The Great has been renewed for a second season at Hulu, just short of two months after it debuted.
The series, created by Tony McNamara, is a satirical dramedy about the rise of Catherine the Great (Elle Fanning) from being an outsider to becoming the longest-reigning female ruler in Russia’s history.
Nicholas Hoult, Phoebe Fox, Adam Godley, Gwilym Lee, Charity Wakefield, Douglas Hodge, Sacha Dhawan, Sebastian de Souza, Bayo Gbadamosi, and Belinda Bromilow also starred in the series.
Hulu reported that The Great was “one of the top-performing original comedies” at the platform.
McNamara was nominated for an Oscar for best original screenplay for The Favourite, another historical dramady which starred Olivia Coleman as England’s Queen Anne.
McNamara told Deadline the idea for The Great came to him by chance, “I didn’t know much about her except that maybe she banged a horse,” he said of the famous rumor circulated about Catherine. “And then I heard something about her keeping the Age of Enlightenment alive. So, I read up on her and she seemed to be an amazing character—really complicated and really modern in a lot of ways. That made me want to write about her, and I thought, well, how do I write about her in a way that would make me want to watch it?”
