Interview with George Powell: Season Three, Fanfiction, and Inspiration
For anyone hoping for hints on Season Three!
George Powell, creator of the critically-acclaimed historical-drama The Cursed Queen, meets me in his house wearing jeans and a collared t-shirt. He’s a large, solid man with a whitish-gray beard and bushy eyebrows over dark-framed glasses. He laughs easily and often, and has a contagious laugh—as we move outside to the patio with glasses of lemonade, I find myself laughing, too, as he tells the story of one of his favorite days on set.
“And we just couldn’t get it together,” he said. “We did six, seven takes, and every time, Emma [O’Connor] and Kat [Gordon] just broke down laughing—we were all laughing.” He gives a satisfied sigh and leans back in his metal chair. “That’s the great thing about this show. It’s got its moments.”
I, like so many others, have watched The Cursed Queen since it premiered in January 2016, and that’s one of the things that’s kept me coming back week after week. While The Cursed Queen follows a dark story—parallel timelines follow Maleen of Adlkofen’s refusal to marry a cruel prince and the later deaths of three of her sons—Powell is right when he says it has its side-splitting moments. The episode he is referring to has a scene where Maleen (Emma O’Conner) and her daughter Margareta (Kat Gordon) get covered in mud while out riding. When they return to the castle, they meet Maleen’s husband Conrad (James Brandon) and Margareta’s prospective husband, the uptight Frederick (Tom Dartnell). Their interaction with Frederick—while they attempt to maintain some dignity in the face of his shocked horror—is one of those rare, side-splitting moments that makes an otherwise serious show feel like a slice of life.
“James just couldn’t get his lines out,” Powell says. “We wanted Emma and Kat fighting back laugher on camera, but every time they got through their lines without completely breaking down, James and Tom would start laughing. It was a good time.”
Powell has been director, producer, and on a team of writers for The Cursed Queen since work began on the series in late 2013. It aired in January 2016.
“I was in Germany in 2013,” Powell says. “I was scouting locations for a different show, in Germany. That’s what I might do after this.” When pressed, he smiles coyly and shakes his head. “All I’ll say is that it might go in a more fantasy direction.”
While scouting locations for this other show, Powell and his wife—who was travelling with him, and currently works in costume design on The Cursed Queen—got word that their show had been dropped.
“The rest of the team stayed in Munich for a day,” Powell says. “But Lynn and I headed down to a little town, nearby.” They stopped in a small, local restaurant. At the table next to them was a German man with three kids, who heard Powell speaking English and began looking at him with interest.
“We thought at first we were worried we couldn’t read the menu,” Powell says—then he laughs. “I couldn’t! Lynn could. But after a while, we got the sense the whole family was about to come talk to us.”
And after a while, they did.
“The boy turned around and asked in perfect English if we were American,” Powell says. “And we weren’t surprised, we figured these European kids could understand us—but we were a little surprised after we said yes, and the kids all turned around and told us that their mom was American and she worked at a museum in town.”
Powell and his wife started talking to the German family. “The father could understand, but he didn’t say much,” he says. “The kids talked to him in German after we’d been talking for maybe forty minutes, and asked if we wanted to come meet their mother and see her museum. And Lynn and I had a whole day in town, and we’d left our crew in Munich, so we said we’d love to.”
After lunch, the family took Powell and his wife to a museum in a small, white building. It was mostly local history, with maps and some models of the city in different eras—and then there was this room of papers, really carefully restored papers.” These were what the American woman worked on.
“And that’s how I met Elizabeth,” Powell says of Elizabeth Raye-Muller, one of the original crew to stumble upon the story of Maleen of Adlkofen. “Her kids ran straight back into the lab to tell her they’d picked up some strange Americans, and Elizabeth’s team came out to meet us.” Among that team were Martin and Julie Shipland, who have also been on the Maleen story since 1995.
“They showed us what they’ve been doing,” Powell said. “All these letters, diaries, notes—and when they started telling us this story, we knew we weren’t going anywhere. I think they’d been talking for about ten minutes Lynn and I just looked at each other and whispered we have to make this into a show.”
Powell and his wife spent the rest of the day at the museum, and at the end of the day, were invited home by the Shiplands. Elizabeth Raye-Muller’s family accompanied them there.
“We had a great time,” Powell says. “Had a big cookout, American style, thrown together real fast—one minute we’re at lunch, next minute Lynn and Julie are making potato salad and I’m outside at the grill. And we stayed up for hours, and they told us about their research.”
By then, the German team knew that Powell was a big-name TV producer—the Shiplands even knew and liked his earlier show, In Search of Dragons.
“I think it was Martin or Elizabeth who suggested it first, once I told them we were scouting locations,” Powell says. “I’ve talked to them—often, since, really often—I visit them when we’re filming in Bavaria. They don’t remember, either. But one of them said that if I wanted to make a show like In Search of Dragons about Maleen of Adlkofen, they would be glad to work with me on it.” He laughs, a deep belly laugh. “And I’d spent the whole afternoon trying to think of some way to ask!”
Once they realized they were on the same page, it was quick work. Elizabeth Raye-Muller was already working on a book about Maleen for publication in the US. “It wasn’t expected to get very popular, but she was excited,” Powell says. “And I couldn’t see why, because this is just the most exciting story. Next day, we called our crew down from Munich, and once they heard, they got excited, too. We met with the team that whole day about an outline for what this show might look like—we were in—I think Martin and Julie’s living room.”
Powell is extremely excited as he tells this story, and when asked if any detail in particular stuck out to him, he’s quick to put down his glass and turn to face me.
“I know exactly,” he says. He fumbles with his phone and opens a photo. “I have a picture of the quote she read me, because I sent it to the crew—it’s from Conrad, in 1558. Ludvik is his fourteen-year-old grandson. And it says—” He turns the phone sideways and squints. “It says, woke sometime this morning to William frantic knocking on the door--he abbreviates everyone’s name,” he says, interrupting himself. “I’m filling in. Woke sometime this morning to William frantic knocking on the door and Maleen and I woke and went to see what was wrong. Ludvik standing in sitting room with so much blood on his body that we thought he must be dying or have hurt himself—William incoherent and shaking and Ludvik in tears asking how he had come here. William said he had appeared out of nowhere in the hall and there was blood back as far as the stairs. Ludvik remembered nothing since supper and left him with Maleen and went with William tracking blood path through hall and back to Conrad’s chambers. Found door standing ajar and Conrad stabbed to death and bathed in blood.” He’s smiling when he looks up. “I think in movie shots—cuts and pans—and I could see that scene. I could see exactly what we ended up doing. You start in real close to Maleen asleep, you keep it claustrophobic and dark and fast—you can see her, you can just barely see Conrad—in our version, we skipped ahead, we skipped to Ludvik waking her so you get that shot of these bloody hands in the dark—right then, I had to make this story.” That's exactly the opening scene of the show (if you need an episode guide or refresher, check here).
Powell talks about the other things that made the story perfect to produce.
“First of all,” he says, “We’ve got a woman at the center. Maleen’s at the center of everything, and she’s in charge, and that’s a dynamic that’s different—it’s more fun than making a Tudor story, a Borgia story, because we know what it looks like when the court’s revolving around the king and his lovers. This is different, and that automatically makes it fun to make.”
I ask him, of courses, about Maleen’s affair, which has appeared in the second trailer for season three (psst--you can find a breakdown of Trailer 1 here and a quiz to test your memory of the previous seasons here!)—the queen and her lovers? Is it based in fact, something he takes pride in with other elements of the show?
“Well,” Powell says. “We have the letters--Julie Shipland published the letters. Between July 1559, in Willmars, and maybe December—nothing, not a one. And there were sometimes multiple notes a day before this, at least one a week. And in January, we pick up with words like return and again. I’m with her thinking something happened in there, and it got me thinking—what could happen? Our team and the German team—mostly Julie—we talked about it, and we found that okay, she’s been regent for a while, she’s had a lot of kids, she’s spent a lot of time with Conrad, she’s got a lot of power. And Conrad—Martin Shipland thinks he’s got some kind of OCD, based on the notes he takes with the code for rooms, and by 1559, he’s got Ludvik just starting to edge towards snapping like he does when he kills Conrad Junior, so he’s spending all his time taking care of this kid—and we know he disagreed with Maleen on what to do about Conrad Junior, once they found out the awful stuff he was doing to the grandkids. So they’re in a position where they’re just not getting along—and we asked ourselves who she might pick. Someone who won’t contradict her, someone who’s going to do what she wants easily—and I think it works. I think people are going to like how we end up handling it in Season Three.”
He adds that the last scene of season two—where Conrad catches Maleen and Joseph von Absberg about to begin the affair—is actually inspired by fan fiction he found online.
“Of course I read the fan fiction,” Powell says. “I started after we killed off Rani in In Search of Dragons and the show got a lot of pushback.” Rani (Lela Rezai)’s character was killed in Season Six, in the same episode she began a relationship with Portia (after three seasons of buildup).
“When we did that, we thought it made sense,” Powell says. “It made sense to me for Rani’s character—she’d had so many close brushes, she was so hurt and so sick that I didn’t think she’d make it through another raid. I didn’t think it was possible. But I went on the fan fiction site and all of a sudden, there were all these ways around that, and I’m hitting myself asking why we killed her. I didn’t want to do that to the fans again.” Powell looks out at the yard.
“I wished right away we hadn’t killed her so well, you know?” he says. “I thought that maybe we could bring her back, but she died pretty—pretty on-screen. So we knew the next show wasn’t going to do that—consciously wasn’t going to do that—and we weren’t going to get involved in that—that—queer-baiting?” He waits for my nod.
“Yeah,” he says. “I want to make a show that people like watching. I want it to have action, and intrigue—and sex—“ He chuckles—“And love, and fights and blood—that’s the kind of show I like watching. I want to be—“ He gestures in mid-air—“I want to be dragged to that TV once a week. I want to be so excited that I can’t even wait to binge the whole thing—I have to watch it one episode at a time. And what struck me about the Bavaria story is that Henrik—the gay son—he’s the one who lives. The whole point is that he makes it till the end and gets a pretty happy ending for the time—he gets to go live in a nice manor house with his partner and read books and ride horses, and his parents love him. Have you read any of these notes?” I tell him that I have, and he nods approvingly. “Yeah. They adore him. He’s by far the favorite, I think. And that was one of the first things Elizabeth told me about the story of the Mad Kings--Kira Lennox did a good interview on that—but one of the first things she told me was about Henrik, and I grabbed Lynn’s arm and I told her I’m going to make this guy a character. He’s up there with Margareta—and she’s another reason I had to make this show.”
I ask him about Margareta, one of Maleen’s daughters, who appears as a main character in the show, despite having had less written about her than her sister Ursula. Powell puts his glass down and turns to me across the table.
“What I liked about Margareta is this story that happens near the end of Conrad’s notes,” he says. “She’s taking care of Ella, one of the grandkids who got abused, and she sends out this bizarre notice that any prince who’s going to marry her is going to ask her permission before he ever touches her at all, and she gets all these men in who grab her hand to kiss it—“ He mimes this in midair—“And she flips out. And Margareta just keeps saying no to these men. Nope. Nope.” He gestures like he’s shooing away a fly. “She takes no bullshit. She just says well, you should have listened to what I said. And she’s great—she gets in all these stupid fights with Henrik, in the notes, but they’re in this together. Have you read the bit—there’s one part where she tells Richard, when Henrik’s with him, that she would like him more if he got trampled by a horse?” I tell him I haven’t and he beams. “About four lines after she’s told Henrik that he’s stupid and they’ve yelled at each other and banged out of Conrad’s library crying. She’s fantastic.”
Powell talks excitedly, full of plans and ideas, dropping hints for Season Three. “We’ll see some more of Ursula,” he says. “And Hildegard's going to stay with her. And we’ll see more of Ramona—people were bored by her, but we’ll make her more interesting.” I press him, but he just smiles and won't say. When asked about Joseph von Absberg, he just smiles.
"You never know,” he says, with a smile. “There’s all kinds of political drama coming up in Season Three. Anything could happen. You never know.”
“And we just couldn’t get it together,” he said. “We did six, seven takes, and every time, Emma [O’Connor] and Kat [Gordon] just broke down laughing—we were all laughing.” He gives a satisfied sigh and leans back in his metal chair. “That’s the great thing about this show. It’s got its moments.”
I, like so many others, have watched The Cursed Queen since it premiered in January 2016, and that’s one of the things that’s kept me coming back week after week. While The Cursed Queen follows a dark story—parallel timelines follow Maleen of Adlkofen’s refusal to marry a cruel prince and the later deaths of three of her sons—Powell is right when he says it has its side-splitting moments. The episode he is referring to has a scene where Maleen (Emma O’Conner) and her daughter Margareta (Kat Gordon) get covered in mud while out riding. When they return to the castle, they meet Maleen’s husband Conrad (James Brandon) and Margareta’s prospective husband, the uptight Frederick (Tom Dartnell). Their interaction with Frederick—while they attempt to maintain some dignity in the face of his shocked horror—is one of those rare, side-splitting moments that makes an otherwise serious show feel like a slice of life.
“James just couldn’t get his lines out,” Powell says. “We wanted Emma and Kat fighting back laugher on camera, but every time they got through their lines without completely breaking down, James and Tom would start laughing. It was a good time.”
Powell has been director, producer, and on a team of writers for The Cursed Queen since work began on the series in late 2013. It aired in January 2016.
“I was in Germany in 2013,” Powell says. “I was scouting locations for a different show, in Germany. That’s what I might do after this.” When pressed, he smiles coyly and shakes his head. “All I’ll say is that it might go in a more fantasy direction.”
While scouting locations for this other show, Powell and his wife—who was travelling with him, and currently works in costume design on The Cursed Queen—got word that their show had been dropped.
“The rest of the team stayed in Munich for a day,” Powell says. “But Lynn and I headed down to a little town, nearby.” They stopped in a small, local restaurant. At the table next to them was a German man with three kids, who heard Powell speaking English and began looking at him with interest.
“We thought at first we were worried we couldn’t read the menu,” Powell says—then he laughs. “I couldn’t! Lynn could. But after a while, we got the sense the whole family was about to come talk to us.”
And after a while, they did.
“The boy turned around and asked in perfect English if we were American,” Powell says. “And we weren’t surprised, we figured these European kids could understand us—but we were a little surprised after we said yes, and the kids all turned around and told us that their mom was American and she worked at a museum in town.”
Powell and his wife started talking to the German family. “The father could understand, but he didn’t say much,” he says. “The kids talked to him in German after we’d been talking for maybe forty minutes, and asked if we wanted to come meet their mother and see her museum. And Lynn and I had a whole day in town, and we’d left our crew in Munich, so we said we’d love to.”
After lunch, the family took Powell and his wife to a museum in a small, white building. It was mostly local history, with maps and some models of the city in different eras—and then there was this room of papers, really carefully restored papers.” These were what the American woman worked on.
“And that’s how I met Elizabeth,” Powell says of Elizabeth Raye-Muller, one of the original crew to stumble upon the story of Maleen of Adlkofen. “Her kids ran straight back into the lab to tell her they’d picked up some strange Americans, and Elizabeth’s team came out to meet us.” Among that team were Martin and Julie Shipland, who have also been on the Maleen story since 1995.
“They showed us what they’ve been doing,” Powell said. “All these letters, diaries, notes—and when they started telling us this story, we knew we weren’t going anywhere. I think they’d been talking for about ten minutes Lynn and I just looked at each other and whispered we have to make this into a show.”
Powell and his wife spent the rest of the day at the museum, and at the end of the day, were invited home by the Shiplands. Elizabeth Raye-Muller’s family accompanied them there.
“We had a great time,” Powell says. “Had a big cookout, American style, thrown together real fast—one minute we’re at lunch, next minute Lynn and Julie are making potato salad and I’m outside at the grill. And we stayed up for hours, and they told us about their research.”
By then, the German team knew that Powell was a big-name TV producer—the Shiplands even knew and liked his earlier show, In Search of Dragons.
“I think it was Martin or Elizabeth who suggested it first, once I told them we were scouting locations,” Powell says. “I’ve talked to them—often, since, really often—I visit them when we’re filming in Bavaria. They don’t remember, either. But one of them said that if I wanted to make a show like In Search of Dragons about Maleen of Adlkofen, they would be glad to work with me on it.” He laughs, a deep belly laugh. “And I’d spent the whole afternoon trying to think of some way to ask!”
Once they realized they were on the same page, it was quick work. Elizabeth Raye-Muller was already working on a book about Maleen for publication in the US. “It wasn’t expected to get very popular, but she was excited,” Powell says. “And I couldn’t see why, because this is just the most exciting story. Next day, we called our crew down from Munich, and once they heard, they got excited, too. We met with the team that whole day about an outline for what this show might look like—we were in—I think Martin and Julie’s living room.”
Powell is extremely excited as he tells this story, and when asked if any detail in particular stuck out to him, he’s quick to put down his glass and turn to face me.
“I know exactly,” he says. He fumbles with his phone and opens a photo. “I have a picture of the quote she read me, because I sent it to the crew—it’s from Conrad, in 1558. Ludvik is his fourteen-year-old grandson. And it says—” He turns the phone sideways and squints. “It says, woke sometime this morning to William frantic knocking on the door--he abbreviates everyone’s name,” he says, interrupting himself. “I’m filling in. Woke sometime this morning to William frantic knocking on the door and Maleen and I woke and went to see what was wrong. Ludvik standing in sitting room with so much blood on his body that we thought he must be dying or have hurt himself—William incoherent and shaking and Ludvik in tears asking how he had come here. William said he had appeared out of nowhere in the hall and there was blood back as far as the stairs. Ludvik remembered nothing since supper and left him with Maleen and went with William tracking blood path through hall and back to Conrad’s chambers. Found door standing ajar and Conrad stabbed to death and bathed in blood.” He’s smiling when he looks up. “I think in movie shots—cuts and pans—and I could see that scene. I could see exactly what we ended up doing. You start in real close to Maleen asleep, you keep it claustrophobic and dark and fast—you can see her, you can just barely see Conrad—in our version, we skipped ahead, we skipped to Ludvik waking her so you get that shot of these bloody hands in the dark—right then, I had to make this story.” That's exactly the opening scene of the show (if you need an episode guide or refresher, check here).
Powell talks about the other things that made the story perfect to produce.
“First of all,” he says, “We’ve got a woman at the center. Maleen’s at the center of everything, and she’s in charge, and that’s a dynamic that’s different—it’s more fun than making a Tudor story, a Borgia story, because we know what it looks like when the court’s revolving around the king and his lovers. This is different, and that automatically makes it fun to make.”
I ask him, of courses, about Maleen’s affair, which has appeared in the second trailer for season three (psst--you can find a breakdown of Trailer 1 here and a quiz to test your memory of the previous seasons here!)—the queen and her lovers? Is it based in fact, something he takes pride in with other elements of the show?
“Well,” Powell says. “We have the letters--Julie Shipland published the letters. Between July 1559, in Willmars, and maybe December—nothing, not a one. And there were sometimes multiple notes a day before this, at least one a week. And in January, we pick up with words like return and again. I’m with her thinking something happened in there, and it got me thinking—what could happen? Our team and the German team—mostly Julie—we talked about it, and we found that okay, she’s been regent for a while, she’s had a lot of kids, she’s spent a lot of time with Conrad, she’s got a lot of power. And Conrad—Martin Shipland thinks he’s got some kind of OCD, based on the notes he takes with the code for rooms, and by 1559, he’s got Ludvik just starting to edge towards snapping like he does when he kills Conrad Junior, so he’s spending all his time taking care of this kid—and we know he disagreed with Maleen on what to do about Conrad Junior, once they found out the awful stuff he was doing to the grandkids. So they’re in a position where they’re just not getting along—and we asked ourselves who she might pick. Someone who won’t contradict her, someone who’s going to do what she wants easily—and I think it works. I think people are going to like how we end up handling it in Season Three.”
He adds that the last scene of season two—where Conrad catches Maleen and Joseph von Absberg about to begin the affair—is actually inspired by fan fiction he found online.
“Of course I read the fan fiction,” Powell says. “I started after we killed off Rani in In Search of Dragons and the show got a lot of pushback.” Rani (Lela Rezai)’s character was killed in Season Six, in the same episode she began a relationship with Portia (after three seasons of buildup).
“When we did that, we thought it made sense,” Powell says. “It made sense to me for Rani’s character—she’d had so many close brushes, she was so hurt and so sick that I didn’t think she’d make it through another raid. I didn’t think it was possible. But I went on the fan fiction site and all of a sudden, there were all these ways around that, and I’m hitting myself asking why we killed her. I didn’t want to do that to the fans again.” Powell looks out at the yard.
“I wished right away we hadn’t killed her so well, you know?” he says. “I thought that maybe we could bring her back, but she died pretty—pretty on-screen. So we knew the next show wasn’t going to do that—consciously wasn’t going to do that—and we weren’t going to get involved in that—that—queer-baiting?” He waits for my nod.
“Yeah,” he says. “I want to make a show that people like watching. I want it to have action, and intrigue—and sex—“ He chuckles—“And love, and fights and blood—that’s the kind of show I like watching. I want to be—“ He gestures in mid-air—“I want to be dragged to that TV once a week. I want to be so excited that I can’t even wait to binge the whole thing—I have to watch it one episode at a time. And what struck me about the Bavaria story is that Henrik—the gay son—he’s the one who lives. The whole point is that he makes it till the end and gets a pretty happy ending for the time—he gets to go live in a nice manor house with his partner and read books and ride horses, and his parents love him. Have you read any of these notes?” I tell him that I have, and he nods approvingly. “Yeah. They adore him. He’s by far the favorite, I think. And that was one of the first things Elizabeth told me about the story of the Mad Kings--Kira Lennox did a good interview on that—but one of the first things she told me was about Henrik, and I grabbed Lynn’s arm and I told her I’m going to make this guy a character. He’s up there with Margareta—and she’s another reason I had to make this show.”
I ask him about Margareta, one of Maleen’s daughters, who appears as a main character in the show, despite having had less written about her than her sister Ursula. Powell puts his glass down and turns to me across the table.
“What I liked about Margareta is this story that happens near the end of Conrad’s notes,” he says. “She’s taking care of Ella, one of the grandkids who got abused, and she sends out this bizarre notice that any prince who’s going to marry her is going to ask her permission before he ever touches her at all, and she gets all these men in who grab her hand to kiss it—“ He mimes this in midair—“And she flips out. And Margareta just keeps saying no to these men. Nope. Nope.” He gestures like he’s shooing away a fly. “She takes no bullshit. She just says well, you should have listened to what I said. And she’s great—she gets in all these stupid fights with Henrik, in the notes, but they’re in this together. Have you read the bit—there’s one part where she tells Richard, when Henrik’s with him, that she would like him more if he got trampled by a horse?” I tell him I haven’t and he beams. “About four lines after she’s told Henrik that he’s stupid and they’ve yelled at each other and banged out of Conrad’s library crying. She’s fantastic.”
Powell talks excitedly, full of plans and ideas, dropping hints for Season Three. “We’ll see some more of Ursula,” he says. “And Hildegard's going to stay with her. And we’ll see more of Ramona—people were bored by her, but we’ll make her more interesting.” I press him, but he just smiles and won't say. When asked about Joseph von Absberg, he just smiles.
"You never know,” he says, with a smile. “There’s all kinds of political drama coming up in Season Three. Anything could happen. You never know.”