Elizabeth the First is a ten-part American podcast series that isn’t about Elizabeth I at all. The assumption of its producers seems to be that the Tudor monarch was all right – a bit of a trailblazer, one might say – but not really worthy of her title.
The real ‘Elizabeth the First’ was actually Elizabeth Taylor. The series aims to present the actress as the first ‘influencer’ the world has ever known, even though poor old Taylor didn’t even know what Instagram was. Taylor did, however, court the media before the word ‘social’ was attached to it. And she didn’t need to take selfies because people were always shoving cameras in
her face.
The podcast is narrated by Katy Perry, the Californian singer who kissed a girl and liked it and then married Russell Brand. She speaks in a breathy way and is as partial as Meghan Markle to celebrating another woman’s ‘fortitude’ and ‘authentic self’.
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