My Lady Jane fans are still hoping the show returns in some way after that controversial cancellation — but for now they have Edward Bluemel’s new show Washington Black to tide them over.
“It’s really important to know that I actually filmed this before I filmed My Lady Jane. I auditioned for My Lady Jane while I was in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia,” Bluemel, 32, recalled during an exclusive interview with Us Weekly before showing off the “horses on my jacket” that served as a small tribute to the short-lived Prime Video series.
Bluemel noted that there are “similarities” between his role in My Lady Jane and his character on Washington Black.
“They both rely on charm and pretending to be a false character that they portray to cover up their big secrets and their inner turmoil,” he noted to Us in the joint interview with his Washington Black costar Iola Evans. “That’s something that definitely links them both.”
My Lady Jane, which premiered in June 2024, was a radical reimagining of Lady Jane Grey’s (Emily Bader) very brief time as monarch after King Henry VIII’s son Edward (Jordan Peters) died of tuberculosis. In this version, Jane and her husband, Guildford (Bluemel), weren’t beheaded and Edward wasn’t killed off.
Bluemel made viewers fall in love with his portrayal of Lord Guildford Dudley alongside Bader, 28, so imagine Us’ surprise when one month after My Lady Jane’s debut, Prime Video canceled the show. The decision led to overwhelming fan backlash and campaigns to bring the show back that are still going on now.
Bluemel has remained booked and busy with his upcoming series The Seven Dials Mystery and his role as Billy McGee in Hulu’s Washington Black, which is an adaptation of the book of the same name by Esi Edugyan.
“Dudley and McGee are romantics at heart,” the actor teased. “As you go on and you watch Washington Black, you realize that they’re both characters that are actually driven ultimately by kindness.”
Since McGee wasn’t in Edugyan’s novel, Bluemel had more freedom to make the character his own, adding, “He has been created especially for the TV show. So I decided to just go off the scripts with the story itself and learn from the story that contains Billy.”
In addition to Bluemel and Evans, 31, Washington Black also stars Ernest Kingsley Jr., Sterling K. Brown and Tom Ellis in a story about George Washington Black through past and present timelines as he is raised under the shadow of slavery before catching the attention of the sugar plantation owner’s brother. A young Washington is recruited to help the owner’s brother, leading to an adventure around the world.
“Reading it on the page, it was quite refreshing. It doesn’t go the way that you’re expecting it to go. That’s really exciting to me in a genre such as period dramas that do quite often have tropes,” Bluemel noted. “It was really fun to fight against a trope. When I started reading, I thought I knew where Billy was going as a character and I was very wrong in so many ways. I hope the audience goes on that same journey.”
All eight episodes of Washington Black will be released on Hulu Wednesday, July 23.
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