Why Complicated Characters Are More Interesting to Write – A Conversation with ‘The Great’ Creator Tony McNamara

Season 3 of The Great sees Catherine (Elle Fanning) and Peter (Nicholas Hoult) attempt to make their marriage work after some seemingly insurmountable problems. Peter witness his own attempted murder at Catherin’s hands and she also imprisoned all of his friend. On top of this, Peter is at as loose end playing First Husband to Catherine’s reign, so he busies himself with fathering, hunting and salty culinary ventures. But they’re not enough to keep him contented as visions of his later father (played by Jason Isaacs), get in his head about his failures as Peter the Great’s son. Catherin the Great starts making a name for herself beyond her borders and inspired by a visit from the US ambassador, sets up a convergence where peasants, nobles and merchants can all give their input on developing a new Russia. She learns that even the best political leaders sometimes need to make compromises in order to progress. 

The latest season of The Great is surprisingly emotionally deep, chaotic, and whimsical - all at once. Tony McNamara, his incredible cast, and his talented team behind the scenes are covering a lot of bases in what you can do as a visual storyteller and how you can push your characters beyond the end of their rope. 

Showrunner, writer, and producer Tony McNamara returns to Script to discuss Season Three; tackling Catherine's external ambitions versus her internal relationship with Peter, what episode most creatively surprised him, and penning the finale. Plus, he shares writing and research advice for those juggling plot and character in a historical space.

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

Sadie Dean: In our previous conversation, you had mentioned that there are certain themes that you want to hit in all the seasons and in the episodes, but with this season, specifically, what were you trying to hit thematically or just even in terms of Catherine's character arc?

Tony McNamara: I think thematically we really wanted to hit…well, I think as this season split into - I knew it would split into two halves in a way - which was sort of like how does she run this country while being married to him and how that would work? At the same time as sort of actually being a functional couple after what they've done to each other. And then I knew that the mid midpoint of the season would be then - she sort of gets to a midpoint of like, it's very hard to run this country and be married to him, then he dies. And it's actually very hard to run this country and be grieving him.

So, it was very much about the, I guess thematically, it was about your partner's presence in your life, and the impact it has on your own external life and your external ambitions while you're trying to manage the internal relationship. And I guess, it's on a big scale, not that we're all running a country, but that was sort of the idea of it was to explore that idea of a relationship that was sort of very tricky. And it had a lot of opposites in it, and whether they could manage it. And they sort of solved that bit of it, that they can live together as a couple, but what she can't really rule with him, ultimately, because he is just off on his own trip.

Sadie: Right and this idea of their own individual leadership and their own individual ideas of what survival is, but also how do they come together and forgive each other in some way for who they are and what they are? Yeah, it's really interesting how you get to explore all of that in this one season.

Tony: [laughs] It's true. Yeah, it did seem at certain points, I was like, ‘There is a lot in here that we could have run over more,’ but I also liked the idea as a writer of I think I wanted us to challenge ourselves. And I knew Nick was going to die. And I didn't want that to be light in the season, because I felt like it'd be more surprising for the audience if it was in the middle. And I had had from last season, I knew how I was going to do it. So, I knew how I wanted to get there. And I also wanted her to have some time - I didn't want Season Four to be about the grief. So, I wanted it to be compressed into this season.

Sadie: And how we navigate grief as a society is so interesting to me, and just the weirdness of all of it and you see that with her go through all of it. [laughs]

Tony: Yeah, I think that was nice, too for the ensemble, because once you kill him, of course, it has a big impact on her, but it ripples out to Elizabeth, Gregor, and then affects the politics of the court. So, it felt quite rich to have all that as well. And I think even though they were missing Nick a lot, [they] enjoyed that experience of acting on another level of within the show.

Sadie: And speaking of which, giving Peters double Pugachev a voice in this season. What was that process like in terms of working with Nick on that, and writing that character?

Tony: It was fun. For him, I think at first he was very nervous when I first pitched him the idea of it, of bringing Pugachev into the show; because I knew that was a big story we had to tell - because it was a big uprising and one of the things that changed her as a ruler. But then I had the idea of Nick doing it, and playing off the look-alike idea. He was nervous because he's created a character. He's got Peter, and he's got certain things about Peter. And then he would be in the same show with the same characters playing off Elle or Belinda [Bromilow] and he would have to gear shift that on the same day. Sometimes he would be Peter in the morning, and then he'd have to be Pugachev. We worked on the teeth. And we worked on physical things together to make it different enough.

And then we worked on the voice for a while. And we'd sort of played with certain ideas of what that voice should be. And I think we were kind of like, in the end with some version of some sort of Ray Winstone in Sexy Beast [laughs] kind of the idea we had. And I think the more he did it, the more he enjoyed it.

You can see in those last episodes when after Peter goes, there's a scene with Archie that's so amazing. He's such a brave actor, he just kind of throws himself in, but he did feel the risk of it. And he did feel like he didn't want it to go horribly wrong. [laughs] Which I didn't either. So we worked really hard on it, but it did seem as sort of fun idea that as you've tried to do it, I was like, ‘Oh, it's kind of risky as well.’

Sadie: How many opportunities as an actor do you get to die twice in one season, right?

Tony: [laughs] Exactly, exactly.

Sadie: The idea of rooting for unlikable characters - when it comes to writing these characters, how do you take someone that is so unlikeable, but give them some kind of qualities that an audience will come around to embracing them so that when the ‘Ice’ episode comes along, we are totally shattered?

Tony: That he's dead…I'm always very conscious of sort of what lines they're crossing and why they're crossing them. And, I mean, this show, there's so much sort of humor built into the show and built into every character. And I think that gives you a lot, usually. I think my baseline is always like if an audience gets why people are doing something, if it's not just evil for evil sake, if it's an idea like Archie has a particular view of the church, as well as he has sort of malice, then I think you go, ‘Oh.’

And I think there's an element of joy in all the characters in why they do everything and the way they execute it. That I think, amongst all that kind of stuff - and even in the edit, sometimes I will go, ‘Ah, let's trim that out.’ Because I think it does take the character to a point where you don't like them, and it's not like you have to like them every minute. But I do think there has to be a sense of connectedness between them in the audience for something like Nick's death to have an impact. And, you know, I mean, it's Nick Hoult, so I'm lucky, it connects with the audience. So, I think that's sort of how, and they're more interesting characters to write because they're complicated.

Sadie: Yeah, absolutely. And it makes me think of Georgina's character and her arc from the very first episode of Season One to now and how she kind of takes what Catherine is dishing out and really runs with it, but then uses it against her. What was your process around that and making her this character that she became?

Tony: Well, it sort of becomes a bit organic, because I think I'd built her as very much as a person who understood the court really well and knew how to play it. And then Catherine came in as the ultimate disrupter for her because it disrupted the core politically, disrupted her relationship, disrupted her status. So at some point, she has to kind of find a way, but as a character for me, she's a great survivor. So, she finds her way through.

And this season, I was conscious that I really wanted to flip her, but I was also conscious the audience is not going to buy that she's flipped. And it's very hard for the court to buy that she's flipped. Charity [Wakefiled] was a bit nervous and I said, 'It's like you're a method actor in the court, where you will not give an inch to the point where people start going, maybe it's real.’ And I said, then at some point, ‘We'll flip it, and we'll reveal it.’ And then once Peter died, then pulling the switch to her becoming a much more serious antagonist.

So, it's sort of a slow organic build. I didn't know what I was going to do that with her in Season One. I got to the end of Season Two, and I was very interested in her pretending to change and by pretending to change actually changing and whether just exposure to ideas and exposure to the idea that anyone can have power if they think they can have power, rather than she'd always been the person who wanted to make the best of the periphery. And then thankfully, I have these great actors who seem to be able to execute everything.

Sadie: Yeah, you definitely miss her in the second half of the Second Season.

Tony: Yeah, we really did. I think the day she came back we were like, ‘Oh my god, we missed you more than you knew.’

Sadie: But I think it's so interesting from a writing standpoint that these characters are living lives and even though she is gone for half of the Second Season, this character is actually out there experiencing life and came back as this more informed person to give more to your story. But I feel like a lot of shows have these great characters that become throwaway characters that could potentially be really great. And I feel like you guys knocked it out of the park with hers specifically.

Tony: Oh, thank you. Yeah, I think it's important. Like we're always talking about the characters a lot…the show, it's got a lot of plot in it, I'm really led by character. Because I think that's where you get the richness of. You get more interesting plots if the characters are well thought about.

Sadie: Absolutely. I'm curious, was there maybe an episode in this season for you that took you by surprise, either a character turn or maybe even something that you had on the page that became a bigger moment once you were in post?

Tony: [laughs] I think there were a couple of things - one of the big moments in the show was Henry [Meredith], who plays Maxim. I think I'd always plotted to kill him in the Second Episode, that he died in the duel. And then he did the read-through. And when he does the table read, he's not allowed in the room because of the content of the show. He has a chaperone at the door, who lets him in for his piece. But he sort of walked in, and we do the scene and he was so funny. It was like mic-drop comedy, and people were on the floor. And halfway through the read, I went, ‘I can't kill this kid, he's great.’ So Henry lived. So, I think that took me by surprise.

But I think the level of managing the tone of Episode Seven was a very tricky episode for us. I didn't realize how hard it would be to manage the tone and keep the comedy, even though I was obsessed with Episode Seven for that reason, writing it. Managing the tone of that episode to still be a very funny episode, even though it's got a lot of grief in it. And then what took me by surprise, of course, was we were sort of grieving as a cast. And as a team, we were grieving Peter's absence. So, the actors were having a hard time, like they were literally grieving it. 

And so, it was quite heavy with the initial reads, and I was like, ‘No, we've still got to keep the tone - it's a buoyant thing while serving the grief so it feels true.’ But we still have to keep the tone of the show. I didn't realize how difficult that would be to manage that episode with Matt Moore, who was the director. But we worked really, really hard on that. And I think that took me by surprise, how hard our personal experience of Nick leaving the show would be when we hit the floor to grieve the character.

Sadie: You guys are like a family, essentially. And then having that kind of loss, it's devastating and playing make-believe on top of that, I think it's even harder. [laughs]

Tony: [laughs] Yeah, it's true, it's true.

Sadie: In terms of the use of music and contemporary music, I just really love what you guys did with the last episode. And using AC/DC's “You shook me all night long” but also her interpretive dance. It’s like she's coming out of this cocoon where she's like this new woman and she's like, ‘I have the power.’ I would just love to just talk about framing that episode, and how you landed on that song. And did you always know that it was going to be this interpretive silent moment with just her?

Tony: Yeah, I think it was a big evolution. I think I'd either written the episode or… I write it quite late, so almost in pre-production and I'd written it - but I still felt like I wasn't happy where it landed, in terms of emotionally for her. We hadn't had much dance this year and I went down to watch a dance rehearsal for one of the earlier episodes that we were pre-producing at the time but I think seven or eight or something and as I was watching it, I was like, ‘Oh my god, I love what Polly [Bennett] does,’ and I love the dances we've had in this and then I kind of was walking back to my office and I was like, ‘We should do a dance. She should dance by herself.’ Which at the time I felt was [laughs] a great idea that I was then terrified about from that moment on, whether I was insane to kind of put on my finale, and you know, not rest on all my strengths of dialogue and character and all those things. But it kept feeling right.

I told Elle about it and Marian [Macgowan] and they thought it was a great idea. And then we were sort of composing a track for it. I briefed Polly, the choreographer about exactly that - what she's gone through, and she's going into this new place, and could we do it. And then I went down to Elle to watch her rehearse with Polly, and we had some composed music, but when I got down there, Elle was like, ‘I've been sort of practicing at home, but I've been practicing to this.’ And she put on AC/DC, and started doing it. And I looked at Marian, and I was like, ‘Can we afford AC/DC?’ [laughs] ‘We should do this.’ And then we sort of went that way. ‘Well, if we're gonna go mad, let's go completely mad.’ [laughs] ‘And throw ourselves at this, man’ - it also felt right instinctively that we would do something we'd never done before.

Sadie: It was like it was meant to be. And I mean, even lyrically, that song is so powerful for her, and there is that full circle of her grieving and then reclaiming her power. And then how there's no music over the end credits, I think is such an interesting way to get us ready for the next season and what that will be.

Tony: Yeah, the drop of silence seemed right. And I think it was one of those moments where as a writer, I suddenly thought, there's no speech that can encompass this, there's no words. I mean, our show is so many words. The actors are like, 'Tony.' [laughs] But I was like, ‘We have to do something without words.’ And that sums up this season for her. And, of course, thankfully it's Elle, she's so in the character. It's good.

Sadie: Any general advice for writers who are writing a historical piece? What should they totally lean into, in terms of research? Or should they get in and get out as quickly as possible because you can go down that rabbit hole and be stuck researching for 10 years?

Tony: Well, I think research for us is always - we go searching for what the character needs in a way. We don't go searching for plot that much or event…I mean a tiny bit we, every season I do go, ‘I want to do this. This Pugachev uprising happened, so let's do that but in our own way.’ So, I would say my advice is be led into research by character because then it will be easy to discard what you don't need whereas you can, yeah, exactly as you said, you can go down a rabbit hole if you're just looking for an event for event's sake, it's not the answer. An event for character's sake, is the answer.

Season Three of The Great is now streaming on Hulu.