Warning: This article contains spoilers forThe Greatseason3.
Marial (Phoebe Fox), just in the nick of time.
(Plus, read what Hoult had to sayabout the shocking death, here.)
Elle Fanning, Tony McNamara, and Nicholas Hoult.Phillip Faraone/Getty
When did you know the time was now and this is how he would die?
TONY MCNAMARA:I think we always knew.
Do you go really early and shock everyone, or do we go late right at the end?
Elle Fanning as Catherine in ‘The Great’.Christopher Raphael/Hulu
I still wanted to pull the switch relatively early.
And Nick was doing Pugachev at the same time.
And [in real life] he was having a baby, as well.
And I knew how I was going to do it last season.
I decided how, yeah.
So I think I knew how, I just didn’t know how to get there.
I just knew he fell through the ice and he drowned on a horse.
And why did you want to do it that way?
We’ve been friends for a long, long time.
And I had two thoughts about it.
And two, I thought, you know what?
So they were the two ideas I wanted to kind of put together.
What was it like breaking the news to Elle and Nick?
Well, we all knew, the three of us, that would happen in the third season.
So I was a bit like, “Oh, I’m never going to write Peter again.
That’s harsh.”
So it was hard.
And the cast in the weeks before it happened were finding it really hard.
So the fact they wouldn’t do scenes together anymore, it was very hard for them.
Then there’s the Pugachev of it all.
Well, I think in the end, he wasn’t going to do Pugachev forever.
So I think he wanted to kind of do this as a great last season.
Yeah, because I think that felt like I was cheating, I guess.
You thought something else would happen.
But the little kid’s a sociopath, what can I do?
We do know ghosts exist in the show’s universe.
Might we see Peter again in that way?
I mean, I’d never say never to having Nick Hoult around.
That’s for sure.
Or you could have him play a constant stream of Peter lookalikes.
He could play his own lookalike forever.
No, I don’t know.
I haven’t really got that far into it.
I’m still recovering from [season] 3.
We delivered it like four weeks ago.
I’m sure ambiguity was the point, but I am curious about your thoughts on it.
“That terrine was good.”
The season ends with Catherine shaking it off, literally.
We don’t know yet if there will be a season 4.
Would you be content with this as a finale ending?
It had a certain conclusive feeling to it that we maybe haven’t had before yet on this show.
I think we were discussing it today actually, how people will read the ending.
There’s so many interesting ideas brought up by season’s end.
And she doesn’t know Georgina is betraying her left, right, and center.
Amongst the ensemble, there’s a lot of intrigue to be played out, I suppose.
When did you know he was also getting the axe?
And he felt like it was the right time for him to do it.
So I knew that at the end of season 1.
And then I just had to work out how I wanted him to go.
They’re like, “I don’t know, he went away or they killed him.
Who knows what happened.”
Of all the new alliances that take shape, who surprised you the most as you were writing it?
We did make a very conscious decision to each season bring the ensemble up even more.
And she just has to keep doing it.
So at some point, people are going to start to believe her."
You also introduce a bit of American history into this season.
Was that fun for you to delve into?
Well, it came out of the research, strangely.
I thought, let’s see what else was going on in the world at that time.
And of course [the American Revolution] was going on in the world.
What was her attitude to it?"
And I thought, “Oh, what if the Americans came too?”
So it just seemed funny to us, and the episode came out great.
He’s just this amazing kid.
He’s just a kid who walks on set and you know he is an actor."
And he is, he’s great.
It’s crazy, but let’s keep him, he can win the duel and keep going.
But he likes it.
I’m speaking to you before the world has seen the new season.
Are you nervous, now that you’ve killed one of your leads?
How do you move on from this?
How do I move on?
No, you move on by thinking of new stories and getting excited about it.
I’ll never move on from Nick, and hopefully we’ll work on other things together.
But yeah, it’s hard to move on.
I think it’s all just a challenge.
I mean, it was a challenge how to do this season.
And that’s what I like about TV it’s a challenge.
And I felt like we still did four great episodes.
This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
