flash-forward to Anne’s guilty verdict, and title cards near the start of each episode count down the days until her death.

The choice to mark the passage of time relative to her death adds a bit of narrative tension to what’s already a well-known story, and addresses head-on the elephant in the room. We already know Anne’s story ends with Henry ordering her execution by beheading, so the question becomes how one woman’s fortunes could turn so dramatically, so swiftly. But the framing has the additional effect of flattening everything onscreen into a series of puzzle pieces clicking into place.

Anne can’t so much as play a card game without stumbling into a metaphor about how Jane “had the winning hand all along.” At other times, characters blatantly spell out the series’ themes, informing Anne that “your influence lies in your belly, not your brain.” To Hedderwick Turner’s credit, she carves out room within that too-tidy construction for Anne to be messy and unpredictable.

She plants a kiss on Jane Seymour and declares that she understands the appeal, trying to come to terms with Henry’s wandering eye even as she increasingly rages against it. With a more timid actor, this mercuriality might come across as inconsistency — or worse, as markers of that dreaded biopic tendency to check off boxes rather than connect the dots. Turner-Smith wears these moods as confidently as she does Anne’s extravagant gowns, weaving them together into a portrait of a woman equal parts frustrating and enchanting.

(As I said, subtlety is not the show’s strong suit.) Anne’s marginalization is further emphasized by the choice to cast her as a Black woman, one of only a handful of non-white actors among a mostly white cast. But having raised these basic if valid points, Anne Boleyn seems satisfied that its work here is finished.

Who Is King Henry Viii’S Second Wife?

The dusty stories we learn in middle and high school in this country are rarely nuanced, updated, or contextualized with the lens of society’s understanding of how patriarchy or systemic bias influenced the original telling of events at the time. All of this is why AMC+’s airing of the limited series, Anne Boleyn, arrives when we could all use a fresh look at King Henry VIII’s second wife, mostly remembered today for getting beheaded by him. Written by Eve Hedderwick Turner and directed by Lynsey Miller, this three-part series (which premiered on the UK’s Channel 5 earlier this year) stars Jodie Turner-Smith (the first Black actress to take the role) as Tudor Queen Anne Boleyn, and the narrative is refreshingly framed from the Queen’s point of view.

What Anne Boleyn and Turner-Smith do so well in this series is make Anne a far more defined woman with her own ambition, intelligence, and keen strategic savvy. She’s imperious, confident, and a worthy player in knowing how to navigate the governmental and sexual politics of her husband. And she becomes aware that allied court advisors, like the increasingly smarmy Thomas Cromwell (Jamael Westman), are only too happy to reduce her influence on the king in matters of religion and relationships with countries like France and Spain.

The main Greenwich Palace locale is minimalist, with the most exotic location shooting mostly near ponds and gardens. It’s really Anne’s dresses that grab the eye throughout, featuring beautiful fabrics of teal with jewelry accents giving her a regal glow as she’s framed by the natural light coming from windows and alcoves. Everyone else is functional and era appropriate, so it’s not going to dazzle the peepers like a Downton Abbey or Bridgerton.

Once Turner-Smith gets past the business of showing the many mercurial shades to her character’s persona in the first episode, she’s then allowed to attain a more measured balance with Anne. The moments that give the audience an intimate view of Anne really shine, like when she provocatively confronts Jane about the nature of her relationship with Henry while on a private walk, or her portrayal of the devastating aftermath of Anne’s labor, where the sympathy elicited for the character sweeps the audience into the tale far more than the script can do alone. The more she asserted her values, wants and needs, wrong or right, the more the court and the political players found reasons to dislike her and resent her ambition outside of breeding.

Henry is one thing, but their nemesis-level battle with one another is really the personification of Anne’s struggle in life. And Turner-Smith plays Anne’s last days with powerful resonance. But Anne Boleyn and Turner-Smith make the dusty, distant history feel immediate and pertinent once more.

Who Starred In Queen & Slim?

EXCLUSIVE, updated with new trailer: Anne Boleyn, the British drama series starring Jodie Turner-Smith in the titular role, is heading to AMC+. The streaming service has picked up the U.S. rights to the series, which was originally commissioned by ViacomCBS-owned UK broadcaster Channel 5 and co-financed by Sony Pictures Television. The convention-defying three-part drama will launch in the U.S. on December 9 and will be rolled out weekly.

It examines the downfall of Boleyn through the prism of a psychological thriller rather than a stuffy period drama retreading the demise of King Henry VIII’s second wife. Penned by newcomer Eve Hedderwick Turner, the drama shines a feminist light on the final months of Boleyn’s life, re-imagining her struggle with Tudor England’s patriarchal society, her desire to secure a future for her daughter, Elizabeth, and the brutal reality of her failure to provide Henry with a male heir. Turner-Smith, who starred in Queen & Slim, plays Boleyn with I May Destroy You’s Paapa Essiedu s Anne’s brother and Tudor nobleman George Boleyn.

Barry Ward (Des) is King Henry VIII’s closest and most powerful advisor Thomas Cromwell, Jamael Westman (West End’s Hamilton) is Jane Seymour’s ambitious brother Edward, Amanda Burton (Marcella) is stoic Governess, Lady Anne Shelton, and Thalissa Teixeira (Ragdoll) is Anne’s loyal confidante and cousin Madge Shelton. Hedderwick Turner has penned the mini-series, which is directed by Lynsey Miller (Deadwater Fell). It is produced by Faye Ward and Hannah Farrell’s Sony-backed production company Fable Pictures with historian Dan Jones as exec producer.

“Featuring a superb ensemble cast led by Jodie Turner-Smith‘s mesmerizing performance and a predominantly female creative team, this groundbreaking drama, told from the unique perspective of one of history’s most fascinating – and scrutinized – women, makes for a can’t-miss television event to end the year.” “We couldn’t be more thrilled to be working with AMC – the home of many visionary shows that have inspired us over the years. Jodie Turner-Smith is mesmerizing as Anne Boleyn and we can’t wait for audiences to see her exploding the myths around one of England’s most notorious queens,” added Ward and Farrell.