This story about “The Great” stars Elle Fanning and Nicholas Hoult first appeared in the Down to the Wire: Comedy issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine.
In its second season, “The Great” found a new gear and Emmy voters noticed.
The relationships between Russia’s Catherine the Great and her tyrant husband Peter got messier and more complicated, the hormonal and sexual energy once Catherine became an expectant mother got more intense, and the stakes were raised to the point that it wasn’t clear if even Peter would make it out alive.
After voters bypassed them in the Hulu comedy’s first season, stars Elle Fanning and Nicholas Hoult both landed lead acting nominations this year, their first in each of their careers that date back decades despite their relative youth. (He’s 32, she’s 24.)
It’s clear the actors have a playful back and forth that has seeped into their combative, on-screen performances.
“We both really enjoy challenging each other and seeing if we can make the other one break,” Hoult said in a joint interview. “That’s one of the best moments for me, if I start to see Elle have a little creepy half smile or quiver in her lip. And likewise, when she gets me with something that I wasn’t expecting, it really sends me.”
“We do show up ready to spar with each other and surprise each other,” Fanning added. “It is definitely rare and a special bond and working relationship that we have that we can push each other that way and feel free around each other to go to these kinds of endless places. There’s really nothing that’s off limits.”
It’s a quality that wasn’t necessarily there in the first season, in part because they got to unleash some “fireball energy” after coming back from the pandemic shutdowns for Season 2. And by pushing the other to laugh and stay spontaneous in the moment, they’ve developed a quiet shorthand to exchange a glance and know exactly which jokes land and which don’t.
“If we’re doing a scene and we’re like, no, this is odd or just something is going off and it’s not happening, then instantly, Elle and I can look out from across the room and we both have that thing of like, ‘Yeah, we know,’ Hoult said.
“And then we’re like, we need to do a powwow. Let’s figure out what we could do to crack this and do better,” Fanning added.
Fanning and Hoult say a lot of the credit belongs with Tony McNamara’s scripts. While the performers have free reign to work within their emotions or physicality, they’re not allowed to stray from very specific word choices in the dialogue. That’s led to “a lot of memorization,” Fanning said. “It’s like having a test at school every single night that you have to study for.”
Hoult had to juggle not one but two accents this season when he had the dual performance of both Peter and Pugachev, Peter’s body double (in actuality, a real person who looked strikingly like the former Russian emperor). Hoult’s makeup as Pugachev is subtle enough that at a quick glance you may not instantly realize it’s him playing both parts at once. Hoult even looked at films like Nicolas Cage’s split performance in “Adaptation” to figure out how to play two similar yet very different characters simultaneously.
Fanning, meanwhile, found her character becoming even more like Peter this time around, feeling the weight of the crown now that she has the power and the expectations to live up to Catherine the Great’s lofty promises.
“That’s something that she’s still learning even throughout this third season,” Fanning said. “It’s so interesting to think about the girl that was in the pilot who’s so idealistic and romantic and has this beautiful view of the world. And slowly throughout each episode, that view of the world really starts to crumble and change, and she hardens bit by bit.”
As the series has grown, so has Fanning. She was 20 when she filmed the pilot, and her outlook on the character and as a performer has changed immensely.
“I’m a little older, maybe wiser,” she said. “I do think that through doing this show, I’ve grown as an actor. I could feel myself being less inhibited.”
That will be crucial as “The Great” heads into its third season. Season 2 ends on a cliffhanger of sorts, something the cast compares to “The Graduate’s” moment of wondering what in the world these two lovers are going to possibly do now. And with the finale also throwing off the shackles of any semblance of Russian historical accuracy, there’s no limit to what gear the show can find next.
“There are really no boundaries,” Fanning said. “I feel a pressure for Season 3. I’m definitely putting that pressure on myself, but we’re really pushing it.”
Read more from the Down to the Wire: Comedy issue here.
