Clémence Poésy attends the Chloé Womenswear Fall/Winter 2024-2025 show as part of Paris Fashion Week on February 29, 2024 in Paris, France.
| Photo Credit: PASCAL LE SEGRETAIN
We had previously reported that actors Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and James Norton will lead King and Conqueror, a historical drama series on William the Conqueror and the Battle of Hastings. Now, the latest is that actors Emily Beecham and Clémence Poésy have joined the cast of the series.
The series features Coster-Waldau as William, Duke of Normandy, while Norton plays Harold, Earl of Wessex. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Beecham is set to play Harold’s wife Edith Swanneck while Poésy plays William’s wife Matilda. “Edith has never quite found her place in Harold’s family. She married Harold for love and protection, but never expected her husband to end up fighting for the English crown. Raised in the cutthroat world of the royal court, Matilda has realized that in order to succeed she has to be more devious, more ruthless and more bloody than her male opponents,” reads the show’s description on the characters.
An earlier reported plot description of the series read, “King and Conqueror is the story of a clash that defined the future of a country — and a continent — for a thousand years, the roots of which stretch back decades and extend out through a pair of interconnected family dynasties, struggling for power across two countries and a raging sea. Harold of Wessex and William of Normandy were two men destined to meet at the Battle of Hastings in 1066; two allies with no design on the British throne, who found themselves forced by circumstance and personal obsession into a war for possession of its crown”
The BBC and CBS Studios’ series hails from writer Michael Robert Johnson with a pilot directed by Baltasar Kormákur. The production on the series is expected to begin soon in Ireland.
Coster-Waldau and Norton also executive produce, with the former also directing an episode. Kormákur, Kitty Kaletsky, Robert Taylor, Dave Clarke, Richard Halliwell, Ed Clarke, Robert Jones, and Martin serve as executive producers as well.