Driver says that tinkering with the history books is a delicious choice. “It’s delicious to be able to fabulate [imagine]; the notion that where history ends, historians sometimes fabulate what might’ve happened,” she says.

“What Justin has done, is asked what would happen if these two women met? Because it’s not a huge stretch. It’s literally the English Channel that kept these women apart,” Driver says. “Politically, they had to be separate, but what if they had met and if they had, I think this is very much what it would’ve looked like.”

Though she has a wide range of credits to her name, including an Oscar-nominated performance in Gus Van Sant’s Good Will Hunting, and a dazzling turn in the film adaptation of the stage musical of The Phantom of the Opera, Driver has established a credential playing wild women.

In Will & Grace, the 54-year-old London-born actress played the scheming (but hilarious) heiress Lorraine Finster, who lurched into scenes with a great sense of physical comedy. And in Absolutely Fabulous she played a selfie-selling, clothes-stealing version of herself.

As you might expect, in the hands of an actress with Driver’s range and instinct for self-parody, Elizabeth I becomes both a sensual and sexual figure, and also very, very funny.

“It was, honestly, one of the things that I said to Justin about her ... I was so interested in the woman because there is a woman behind the rough, behind the leaded makeup, behind all of that,” Driver says. “Who is that, and where does it fray, and where do you start seeing this woman come through?

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“In The Serpent Queen there is this image of who she is, and she’s wily, and she’s slightly feral, and she’s watching, and she’s incredibly powerful ... and then there are these moments, it’s really shocking when you see her with her hair down and pearly skin and getting naked, but there’s a total veracity.”

The role took a physical toll on Driver, not just because of the demands of the script, but because parts of the second season were filmed on location in France’s Loire Valley during a brutal heatwave. At times, Driver told US media, she wore ice packs under her skirts.

“You know when you’re phoning it in, and you know the things that you could do standing on your head, and you are often just glad for the work, and so you will do those things ... and then there are those jobs that are extraordinarily physically challenging, and they do take their toll,” Driver says. “But it was worth it.”

“That’s part of the fun of it,” Driver adds. “That’s the extension of going into the dressing-up box and putting on the outfit. It’s like you change yourself. It asks something of you that is difficult. And a high degree of difficulty at this point in my career is, essentially, what I’m looking for. I have no interest in phoning anything in ever.”

The political lesson in the series, Driver says, is that female leadership is substantial. “There should be more women in power,” she says. “If we had as many foremothers as we had forefathers, history would probably look a bit different.

“We so rarely revisit the lives of women in the way that we constantly revisit the lives of historical men, be they American presidents or Shakespearean characters,” Driver adds. “We need to revisit these powerful women from history in order to at least have a shot at learning. We don’t seem to be doing a very good job of learning it from any of our history, but I think women need a crack at changing things.”

The second season of The Serpent Queen is streaming on Stan.

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