The Serpent Queen Season 2 Ends with the Collapse of Its Strongest Relationship
Emma McDonald talks Rahima’s Season 2 journey and the break-up of the show’s real one true pairing.
Photo Courtesy of Starz
The Starz period drama The Serpent Queen initially begins as something of a two-hander, an extended conversation between infamous French queen Catherine de Medici and a lowly servant girl named Rahima. As Catherine recounts the dramatic story of her life thus far, she takes the younger woman under her wing, sensing something of a kindred spirit in a girl who wants more than she’s been told she can have.
The Rahima we meet in The Serpent Queen Season 2 is a very different woman than in its first installment. In the world of the show, a dozen years have passed since the Season 1 finale, allowing the boy king Charles to grow up, his mother to fully settle into her role as Regent of France, and her most trusted handmaiden to establish herself as the center of the French court’s web of secrets and intrigue. For Emma McDonald, who took over the role from Sennia Nanua for Season 2, Rahima is a much more active character, plotting alongside Catherine as something that feels almost like an equal, rather than a student learning at her feet.
“It was really interesting, joining [the show] where I did,” McDonald tells Paste. “I think Rahima started very much as the pupil and ends the master, constantly challenging Catherine as the story goes on. She’s so calculated and does so much with so little. She’s in these spaces, not really saying much, but very much a presence. Just listening. And by the end, she’s the one asking the questions.”
In the Serpent Queen’s first season, Rahima was often used as a plot device, a largely passive listener whose presence allowed Catherine to frame and shape her own story in the telling of it. In its second, the narrative has caught up to itself, so to speak, and both women must navigate a relationship that’s on more even ground.
“You have to be so clever with what you allow others to see. I think that’s something I learned from watching Samantha [Morton, who plays Catherine], actually. To do a lot with a little.” McDonald continues. “Her performance is so beautifully small and nuanced, but so big at the same time. I took most of my cues from her watching her and how she conducts herself in a space because I think that’s what Rahima would’ve done.”
So much of Rahima’s character is defined by her ability to exist in what often feels like a liminal position within the world of the French court. Effortlessly moving everywhere from Catherine’s side to the servants’ quarters, she’s one part master of secrets, one part problem solver, and one part sounding board. The leader of Catherine’s alleged gang of loyal female courtiers known as the Flying Squadron, she has access to information that no other character on the canvas—save Catherine herself—can match.
“It’s really interesting what Justin [Haythe, Serpent Queen showrunner] has done in making Rahima the leading figure of the Flying Squadron, which puts her firmly in the middle of the upstairs/downstairs world of the court,” McDonald says. “And her role within that group, you see a different Rahima than how she is behind closed doors in her own chambers versus with members of the Royal Family or the Guises, or even Catherine.”
Catherine’s infamous Flying Squadron was real—a group of women the queen used to spy on the men of the French court and visiting political leaders (likely with a little seduction thrown in for good measure). They’re a perfect addition to a season of The Serpent Queen that’s so focused on the faces women must present to the world in order to wield power.
They also further add to The Serpent Queen’s deliberately diverse canvas, which not only features multiple characters of color, but refuses to whitewash their stories.
“There would have been Black people at court, absolutely,” McDonald says when asked about the diversity of the series’ cast and story. “There were Black kings and queens and musicians and scientists [in this time period], but we never see those stories told, especially in period dramas. What this show does in such a beautiful and clever way is use Rahima’s story to make a space for that. Maybe her story isn’t necessarily historically accurate [in terms of her specific relationship with Catherine], but I believe there would have been many Rahimas, or women like Rahima, at court.”