‘Mary & George’: Does George Really Love James? Nicholas Galitzine Weighs In (VIDEO)
[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for Mary & George Episode 4, “The Wolf & The Lamb.”]
Tony Curran‘s King James gave his heart to George Villiers in Mary & George Episode 4… literally. The Scottish King of England brought Nicholas Galitzine‘s George to his homeland for the purpose of digging up the embalmed heart of his first great love, Lord Lennox, encased in an iron ring.
Lennox and James had the same age difference as James and George, viewers learned in the Friday, April 26 episode. James learned a lot from his older lover, though everyone around him at the time feared that the love wasn’t real between them, that James was being used. But their concern wasn’t for James’ true wellbeing, rather for the sake of the monarch and how his wellbeing affects everybody else. James fears that no one can love him as deeply and truly as Lennox, but he pours his heart out to George in Episode 4 to give himself the chance of it happening.
“It’s quite a profound act to actually do, to actually share it somebody,” Curran previously told TV Insider, noting that Episode 4 is “about as vulnerable as King James appears to be in the whole of the show.”
“At that moment, George is also quite taken by James showing him” such a precious thing, Curran notes. But what was George feeling? TV Insider asked Galitzine: Does George really love James, or does he love the power that being with James brings?
“I think it was both,” The Idea of You star says in the video above, saying that Episode 4 is a turning point of the seven-episode STARZ series. “It obviously started off as transactional, but we see in Episode 4 and onwards, there is a genuine care and a vulnerability between the two of them. The thing that is undeniable, though, is that the position that George is in being the favorite is very beneficial for him.”
James isn’t the only politician in Jacobean England whom George admires, and he’ll cause problems at court because of it in future episodes. It’s a good thing James and George buried that heart someplace safe, because Mary & George is about to become much more dangerous.
Mary & George, Fridays, 9/8c, STARZ
