Samantha Morton

The new Starz series The Serpent Queen brings modern flair and an extremely unreliable narrator to the well-worn genre of period dramas, as an older Catherine de’ Medici (Samantha Morton) tells a servant girl (Sennia Nanua) about how her younger self (Liv Hill) came to control France for decades. In Morton’s hands, Catherine is a fascinating and complex character, and when speaking with the Oscar-nominated actress via Zoom, I really wanted to ask her about playing powerful women, a recent theme in her work. But I also admitted to her that I felt a little silly about it, as film and television currently feature a ton of examples of powerful, strong, and nuanced female characters. Morton, it turns out, agrees with that, but also says “there’s still not enough. I think in television, they’re ...