TAKING THE LEAD

‘Anne Boleyn’: deep dive into doomed wife of Henry VIII

CALL it a new take on an old piece of history. The threepart period drama “Anne Boleyn,” premiering on AMC+ on Thursday (Dec. 9), showcases the famous doomed Queen’s story in a different way — with Jodie Turner-Smith, (“Queen and Slim”), a British actress of Jamaican descent, in the lead role.

“We wanted to make sure the world of our Tudor court didn’t look exactly like period dramas that we’d seen in the past,” series writer Eve Hedderwick Turner told The Post.

“Because it is such a well-known period of history and Anne’s story itself has been really well covered, we wanted it to feel fresh and alive and different. And also, reflective of our society today — so that hopefully we would attract new audiences who maybe didn’t see relevance in watching a story like this previously.” Unlike other historical dramas about similar subject matter — including Showtime’s “The Tudors” (starring Natalie Dormer as Anne) or BBC’s “Wolf Hall,” (with Claire Foy in the role) — “Anne Boleyn” takes a closer focus on the Queen.

It begins when she’s already in power, just a few months before she was put on trial for adultery, incest, and conspiracy against the king (charges which modern historians find unconvincing) and beheaded in 1536.

“Out of so many interesting figures in the period, she’s always one that has sort of stuck out,” said Turner. “Typically, her story is characterized by quite a male gaze. And we have a sort of crude way of remembering the wives, which basically just lists them off as ‘beheaded, divorced, died.’ They’re usually reduced to a number, a very limited way of thinking about them.

“This felt like an exciting opportunity to get under the skin of who Anne was as a woman, and as a fully fleshed out character in her own right — not a supporting character in the story of Henry VIII or [Thomas] Cromwell.”

Turner said she purposefully stayed away from other versions of the story in her retelling of the tale.

“I did read Phillipa Gregory novels and stuff when I was in school. But when I took on this project, I didn’t want to feel too influenced by other retellings, or lean on their interpretations of events,” she said.

“I’m looking forward to watching ‘Wolf Hall.’ I’m excited about going back and having a look at those [other versions of the story].”

The three episodes, which also aired on Channel 5 in the UK, play out like a psychological thriller.

“When I realized that there were these five months that passed between her being the most powerful woman in England, to being ripped down and inevitably murdered by her husband and other powerful figures at court, that felt like a really clear, intense, sort of claustrophobic spiraling story,” said Turner.