‘The Buccaneers’ Season 2 Star Christina Hendricks & Creators Unpack Episode 7 Court Scenes Reflecting “Modern-Day Rape Or Abuse Trials”

SPOILER ALERT: This post contains spoilers for Episode 7 of Season 2 of The Buccaneers.

Just as there are many elaborate weddings in Apple TV+’s The BuccaneersSeason 2 has made way for some equally complex divorce proceedings, culminating in a court battle between Patricia “Patti” St. George and her unfaithful husband Colonel Tracy St. George in Episode 7.

Divorce during The Gilded Age, the period in which the show is set was only given permission on the grounds that there was adultery, and even then, there had to be evidence. HBO’s The Gilded Age series tackles the same thing in Season 3, which is currently rolling out.

“We did a lot of research about how women had to prove that an infidelity had happened. They couldn’t just say it, they had to prove it. In New York at the time, people would even hire people to come in and say that they’d slept with their husband just in order to get the evidence required,” executive producer Beth Willis told Deadline. “So it was incredibly difficult, and the burden was absolutely on the wife. We’d thought that really reflected modern-day rape trials or abuse trials.”

Willis also praised creator and executive producer Katherine Jakeways for her writing on the penultimate episode, titled “All Rise,” in which Patti fights an uphill battle of proving her husband cheated on her while being made to feel shame herself and describe how she tried to satisfy him in the bedroom.

“Katherine rose to the challenge of getting under the skin of that and what that kind of humiliation would feel like for Mrs. St.  George standing up there, doing something that, on paper, feels really straightforward and clear to her,” Willis added. “Which is [saying]‘I’ve had enough, I want to move on with my life,’ but [realizing] how hard it is to actually get permission to move on with your life. Christina Hendricks’ performance in that episode is phenomenal.”

Hendricks finds Patti’s decision to demand a divorce after being unhappy in her marriage to Tracy “fueled by wanting the best for her daughters.”

“It still probably originally comes out of being a symbol of something to show that she is acknowledging the pain that it caused with [Nell]and the pain that it could have caused between Nan and Jinny, but also being given the strength by watching them make choices and thinking, if I’m going to be the woman that I say, I’ve been to them and support them all along, I have to give them something to look up to,” the Mad Men actress said. “So she still goes about it as sort of an offering, but eventually [she] is going to have to internalize that and think about what that really means for her and what her life is going to look like. She knows that it has to be done, but she’s still terrified.”

Tracy’s lawyer Mr. McCarthy (Corey Johnson) does not make it easy on Patti, shaming her by asking for explicit details and scaring her witnesses out of taking the stand to declare that they were intimate with Mr. St. George.

“The detail that she’s having to go into, like Beth says about it feeling like a modern rape trial, where she’s being asked for details of her sex life, the balance of that was quite tricky to get right in terms of how much she talks about,” Jakeways said. “But even having to give any detail of your sex life in those humiliating circumstances in front of a room full of strangers and your daughter and your family, she’s so good in that scene, Christina. We’re so proud of that episode and those scenes. And the lawyers are brilliant in those scenes as well. Corey, who played the main lawyer, the cross examiner, he was so good.”

Leighton Meester’s Eleanor “Nell” Brooks, sister to Patti, complicates the process because at first, she just sits in the crowd to support her sister, but then Nan (Kristine Frøseth) demands that Nell come clean, reveal herself as Nan’s biological mother and simultaneously confirm that Nan was a product of one of Tracy’s affairs. Nell risks her unborn child, her relationship with Arthur (Anthony Welsh) and her reputation to reveal that she slept with Tracy, but her ability to provide physical evidence — letters detailing Tracy’s correspondence with her, receipts and checks — helped clinch Patti the victory to be able to divorce her husband.

“For my character, it’s more symbolic in terms of, taking the next step forward in so many ways. I cannot speak for Mrs. St George, but I do think that, from my point of view, their marriage was was never equal, and even though my actions highlighted that more than anything, I think I also desperately want to help Patti free herself from her current situation that she’s found herself in for so so long,” Meester told Deadline. “And even though I’ve been in my own form of secrecy, and pain there is almost a freedom to having made the choices that Nell made. Patti was left with all the responsibility, so I could see how Nell wants to help her ultimately, and take her side in a situation that’s otherwise very dire, and in a time where the man has the last word, [Patti] has somewhere to go with Nell.”

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