Characters & Actors
Kat Ashley
With Anne Boleyn losing her head at an early age, Kat Ashley was the nearest thing that Elizabeth had to a real mother. Originally joining the princess as her governess when Elizabeth was four, Kat quickly became a trusted friend who was instated as First Lady of the Bedchamber on Elizabeth's accession.
"She was very much a friend and a confidante, she cared about Elizabeth like a younger sister or a child," says Tara Fitzgerald, the distinguished actor playing in her first Elizabethan drama as Kat.
"But she was also very well-educated herself and was quite politicised and involved as a political tool to a some extent. That's something we tried to draw out a bit in the production - the fact that she was used as a sort of mediator and a good mouth on the ear of the queen. Certainly when suitors were deemed unsuitable, like the ongoing Dudley, they contrived as much as possible to recruit Kat Ashley to their cause."
"Kat's heart was with her Queen," Tara agrees. "She died in her service and there's no real sense of her husband anywhere or Kat having any sort of life for herself. It's not something we understand nowadays, the idea of a vocation of that level - it's almost religious."
Tara admits to scant knowledge of the period before making The Virgin Queen, but found it fascinating.
"I think the most interesting thing for me was the idea that one was always being watched, that you were always having to check your back and nothing you said ever came without some price," she says. "It must have been very paranoid a lot of the time, living in that hothouse environment was very strange - but on the positive side it was an incredibly exciting time to be alive, because of the potential."
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