On his experience filming the series, Eddie Redmayne had this story to tell: "The director, Tom Hooper said "One last thing: Eddie, have you ever been on a horse?" I said "Yes". Cut to Lithuania, two weeks later, a huge Elizabethan street, Helen Mirren and Jeremy Irons are standing at this balcony, and there's Tom, cameras, rain machines, fifty Lithuanian extras, spurs attached to my feet, and I'm thinking, "At what point do I tell them that I have never, ever ridden a horse?" It was then that I realized a big part of the cliché of actors lying in auditions is that you should probably try to do the thing you said you can do before filming starts. Anyway, I nearly killed people as the horse galloped off at a hundred miles an hour after I gave it the slightest nudge. Tom came out with his megaphone and shouted, "You're a fucking liar, Redmayne!"
Dame Helen Mirren chose Tom Hooper to direct, having worked with him before on Heißer Verdacht - Die letzten Zeugen (2003).
The 3rd Earl of Southampton was William Shakespeare's patron. Many believe he was the subject of many of Shakespeare's sonnets, including sonnet 20, which begins "A woman's face with Nature's own hand painted / Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion." Eddie Redmayne would later play a transgender woman in The Danish Girl. On stage, he has played Shakespeare's heroine Viola, a woman who disguises as a man.
Hellen Mirren who has natural blue grey eyes wore dark contact lenses for the series, as Elizabeth 1st had very dark brown eyes like her mother Anne Boleyn.
Tom Hooper: A servant, offering the Earl of Leicester (Jeremy Irons) food while he and Queen Elizabeth I (Dame Helen Mirren) dine in a tent before the battle.