Nicholas Galitzine had a tough time filming Mary & George.
In the upcoming Starz limited series, Mary Villiers (Julianne Moore) encourages her son, George (Galitzine), to seduce King James I (Tony Curran) and become his “all-powerful lover.”
Galitzine ended up breaking his ankle in the dance and fighting scenes on the first day of the shoot.
“There were these heeled shoes that you see characters wearing a lot,” he explained. “These stately homes have very slippery floors. While filming the scene in the first episode where I run and tackle this serving boy, my ankle slipped [and twisted] a full 90 degrees inward. I fractured my ankle and had to continue doing stunts the next couple days and then was dancing on it.”
Despite the injury, he pushed through because filming had just begun. He wore riding boots so the splint on his ankle was covered.
“I was basically on set every single day of this six month shoot,” he told Entertainment Weekly. “Learning the dancing I had to do with a broken ankle. I was literally filming a dance sequence, like, three days after I broke my ankle, which is really difficult considering I’m actually not a dancer by trade either.”
The same day he broke his ankle, another injury occurred. “One of my costars, in trying to hold me down, slammed my head into a table. So, I had a black eye and a broken ankle,” he said. “Tony [Curran] head-butted me at one point. He also cut my chin open with one of his rings. I really went through the wars on this production.”
The young star isn’t bitter about it all.
“I’m so pleased with the final result,” he said. “None of it, obviously, was purposeful, and it mirrored the epic-ness of the journey that I went through over the show, both as Nick and as George.”
