Longreads is an amazing place for long-form pieces, and one of my favorites is their Queens of Infamy series. Today’s installment made me hugely excited, as it’s all about Lucrezia Borgia.
I was first introduced to The Borgia family via the 2011 show on Starz starring Jeremy Irons as Rodrigo Borgia / Pope Alexander VI and Holliday Grainger as Lucrezia Borgia. While The Borgias certainly leaned into a lot of the (ahem) scandalous rumors surrounding Lucrezia, she was also shown to be smart, politically savvy, and poetic.
Queens of Infamy mixes history with writer Anne Thériault’s humor and this makes the reading time fly by, especially if you are already familiar with the subject matter. I highly recommend this read for all my armchair historians out there, if only for the breaks that feature script like scenes like these:
LUCREZIA: if you think this is the height of obscene Borgia parties, wait til you hear about the Banquet of the Chestnuts
LUCREZIA: it allegedly involved 50 courtesans crawling around naked
LUCREZIA: and prizes for the guests who had the most sex with the courtesans
LUCREZIA: while my father and I watched
LUCREZIA: I mean, it probably never happened but, you know
LUCREZIA: allegedly
(via Longreads, image: Starz)
- With all that is going on, here are 75 things that white people can do to be allies to the Black community. (via Medium)
- Paul Feig is going to be adapting the middle-grade book series The School For Good And Evil for adaptation for Netflix and I’m excited, since it’s one of my favorites. (via Deadline)
-
Denzel Washington saw a commotion in West Hollywood with cops and an unarmed distressed homeless man. He got out of his car and served as a barrier between the man and the police — helping to diffuse a tense situation. This man was arrested safely.🌎❤️ pic.twitter.com/4UyYdX1vT6
— Rex Chapman🏇🏼 (@RexChapman) May 28, 2020
- Noah Reid delivers some sweetness into our hearts with a new song from his album. (via EW)
- Ruby Rose offers some explanation for her exit from Batwoman—not a lot, but just enough to make people wonder “hmmm?” (via Yahoo News)
- Leslie Odom Jr. talks about his new animated musical series Central Park on Apple TV Plus. (via NYT)
- Logan stars Hugh Jackman and James Mangold spoke about how Dafne Keen landed the role of X-23 and became a legend. (via CBR)
- What is this?
Tomorrow is finally gonna be Friday.
(Warner Bros.)
What did you see today?
Want more stories like this? Become a subscriber and support the site!
—The Mary Sue has a strict comment policy that forbids, but is not limited to, personal insults toward anyone, hate speech, and trolling.—
