'The Serpent Queen' Adds 10 New Faces to Season 2 Cast
As production ramps up on the second season of Starz's biting period drama The Serpent Queen, Starz has confirmed the addition of ten new cast members in various roles. The series stars Samantha Morton (Harlots) as the famous French queen Catherine de Medici, a complicated and controversial figure who was the mother of three kings and who is frequently remembered in history as a dark and sinister figure who loved poison and the occult, kept company with questionable people like the seer Nostradamus and may have murdered her enemies to get ahead. (Most of this is probably untrue, but history has never been all that comfortable with powerful women.)
The Starz series aims to put a more contemporary spin on her story and does so with no small amount of glee, granting her fourth-wall-breaking monologues and refusing to judge the worst of her actions. The Serpent Queen's first season started with the young Catherine's early life, beginning with her arrival in France when she was fourteen. Wed to the second son of the French king, the young princess must learn to navigate an openly hostile court and manage her unconventional relationship with her new husband, who was openly in love with his mistress, Diane de Poitiers, a woman 25 years his senior. But she is determined to survive at all costs, and that willingness to do anything in the service of her own interests will one day see her become one of the most powerful and longest-serving rulers in French history.
We don't know much about what Season 2 of The Serpent Queen will look like. The first season finale saw the events of the story Catherine had been telling all season about her origins catch up to the events of the life she is currently living, just as her second son is about to be crowned King Charles IX. Historically, this means some of her life's darkest and most dramatic events are still ahead of her, so it's not like the show will struggle to find narrative material. But the announcement of nearly a dozen new cast members — and the characters they'll be playing — certainly helps point us in a few likely directions.
