Entertainment

Dame Helen Mirren shares a kiss in new role as Catherine The Great

The Queen star came up with the idea for the Sky Atlantic drama.
The Queen star came up with the idea for the Sky Atlantic drama. The Queen star came up with the idea for the Sky Atlantic drama.

Dame Helen Mirren shares a raunchy kiss with her on-screen lover in a new trailer for Catherine The Great.

The Oscar-winning actress, 73, stars in the Sky Atlantic drama, set in “sexually charged” and “politically tumultuous” 18th century Russia.

A trailer shows her with Grigory Potemkin, the general that the powerful monarch had a passionate affair with.

(Sky Atlantic/PA)
(Sky Atlantic/PA) (Sky Atlantic/PA)

Catherine The Great depicts the monarch and Potemkin’s “obsessive love for each other and their country as they develop a unique and devoted relationship, overcoming their adversaries to build Russia’s reputation as one of the great European powers of the 18th Century”.

The Queen star came up with the idea for the Sky Atlantic drama, saying she had always wanted to play the Russian empress.

“I am very excited by the possibility of embodying a woman from history who grabbed and then wielded great power,” she has said of the series.

Dame Helen won a best actress Oscar for her role in The Queen and also played the monarch on stage in The Audience.

Catherine the Great is set to air on Sky Atlantic this autumn.