6 thoughts on “WCW: Tamzin Merchant

  1. I haven’t seen her in anything other than The Tudors, alas, but she was excellent as Katheryn Howard*. She definitely nailed the whole “way too young and flighty but basically kind” character, although I seriously doubt there was any nude swinging around Hampton Court (oh, Showtime, how you love to anachronistically sex things up…). I’ve always felt sorry for the historical personage, as she was clearly too young and immature to take on a Queen’s role; she might have managed married to a lesser noble in the country, but being in the vipers’ den that was the Henrician court, she never had a chance. “Nothing personal, just business…”

    *Has it ever been determined definitively how she (or any of the other wives, really) actually spelled her own name? The one I used is the one I’ve seen most recently, and looks about right, but who knows? If they can’t manage to settle on when she was actually born (1524 seems popular, which would have made her 15-16 when she married Henry, and probably only 17 when she died), I imagine they find dealing w/Tudor-era spelling too much to deal with.

    1. Spelling wasn’t really solid in the 16th-c. even for names. A lot of places (like the Historic Royal Palaces) use “Catherine Howard” & “Katherine Parr” just to have a distinction between the two wives but that’s arbitrary!

      1. I believe Katherine Parr signed herself ‘Kateryn the Queene KP’ I believe the initials were to differentiate her from her predecessors Catherine Howard and Catherine of Aragon.

  2. I thought she was very good in season 1 of Carnival Row, the only season I’ve seen so far. I barely remember her character in Jane Eyre. Overall, I absolutely LOVED that version of the book.

  3. Personally I thought Tamzin’s Catherine Howard was a little too Valley Girl, but no doubt that was the director’s fault.

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