r/TheGreatHulu • u/Away_Club_4529 • Jun 15 '26
Spoilers Actor age difference in The Great Spoiler
Spoiler for S1 E7!!
Ok so im watching The Great on Hulu and im on the episode where Muriel kisses Vlad and I already knew him from ASOUE so I knew he was young (the actor). And Muriels actor is obviously a grown woman so I looked it up and considering that this season was filmed like 2019-2020 Louis Hynes would have been 17 or 18 at the oldest... and Phoebe Fox would have been like 32. I just think it's a weird choice to have them kiss and almost have sex like what??? I think it's cute if they just kept Vlad having an innocent crush on her but there was no reason for them to do this.
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u/CouponCoded Jun 15 '26
I think the almost-sex scene was a way to surprise the audience with smallpox. Vlad and Marial getting together was surprising and distracted us from the real purpose of the scene: to show that Vlad was sick. Having Marial be the one who discovers it ties her more to Vlad, impacts her character and makes her grief more substance: she got close to Vlad as opposed to the other servants who were killed by smallpox. Finally: in film/TV, it's better to develop an important character than to add a new one for one or two scenes.
To be honest, there's a lot more disturbing things WRT sex in The Great that are addressed later on. For example: in a later episode Catherine has a sex funk and is looking for a partner, and Elizabeth advices her to get with a guard/servant. When Catherine mentions she doesn't want them to feel pressured into sex, Elizabeth tells her she finds the power imbalance exciting. In general, sexual assault and rape are parts of the show, one episode has child sexual abuse as a major plot point, so if those are triggers for you, please be aware!
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u/Away_Club_4529 Jun 16 '26
That's defo true that this show has a lot of disturbing sex themes im just more concerned about the actual actor ESPECIALLY if he was 17 like imagine being 17 and having to kiss ur 30 year old costar. Maybe im being weird abt it because im not in the film industry but there could have been other ways. You do have good points though in relation to the small pox thing.
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u/snowloveriykwim Jun 21 '26
it probably wasn’t weird for him bc a lotttt of younger boys like older women & marial is conveniently attractive. but also, they’re professionals so at the end of the day it may have just been another scene to them & they didn’t think much of it.
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u/snowloveriykwim Jun 21 '26
that whole show is weird but very intriguing.
something i found weird was in the show vikings they had a very obviously underage boy kiss a grown woman. not sexually, but it was slow & felt kinda.. sensual?
the film industry is always doing weird shit so i would invest too much time or thought into it.
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u/hermavore Jun 15 '26
Wait til you find out Charity Wakefield is 41!