Page 146 - Katherine Ryan press pack

What is The Duchess about?

According to Netflix, Katherine Ryan plays a single mother whose daughter, Olive, is
the love of her life and who is debating whether to have a second child with her
greatest nemesis — who also happens to be Olive’s father.

Speaking to RadioTimes.com at the South Bank Show Awards in July, Ryan said:
“I’ve never written a sitcom so that makes it very different [from my previous Netflix
specials], and it was a challenge, because I’m not a screenwriter who’s experienced,
I don’t know the rules, I’m learning the rules. I’m also learning that Netflix allows you
to break a lot of those rules, and they just want authentic voices from all over the
world.

“The Duchess is super authentic I think to my personality, to my stage persona,
because it’s a disruptive mum who’s a bad person but a good mum. She’s
fashionable, she loves being a mother she’s not sad about it — it’s me, yes. The rest
is fiction, but it is a heightened version of me, and I’m really lucky because they’re
just letting me go and write the real thing that I would have wanted to, and I don’t
think I would have been as lucky with a traditional network, I don’t think they would
give me the same liberty that Netflix does. It’s gonna be fun.

“I pitched it to them a year ago, sort of now, June, and so it’s been going on that long
but I had to write all the scripts.”

Is there a trailer for The Duchess?

It’s still early days, but we’ll keep you updated.