History's 'White Queen' comes to Starz

* THE WHITE QUEEN. 8 p.m. Saturday, Starz. (Special preview at 10 p.m. Friday.)

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. - Royals are having a pop-culture moment.

I'm not just talking about that infant whose birth launched all those TV news specials a few weeks back - but about the long-dead kings and queens who played the real-life game of thrones centuries ago.

Helped along by novelist George R.R. Martin, who mixed dragons and direwolves with Britain's War of the Roses to create the fantasy history that spawned HBO's "Game of Thrones," the extravagantly costumed historical drama is back.

And it's turning up not just on PBS (or on Showtime, which was ahead of the pack with "The Tudors" and "The Borgias"), but in places like the CW - which will tailor the story of a young Mary Queen of Scots for an audience of young nonhistorians in this fall's "Reign" - and Starz, which on Saturday launches "The White Queen."

"I think what we're experiencing at the moment is a real explosion in interest in history presented in all sorts of ways," said Philippa Gregory ("The Other Boleyn Girl"), the bestselling writer whose 15th century-set "Cousins' War" novels were adapted by Emma Frost for "The White Queen."

"Historical fiction is having an absolute high period in which people are regarding it as a worthwhile form of literature as well as an interesting way to tell a historical story," said Gregory - who, by the way, is "utterly indifferent about Kate Middleton's baby" - in an interview during the Television Critics Association's summer meetings.

Set against the backdrop of some of the same events that partly inspired Martin, the 10-episode "White Queen" is a co-production of the BBC (it premiered in Britain in mid-June to some snarky reviews, most objecting to what was perceived as a lack of authenticity). It stars Swedish actress Rebecca Ferguson as Elizabeth Woodville, the widow whose clandestine - and romantic - marriage to a young King Edward IV (Max Irons) disrupted a lot of people's plans.

There's sex and violence, but nothing on the level we've come to expect from Starz, best known for the bloody and boob-and buttocks-baring "Spartacus."

And though there are plenty of men about, including James Frain ("The Tudors") as Warwick, the kingmaker who becomes Elizabeth's bitter enemy, "The White Queen" is more the story of the women, including Elizabeth's mother, Jacquetta (Janet McTeer), who've gotten less attention from history.

Not to mention from premium cable drama.

"Telling the story through the eyes of women, I think, made it unique, which was something that we felt made it more right for Starz," said CEO Chris Albrecht, who used to head HBO. "The quality was there, and it also moved me and us further down a path that I have been thinking of, which is that women are underserved" in premium cable.

Ferguson's never seen "Game of Thrones," but the "White Queen" star does have dragon envy.

"I would have wanted dragons," she joked, "Wouldn't that be fun? . . . Elizabeth and Jacquetta run from a massive three-headed dragon. We'll call him Warwick."

The supernatural nevertheless plays a strong role in "The White Queen."

"I'm careful with using the word 'magic,' because I think it's easy to think Harry Potter magic," Ferguson said. "And this is not that kind of magic. This is belief. And that's something very strong."

"I think a lot of women were engaged in what their contemporaries would regard as witchcraft, and a lot of women were engaged in what people thought of as effective witchcraft," said Gregory, who's also an executive producer on the series.

"It's not like you and me going to a reiki therapist and saying, 'Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't. I'll give it a go,' " Gregory said. "You're talking about people who genuinely believe that Elizabeth, and particularly her mother, Jacquetta of Bedford, were practicing, effective witches

"And it happens that two of Edward's battles, he wins against all the odds as a result of extraordinary weather. So, people really believed that he had people in his pay who were changing the weather."

Jacquetta was at one point tried for witchcraft. And then there's Elizabeth herself, "who marries [the king] so inexplicably that people say at the time that she's enchanted him, in the two senses of the word enchantment, allure and witchcraft."

There may well be British actresses who suspect Ferguson, too, of casting spells.

"That's my question, that I say," she said. "Of all the English actresses, what were they thinking?"

The daughter of a Swedish father and a British mother, she was best known as the former star of a Swedish soap opera when she was asked to submit a videotape of herself to the people casting "The White Queen."

With no one to help her, "I built a little shelf out of books and chairs on top of tables, just to get a good height. And I pressed, 'play,' " and for about three minutes "talked about weird things, random things," she said.

"I'd just done a film in Sweden and I'd just started a collaboration in April the same year with an agent in London. They called and said, 'We have this meeting in London. It's just good to go to a casting [audition]. We'll see. We're Swedish. We don't really know,' " she said.

"I came in and it was a chemistry test straight away, and Max Irons [the son of Jeremy Irons] was there and the directors were there and the producers were there. My first ever meeting in London and it went very well," Ferguson said.

And the chemistry test?

"Well, I'll tell you," she said, laughing. "They had been doing this casting process for quite some time. So, Elizabeth was still not found. I know Max had met quite a few women. . . . So, what they wanted was for someone to walk in and Elizabeth and Edward appear."

Apparently they did. Because the rest, as they say, is history.

Twitter: @elgray

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