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Starz‘s Mary & George is the story of an ambitious mother, Mary Villiers (Julianne Moore), and her exceptionally charming son, George (Nicholas Galitzine). It’s also the true story of how George seduced King James I (Tony Curran), propelling his family to the top of the heap in Jacobean England, to his mother’s delight. However, in Mary & George Episode 4 “The Wolf & the Lamb,” George’s feelings for James get muddied. He’s not only tempted by another man, but also begins to actually feel something other than cold, mercenary thoughts towards his older lover. By traveling with James to Scotland and learning about the king’s first doomed love with Lord Lennox, George’s relationship with James finally starts to resemble a real romance.
“This begins as a transactional relationship, explicitly transactional, and becomes something deeper,” Mary & George creator D.C. Moore told Decider. “We’re trying to really chart that in Episode 4 when they both go to Scotland together.”
While in Scotland, George learns more about the trauma that molded James as a young man. History nerds will know that James I of England’s mother was Mary, Queen of Scots, and his father was Henry, Lord Darnley. It’s well-known that Mary would be imprisoned by Queen Elizabeth and eventually executed on trumped up spy charges. The fear that the Catholic Mary could usurp Elizabeth’s throne was a constant source of anxiety during the Elizabethan era. However James’s father’s fate is even wilder. About eight months after James was born, his father was murdered, mostly likely by his mother’s next husband, the scheming Scottish lord Bothwell.
Needless to say, James grew up in a culture of paranoia, with the knowledge that his position of power put a target on his head. George not only gets to see the roots of that paranoia head on, but also learns that the one person who guided James was his first love, the older Lord Lennox.
“My connection with George Villiers definitely had a huge resonance of the past of my relationship with Lord Lennox,” Mary & George star Tony Curran told Decider. “I’ve met someone who reminded me of my first love, if you will, in George Villiers. It was a definitely a very profound moment for James.”
“I actually think in Episode 4 is really when we see the tenderness and the love — not being entirely transactional, a genuine care — growing for him,” Nicholas Galitzine told Decider. “George finding out about Lennox really humanizes James. He sees his vulnerabilities and the fact that he has been taken advantage of in the past.”
Curran thinks that the king’s backstory provides even more insight into what connects the two men.
“Something that Nick mentioned earlier [in another interview]…about Julianne and his relationship with Mary Villiers and how he wanted, you wanted love from your mother. It’s something that’s just sort of occurred to me and it’s sort of the idea that [George] wants that sort of tenderness from the matriarch of his family, his mother, and that’s something that King James never had,” Curran said.
“There’s a sort of correlation between George and James that the, as children they want that sort of validation and that sort of love from the parents, which I didn’t get because I never met my mother.”
Where do both George and James find that validation? Well, after Mary & George Episode 4, they find it in each other. Although, as Galitzine pointed out, it’s unclear how long this honeymoon period between James and George will last…
“I mean, how long that [romance] really lasts, remains to be seen, but there is a sort of a sense of domestic bliss at one point.”
