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 The Virgin Queen
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The Virgin Queen
Starts on 91Èȱ¬ ONE on Sunday 22 January at 9.00pm
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Sienna Guillory plays Lettice Knollys
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Elizabeth may have been a great monarch, but she wasn't always right, insists Sienna Guillory, the 30-year-old Londoner who plays Lettice, the Queen's lady-in-waiting who eventually betrays her by marrying Elizabeth's great love, Dudley.
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"I think the Queen's jealousy of Lettice's looks and her subsequent bullying was what drove Lettice to feel justified in her relationship with Dudley," Sienna muses.
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"Originally, they were incredibly close; they went through so much together, the Tower and everything. She is also the Queen's cousin – the grand-daughter of Mary Boleyn, Anne's sister and also Anne's predecessor in Henry VIII's bed.
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"And her father is in Elizabeth's Privy Counsel, so Lettice was very much a great lady of the land herself at that point.
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"And the history books describe Lettice as the great beauty of the Court, which was something I think Elizabeth, in her increasingly ravenous vanity – especially after the smallpox – found absolutely intolerable.
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"She was so incensed with Lettice's flair for fashion that she is said to have given her a ton of black velvet as a gift to give herself a reason to feel personally affronted if Lettice dared wear anything pretty!"
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Suffering this kind of constant belittlement from Elizabeth, Sienna feels, means Lettice appreciated better than anyone the agonies that Dudley was forced to endure as Elizabeth's plaything, making their relationship entirely understandable.
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"Although it was a betrayal, because she knew how Elizabeth felt about Dudley, they went to such great lengths, Leicester and Lettice, to make their marriage a secret that I believe she genuinely didn't want to publicly humiliate her cousin, otherwise it would have been a more public thing. I think it was very much an affair of the heart." Ìý
Unfortunately, Elizabeth couldn't see it in this light and in a fury banned the pair from Court – an action that would come back to haunt her later.
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"I think it was a rash move on Elizabeth's part because it was purely to humiliate Lettice – there was no reason for Dudley to be sent from Court because it had been made clear that the Queen had no intention of marrying him.
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"She could have done the whole 'keep your friends close and your enemies closer' thing, kept an eye on them and kept them on side, but again, Elizabeth's own jealousy is what made this rash move happen.
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"Then, because of how Lettice reacted to that, it came back to bite Elizabeth because Lettice then used everything she knew about Elizabeth's capricious whims to further her son's career, because she wanted revenge."
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The son in question, the Earl of Essex, was a favourite of Elizabeth's – largely because of his resemblance to Dudley – and Lettice tried to use him to get reinstated at Court.
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But when this didn't work – and worse, when Essex's disastrous campaign in Ireland provoked the Queen to withdraw his sources of income – Lettice plotted to replace the Queen with her son.
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"She was absolutely the driving force behind Essex's actions; she completely used him as a pawn to exact her own revenge," Sienna explains.
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"Essex would have fared better to accept his lot as the war hero, beloved of the people – he probably could have made a living somewhere doing something. Lettice is the one who goads him into winning the Queen's heart and purse back and ultimately to overly ambitious actions which prove his undoing – and hers."
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But Sienna says she can sympathise with Lettice's actions. "Elizabeth's jealousy and her bullying pushes Lettice away, which makes Lettice come back for revenge and try and wound the Queen, and it's that that ultimately is her own undoing.
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"It's a very strange revenge really – Lettice suffers at the hands of her own jealousy and greed in the same way that the Queen does, Elizabeth losing Dudley and Lettice losing Essex. So all in all it's rather a wonderful revenge tragedy."
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It's certainly been an enjoyable experience for Sienna, who first came to attention in the TV series Riders when she was just 16; combined a successful modelling career – including being the Hugo Boss girl – with her acting; and whose more recent credits include the heroine in a TV version of Kingsley Amis' A Girl Like You, Helen of Troy for a TV film, roles in Love Actually and Resident Evil – Apocalypse and her latest part as a swashbuckling elf in fantasy trilogy Eragon.
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"It was brilliant, just the most phenomenal cast," she beams. "My husband Enzo [Cilenti] was on it as well and between the two of us we were great mates with everyone; it was just the most delightful group of people I've had the pleasure of drinking tea with."
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