Warning: mild spoilers for Robin Hood episode 3 ahead.
Connie Nielsen’s Eleanor of Aquitaine is my favorite character in the new MGM+ version of Robin Hood and now that episode 3 is available to stream, you can see why I’m raving about her.
Acting as a mentor for Marian (Lauren McQueen), viewers learn how Eleanor manages to rule a kingdom while her husband is away and she’s confined to her London-based castle. She fosters alliances through near-constant correspondence, keeping her friends close and her enemies closer.
Every word that leaves her mouth is a piece of sage wisdom, both for Marian and any female viewer watching (but more on that as the series continues). Nielsen is as captivating as she is alluring, pulling us in by being the keeper of more information than we’re even aware of.
Given we know Nielsen has a history of playing royalty – of course I’m talking about Lucilla, the daughter of Marcus Aurelius, in Gladiator and Gladiator II – but amazingly, her breakout role wasn’t what inspired her to play the latest Queen in her roster.
When I asked Nielsen what was, I would never have guessed what movie she cited as her answer… and I bet neither would you.
Wonder Woman helped Connie Nielsen prepare for Robin Hood, not Gladiator
“When I was, doing prep for playing the Queen of the Amazons in Wonder Woman, I was reading this incredible book by an anthropologist at Stanford,” she tells me. “She pointed out in her book that female scientists had gone out and DNA tested all of these fabulous warrior graves that had been found all over Eurasia, and found that the ones that were the most famous were female.
“Anthropologists had made these assumptions that they were all males at the time – if they had a sword, they had to be a man. If they had a pot in the grave, then they had to be a woman. Turns out these presumptions just created prejudice.”
It’s this kind of thinking that has so obviously informed Nielsen’s approach to playing Eleanor. It’s a role we’ve seen portrayed countless times before (most notably Katherine Hepburn in the 1968 film The Lion of Winter). But as you can probably guess, Nielsen didn’t lean on any TV and film versions of Robin Hood.
“I felt like there was so much of who she was in the writing. There was a direct line to her reality. Historians have constructed quite a lot of material for people like us to build on, so it was real pleasure to to dive into her story.
“I really recommend everyone to read some of the biographies about her, because she’s really an extraordinary historical person. I really think she’s amazing. And it’s really lovely that we’re starting to explore this extraordinary woman’s history in this in this series.”
Given we’ve been so wrapped up in the urban legend that is Robin Hood (and the new backstory that MGM+ is fleshing out for him), I love that Nielsen is making being a history nerd sexy again. Here, we can truly have the best of both worlds.
Robin Hood is streaming on MGM+ in the US and UK, and Stan in Australia.
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