Janet McTeer

What character do you play?

Jacquetta was an amazing woman and she was a really interesting character to play.

She’s one of those slightly lost figures, at all the main events but not written about and I would say that’s because it was all written by guys. Her father was from Luxemburg. She was Jacquetta of Luxemburg, so her first language would have been French.

She was married at a ludicrously young age to the Duke of Beaufort who, at that point, ruled France. She was a very wise woman. She was Margaret of Anjou’s first lady and became her best friend. When her first husband died, she’d fallen in love with his squire. She married the squire on a boat on the way back to England and was apparently fined £1000 as she married without the King’s permission, which at that time was the equivalent of something like £10 million!

It was a very happy marriage and an active one! They had 14 children – well, we think they had 14 children, because often they didn’t record them if they died and there were a couple of gaps, so possibly she lost a child or he was away and she didn’t get pregnant. Put it this way, she was pregnant with her last child when Elizabeth already had two boys. So in other words, if your daughter marries at 15 and has her first child at 16-ish then you’re only 30/31. Jaquetta was a grandmother by 30-ish and she stopped having children when she was around 40-ish and I think she lived for quite a long time after that.

She was supposedly descended from a River Goddess and that’s the story of her lineage. It was a legend. They had it on their coat of arms / family crest.

Have you enjoyed researching all of this?

Oh, I’ve loved it. It’s the fun part of my job, well part of the fun part of my job - you do something like this and you steep yourself in the history. It’s great.

I also read Philippa Gregory’s, The Lady Of The Rivers, which is Jacquetta’s story, the one before The White Queen, I read them all. I also read Philippa’s Cousin’s At War about the forgotten women and how these woman were so powerful in their own way, which I really enjoyed. Jacquetta has a line, “Men can fight with war and sword and canon, women fight with their own weapons”, and in the series Jacquetta teaches Elizabeth how to do that.

It’s a pretty scary world they live in and I think that’s one of the things we’ve really tried to portray.

It all sounds so exciting and glamorous, everyone wears really nice dresses, but in actual fact, their world is one where somebody could turn up at your door and if you’re on the wrong side then not only could they take your house they could take you outside and behead you right there and then. It really mattered whose side you were on - York / Lancaster.

She is quite up front about pulling the strings...

I think partly because we focus on Jacquetta and Elizabeth, and their conversations behind the scenes. You know that old joke about Hilary and Bill Clinton? They broke down in their car and called whoever and the guy who came to mend it was a guy she used to go out with and he mended the car and he said “isn’t it marvellous, isn’t it a coincidence wow if you’d have married me you’d have been the wife of a car mechanic”, and she said “no if I’d have married you, I’d have been the wife of a president”. That’s what she wanted and that’s what she’s going to achieve. To a certain extent I think Jacquetta is a little bit like that.

And on Jacquetta’s belief in her magic...

It’s very interesting, witchcraft in general was a huge theme at this time. I think she definitely believed in outside forces and believed in something bigger than herself and I would say she was a Catholic as well as probably a little bit of a white witch. In Philippa’s book those are very real things, it’s not just a belief, it’s a fact.

Everybody then was Catholic and prayer has power and lighting candles has power. This was really the way before any kind of science, belief was huge. Some people would say that a woman going out and picking her herbs which helped you go to sleep, because they were camomile, was a doctor and some people would say that was witchcraft.

Have you enjoyed playing Jacquetta?

I really enjoy it. I think partly I enjoy it because almost all of my scenes are with Rebecca (Ferguson) and we have such a lovely time together. We really like each other’s company and we just howl like idiots because we have a very similar sense of humour and both work very very hard and that’s been great. And in this time, the only people you could really rely on were your family. She decides to teach Elizabeth to cope, should she not be around anymore. We’ve tried to really flesh that relationship out in all its colours, and try to make their relationship very real and normal whilst at the same time she (Elizabeth) is the Queen.

It’s also the first time I have played a grandmother, and the grandchildren’s nickname for me is Ninja Nanny!

Have you worked with any of the cast / production team before?

I’ve worked with my husband (in the series) Robert Pugh several times, He’s such a wonderful mixture of hard work and good fun. He’s a sailor, very well read, very clever and ludicrously funny - I have to send him off the set sometimes. Wickedly, badly behaved, going out and drinking with the 20 year olds, he’s just heaven!

How have you found all the costumes?

The absolutely blissful thing about these costumes, which you only understand if you’re an actress, are that you don’t have any corsets, which is just so nice. Because the truth is a corset might look wonderful but it’s so uncomfortable so it’s just very nice not to have to wear a corset!

The only thing about them is that these clothes are so long and very heavy. I have a blue coat that has about a 4ft train and it’s very heavy, at the end of the day your shoulders ache.

What was it like filming in Belgium?

Bruges is just extraordinary, there’s no way around it. It’s amazing to be here as in Bruges, they have immense medieval architecture that hasn’t been destroyed, hasn’t been surrounded by modern buildings and is staggeringly beautiful and well preserved and it gives our whole series a look that I don’t think I’ve seen before.

There’s not been much time off but to have the odd day off when you can go around and see these amazing churches and the Madonna and Child - the only Michaelangelo outside of Italy is really beautiful.

Also I have to say our built studio set is probably one of the most beautiful sets I’ve ever seen. I’ve been doing this for quite a long time now and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a set as beautiful as this.

Martyn John, our set designe,r has done an amazing job. He just has an incredible eye – putting modern raised wall paper on and then somehow banged it all down so it looks like it’s painted. And the textures and the lighting is beautiful so it looks incredibly sumptuous. We go on the set where we work every day and go “which way is out?” because some of the corridors are so long and off the corridors they’ve built all of these little sets and some of them are dungeons and some of them bedrooms or Parliament. And you look at it and go “wait a minute, where am I?”. It’s amazing.