Holliday Goes Nude For Fun

"It’s something about my left boob and the perpetual push of the corset that just doesn’t quite work..."

"My friends keep Facebooking me saying 'I saw your face on the Tube,'" laughs Holliday Grainger, who has just hit London to promote Mike Newell’s adaptation of Great Expectations. Fair, fresh-faced and peppering her Manchester accent with a range of throaty laughs, Grainger seems a far cry from the poised, flame-haired Estella, pictured in a tryst with Pip (Jeremy Irvine) on the posters. "I think people do expect something different," says the 24-year-old, who agrees she couldn’t be less like her cold, distant character, who’s been trained to manipulate men. "I’m the opposite. I come from a very loving, stable background where I’ve been persuaded to just be myself and anything is possible. "Estella puts pressure on herself, as Miss Havisham [ Helena Bonham Carter ] has done, to lead a life that’s already set out for her."

As for Grainger, known as Holly to her friends, she prefers to play it by ear. "I don’t really have any strategy for my career," she says cheerfully. "I feel like I’ve been doing really well the last few years." She says this last sentence like she does many – with a faint note of surprise and pleasure, as if she’s just realised it that second. No pretence of humility but no arrogance either – just a simple statement of fact. And it’s true. After youthful roles in TV series including Waking The Dead and Demons, Grainger’s career kicked into gear as recently as 2011. Even while she was still studying for an English literature degree, she was juggling parts in Bel Ami and Jane Eyre with a regular stint as Lucrezia in The Borgias, the steamy Showtime series that gave the actress an unusual ailment.


"It’s my left boob," she says, creasing up with laughter and gesturing at her bust, today loosely covered in a green shirt she’s teamed with tight trousers and clompy boots. "It’s something about my left boob and the perpetual push of the corset that just doesn’t quite work. It just starts to ache. And the boning just comes there, just under your nipples…" No wonder she’s happy to strip off for nude scenes in the saga of the not-so-holy papal family. "I’m perfectly comfortable naked," she admits. "I have that thing where I never think of myself as at all sexy so I’m like a two-year-old; I’ll just be naked, that’s fine. They’re just bodies – people shouldn’t make so much of a fuss."

Grainger thinks Hollywood should show more 'normal' figures. "You’re so used to watching perfect bodies, if someone’s too skinny or if someone’s actually got a bit of normal fat on them then it registers… it’s so wrong." If she could change that, how would she? "Run the industry with women who’ve got normal bodies and let’s all get naked," she shrieks. "Maybe all actresses should, rather than go, 'I’ve got a naked scene, I should get down the gym,' go 'I’ve got a naked scene, I need to eat a pie and not go to the gym so that people have to see my cellulite and then you can all get over it because we all have it.'"

Clearly naturally slim, Grainger describes eating ravenously on the Budapest set of The Borgias, where she’s been filming series three. "It’s amazing – we have constant ice cream in the summer and constant pizza in the evenings in the winter." She almost slips into teenager mode here but, as ever, a quick reality check is around the corner. This is a young woman who’s growing up fast and knows things will change. "I’m very lucky as I’ve never ever felt any pressure from any producer to lose weight whereas a lot of actresses have," she says. "So if ever I feel that pressure from someone inside, then maybe ask me that question again and I may be down the gym and eating no carbs."

So is Grainger dying to ditch the corsets and get a bit grittier? "Well, I love period pieces, there are such great roles for women but it would be nice to try a different genre. I’d love to do something that’s more social realism and based on improvisation like Mike Leigh or Shane Meadows, that would be amazing. I’d love to do a sexy, strong woman like Catwoman – like the one Scarlett Johansson plays, Black Widow. Oh yeah," she laughs, checking her idealism once again. "I’d have to get down the gym then…"
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Only a Borgia Can Love a Borgia

"It is a game of want and wanting..."

The final two episodes of the second season of The Borgias were especially rough on Cesare, notes Shilo Adams. While there was undoubtedly a sense of relief that came with putting Juan out of his misery, he still lost a brother and even more important than their long-standing bad blood was the image portrayed of Italy's first family weakening before the public's eyes. There would no longer be one on the battlefield and one in the cloth and it could potentially signal the beginning of the end of the Borgia rule. Then, while having dinner with Rodrigo, the wounds they had recently suffered looked like they were slowly beginning to heal and that the family might be able to take a breath - until Rodrigo was poisoned, his fate currently pending. How would Cesare handle two tragedies in short succession?

The first teaser for the third season of The Borgias indicates that he'll be finding solace with Lucrezia (Holliday Grainger), the member of the family he's always felt the closest with. He didn't have a good relationship with Juan, out of competitiveness for Rodrigo's attention, and his relationship with Rodrigo was at best strained due to perceived favoritism toward Juan, so it makes sense for him to retreat to a source of comfort, both out of need for soothing and an obligation to protect her from any upcoming ills. But what about their attraction toward one another? Tragedy can often lead people to do things that they had only previously thought about, as they have to face their own mortality upon experiencing a death close to him, but will that be enough to get the two to consummate their feelings for one another?





You may feel history has already provided the definitive answer to that particular question; afterall, the Borgias have become a byword for incest, corruption and decadence, the subject of dozens of books, plays, films and now an acclaimed television series. But a new book that draws on documents in the Vatican Secret Archive tries to debunk some of the darkest stories about the Borgias and to rehabilitate their much-maligned reputation, writes Nick Squires. In The Borgias: The Black Legend, Mario Dal Bello, an Italian historian and journalist, argues that the notorious Renaissance clan were the unfair victims of disinformation and propaganda fuelled by the rivalry of other power hungry families. "The films and miniseries are great fun because they are full of sex, scandal and blood," said Mr Dal Bello. "But they do not represent history accurately. The Borgias got a very bad press because the first people to write their history were their critics."

Documents hidden away in the Vatican archives shed new light on the family, he said. Two Borgias become popes – first Alfonso, who took the name Calixtus III when he was elected in 1455, and later Rodrigo, who became Alexander VI in 1492. He is played by Jeremy Irons in the popular TV series, The Borgias – The Original Crime Family. The Borgias were loathed in Rome not just for their success in carving out a powerful papal dynasty, but because they were foreigners, hailing from Aragon in modern-day Spain. "Rome was hostage to the rivalry between the great noble families who were fighting for power and the papacy," said Mr Dal Bello. "Such was the hatred for the Borgias on the part of the Roman nobility, that on the announcement of the death of the first Borgia pope, Callisto III in 1458, more than 200 people were murdered in a few hours."

The new book tries to separate fact from fiction, particularly in regard to Pope Alexander VI and his eldest son, Cesare. One of the most notorious claims is that Cesare murdered a servant who was the lover of his sister, Lucretia, in front of their father, the Pope. This story, like many others surrounding the family, is unreliable, said the historian. "The story was recounted by the Venetian ambassador to Rome but La Serenissima [as the independent Venetian republic was known] was an enemy of Alexander."

Lucretia Borgia has also been the victim of five centuries of misinformation, said Mr Dal Bello. She is portrayed as a scheming vamp who indulged in incest and intrigue at court. In reality she was "an exemplary wife" who later devoted herself to helping the poor in the city of Ferrara. "When Lucretia died at the age of 39 in 1519, as a result of the birth of her eighth child, the whole of Ferrara mourned," said Mr Dal Bello. "Even her third husband, who had married her for political reasons, was destroyed. Her last words were 'I'm forever a servant of God'." Much of the black propaganda about her was spread by her first husband, Giovanni Sforza, who was left embittered after Alexander VI engineered the dissolution of his marriage to Lucretia.

The Borgias may have used poison to dispose of their enemies, but so did every powerful family at the time, Mr Dal Bello writes in his book. Nor was it unusual for popes of the time to have wives and mistresses, as Pope Alexander did – he fathered eight children by at least three women. Alexander VI may have used unsavoury and ruthless means to grab the papacy but he was also an astute diplomat and an energetic reformer of the Church. The notoriety of the Borgias persists to this day, not just in popular representations but within the Vatican, which has been convulsed by recent years in banking and paedophile sex scandals every bit as sordid as anything from earlier centuries.

Timothy Dolan, the Archbishop of New York, was asked during a television debate in October: "How do we defend the Church with stories such as that involving Pope Alexander VI, who had a lover?" He replied: "Not just one lover, he had many." The Borgias continue to cast a long shadow, but the Catholic Church, he said, was prepared to admit the mistakes of the past.

The third season of The Borgias debuts Sunday, April 14th at 10:00 on Showtime.
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Any Human Heart S01E01

I like to fuck, and then I like to drink gin... and then I feel like fucking again...

Television Series: Any Human Heart (S01E01)
Release Date: November 2010
Actress: Holliday Grainger
Video Clips Credit: Trailblazer











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