TCA: 'The Borgias' EP Sees Series Spanning Four Seasons

Executive Producer James Flynn explains how he envisions the period drama's lifespan.

12:42 PM PST 1/12/2012 by Jethro Nededog

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While history is what made Showtime’s The Borgias possible, the downside is that it also gives a timeline for the series. Fortunately for fans of the period drama, the show’s producers have a way around that.

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“I think the overall plan in a series like this is ideally four seasons,” Executive Producer James Flynn tells reporters at the TCA press tour in Pasadena on Thursday. “That would be the plan. That would be the ambition. Of course, we can always go beyond that with Pope Julius and his reign.”

The series, which portrays the late-15th Century Pope Alexander VI (Jeremy Irons) and his family as the ultimate mobsters, returns for its second season after Rodrigo Borgia has captured the powerful position.

“There are number of things in Season 2 that is impacting his conscience,” Flynn says. “He’s beginning to think of his legacy. How is he going to go down in history. Having gotten there, what does he do? Those doubts that he showed in Season 1 are emerging.”

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“It seems to me that we’re not even half way through Alexander’s reign,” Irons adds about his character. “He was there for 12 years, so there’s an enormous wealth of material available to us.”

As it stands, Flynn says that the enormous amount of material very easily lends itself to the dramatic needs of the show.

“I didn't have to manipulate events to make them dramatically engaging,” he says of the highly documented period of the papacy. He then adds, "I didn't have to make things up to make these people seem crazy."

The Borgias second season premieres Sunday, April 8 on Showtime.

Email: Jethro.Nededog@thr.com; Twitter: @TheRealJethro