Becoming Elizabeth's Alicia von Rittberg and Jamie Blackley on Stag Hunts and Friend Zones - Decider

The ad campaign propelling Starz's new Tudor drama Becoming Elizabeth tells us that the show will introduce "the queen you know, the girl you don't." Weirdly, one of the biggest curveballs the show throws hardcore Queen Elizabeth I fans is her relationship with Robert Dudley. In most adaptations following Elizabeth's early years, Dudley isn't just shown as her closest friend, but her first great star-crossed love. In Becoming Elizabeth, however, Princess Elizabeth (Alicia von Rittberg) has her Dudley (Jamie Blackley) firmly in the friend zone.

Becoming Elizabeth's Elizabeth and Dudley tease each other, hunt together, and get into mischief, but it's clear that Dudley is not the guy young Liz is pining after.

"I think the world she lived in was just so brutal. She was basically on her own," von Rittberg told Decider. "To have someone that she knew from her childhood on is just so valuable and so important and I think that is what Robert is to her. It's just like that one friend you've known forever and even though you probably haven't seen each other a lot, it's just that familiarity and best friendship kind of."

Jamie Blackley said, "They are so, so different, but it almost feels like they're going on this journey together of understanding who they are and the world that they're a part of."

"So it's a friend zone," von Rittberg said. "She doesn't really know who to trust, but if there is someone, he probably is as close as it gets to trusting someone, is with Robert."

"He's very much in the friend zone, but I think he enjoys being that voice for her that she can trust," Blackley said. "Because they're so close, it allows him to really tell her what he thinks and he's not afraid to do that because he has no ulterior motive with her. She's a friend and that's what he's there to do, to offer her a shoulder a cry on or a telling off."

Photo: Starz

So there's no whiff of a romance between these two yet on Becoming Elizabeth, but they definitely share an intense, secret moment during a stag hunt. Instead of waiting for the men to come along and finish the stag that she's shot, Princess Elizabeth wants to perform the final kill. Robert Dudley understands why the spirited teen would want to do this, but if he lets her get close to the enormous animal, he is putting a royal's life in danger. Which is a very serious offense.

"Originally, she was supposed to snatch the dagger away from Robert," Blackley said. "But I think we had a discussion about it and thought it would be more interesting for that to be a decision of giving in and accepting that, 'I'm gonna be a part of this, too.'"

"The stakes of that are so high, if anyone finds out that I've let her do this, then I'm in so much trouble which obviously you see at the end when everyone is kind of clambered around the top of the thing."

"It was insane," von Rittberg said. "I remember it because we shot it in one and it was just so far down in some hole in the woods and we had to go up and down and up and down with the camera. It felt so real and it was just absolutely such a cool experience."

"I think it just shows so much how she doesn't want to be treated as some kind of pawn that you can just take and move around. She wants to not just play by the rules but live and experience things. I think that's also the reason why she wants to fall in love, she wants to experience stuff, she wants to have something for herself. I think that's why this scene is so important."

Could it be important to Princess Elizabeth and Robert Dudley's story going forward? We'll just have to keep tuning into Starz's Becoming Elizabeth to find out…