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1* DawsonCasting: 23-year-old Creator/HollidayGrainger plays Lucrezia, who's 14 in the first episode. 18-year-old Cesare is played by 25-year-old Creator/FrancoisArnaud, 33-year-old Creator/EmmanuelleChriqui plays a teenage Sancia, and 18-year-old Giulia Farnese is played by 29-year-old Lotte Verbeek (though this last may count as AgeLift; Giulia's age is glossed over to the point where the only thing made clear is that she is ''much'' [[MayDecemberRomance younger than Rodrigo]]).
2** Giulia's almost definitely an AgeLift. It's made pretty clear that she's been married to her husband for a good long time--long enough to [[spoiler:conceive a child]] and learn the ways of court and men, as well as politics, on some level. She's definitely not eighteen, and probably isn't supposed to be a teenager, either. It's likely that the characterization is a combo of the real Giulia and Adriana da Mila, Lucrezia's real-life governess/mentor-type figure and a cousin to the Borgia family.
3* DuelingWorks: With ''Series/{{Borgia}}'', obviously. Both series are about the [[UsefulNotes/TheBorgias eponymous family]] and were first broadcast the same year.
4* FakeNationality: We have Brits playing Italians (Creator/DerekJacobi, Sean Harris, Creator/JulianBleach), Brits playing Spaniards (Creator/JeremyIrons, Holliday Grainger, David Oakes, and Joanne Whalley), a Brit playing a German (Simon [=McBurney=]), a Dutch woman playing an Italian (Lotte Verbeek), a Canadian-American playing an Italian (Colm Feore), a Lithuanian playing an Italian (Ruta Gedmintas), a French-Canadian playing an Italian (Creator/EmmanuelleChriqui), a Romanian playing a French person (Creator/AnaUlaru), a Swedish-Danish pkaying an Italian (Creator/DavidDencik) and a French-Canadian playing a Spaniard (Creator/FrancoisArnaud).
5* FollowTheLeader: The show was greenlit after the success of Creator/{{Showtime}}'s [[Series/TheTudors other historical drama]].
6* LyingCreator: If you look at the record, the show runners were this in spades. In two of the more notable examples, they said that they wouldn't go into the Banquet of the Chestnuts, because it would be too much "even for Showtime." They did. Then they said they wouldn't go into the [[spoiler:Cesare and Lucrezia incest]] before doing it as well.
7* PlatonicWritingRomanticReading: According to Creator/FrancoisArnaud, Creator/NeilJordan did ''not'' intentionally write Cesare and Lucrezia as a ShipTease. The actors were instructed to stop playing it so {{UST}}y. They didn't know what else they could do with the script they'd been given. Eventually the ship won out.
8-->'''[[https://www.chicagotribune.com/redeye/redeye-francois-arnaud-on-the-borgias-incest-tv-20130428-story.html interview]]:''' When we first got to Budapest, my first rehearsal was with Holly. It was for our very first scene together. We were lying in the garden and Neil kept insisting that we had too many innuendos or it was too romantic or too sexual. And we both argued that it was already all over his writing.\
9It was like there was nothing else to do. So we kept asking, "Do you want us to play against it?" Instinctively that's what came to us, and that's what worked. We had arguments, really big discussions about it in the first year, and he said, "Well, we don't know if that happened. It could all be rumors."
10* PlayingAgainstType: Ronin Vibert, known for playing the pathetic and timid Lepidus on ''Series/{{Rome}}'', plays Lucrezia's [[MaritalRapeLicense rapist]] husband Giovanni Sforza.
11* ScrewedByTheNetwork: Showrunner Creator/NeilJordan had originally planned for the show to last for four seasons like ''Series/TheTudors''. So when Showtime announced that season 3 would be the last, there was an outcry from fans. Jordan later revealed that he had proposed to make a two-hour film to wrap up the storyline and give the show a GrandFinale, but Showtime declined, citing high production costs.
12* ShipperOnSet: While Cesare/Lucrezia did ''eventually'' become canon, showrunner Creator/NeilJordan reportedly did not like it, and -- in earlier seasons -- said they weren't going there. Creator/FrancoisArnaud (Cesare) is beloved by shippers for telling Niel that the script he wrote very much depicts the two being in love. Creator/HollidayGrainger (Lucrezia) reportedly agreed as well, but didn't give interviews about it.
13-->'''Creator/FrancoisArnaud [[https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-borgias_b_2940947 interview]]:''' Well to be honest we thought it was going that way from the very start of the first season. Neil Jordan, the creator of the show, denied it from the beginning but we were like "it's all over your writing man." It's in every single line, every single scene: these two are definitely in love with each other.
14* WhatCouldHaveBeen: It was originally supposed to be a film, simply titled "''Borgia''," with Creator/ColinFarrell and Creator/ScarlettJohansson as Cesare and Lucrezia, but funding fell through. Director Creator/NeilJordan eventually found the money with the Showtime network, and thus a series was born.

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