Natascha McElhone: Playing Elizabeth Hopkins | Saints & Strangers

Elizabeth is a stranger. She’s not a program. She should even come for religious reasons, and this is indicative of the age and the era, 1620s.

Uh, Elizabeth is introduced and is in the story largely because of her husband, Steven Hopkins. She comes with him; he’s a widower, so this is his second marriage. She’s a stepmother of his two children from his previous relationship, and she has a baby on the boat on the way over. I think it’s the only baby that was born on the Mayflower and survived.

She is very resistant to the move and can’t really see the benefit. You at least consider it then for your wife and for your infant child. We differ this time if you were to go back to movement, but again, true to those times, she obeys her husband and his wishes, her command.

There are only four women who survived the first winter: Rose Standish and who plays Hopkins. We suppose they started shooting on the same day, and we were establishing our characters at the same time. He was incredibly collaborative, and we decided to have a, you know, relationship that was based actually not on convenience but on unreal love and sort of, you know, passion.

There would be a fiery element to it, even if that ends up being a backstory. It kind of particularly for me gives some sort of scaffolding and context for the reason why I’m here.