Holliday Grainger & David Oakes Gear Up For ‘The Borgias’ Season Finale

Showtime’s “original crime family” drama, “The Borgias,” wraps up its first season this weekend and there’s some big trouble in store for Jeremy Iron’s Pope Alexander VI and his clan.

”[Cardinal] Della Rovere definitely brings his carnage to Rome, well, through Italy,” series star Holliday Grainger, who plays Borgias daughter Lucrezia, told Access Hollywood, of what’s coming up in this week’s dramatic season finale.

Holliday’s own character, Lucrezia, will be bolder than she’s been, something that was hinted in last week’s episode when she played on the vanity of France’s King Charles, using her charms to gather more information about his army’s battle tactics, to aid her family.

“She’s forced to grow up. She has to deal with a lot of things very quickly and I think it’s kind of her point where she goes, ‘All right, not everyone in the world is a fantastic person; I’m out of my little family circle, so maybe I’ll have to be a little bit mischievous myself,’” Holiday said.

David Oakes, who has brought to life the black sheep of the family — Juan Borgias, the military man with a questionable paternity, said that although the Borgias are in for a ride, they are here to stay.

“I think what’s exciting about ‘The Borgias,’ is it’s not like anything that people have seen before. There’s a lot of historical shows out there at the moment that are doing the same kind of sex and violence historical thing,” he told Access. “With ‘The Borgias,’ you’re gonna have to use your head, you’re gonna have to think. This is a family that’s gonna be here for a while and they’re going to really start stretching what people expect from them.”

And – SPOILER — that means David too is coming back, something historical buffs might be wondering about.

“Yes, there will be a second season for Juan. That’s a big spoiler,” he laughed. “Read the history books. You know it’s coming. The question is, how it’s coming.”

David, an alumnus of the Starz miniseries “Pillars of the Earth,” where he also played another character – William – with a bendable moral backbone, has found jumping into Juan’s shoes, nothing but wickedly delightful.

“People often say, ‘What’s it like to play someone evil?’ And you don’t play evil, you can’t do that, you have to present the truth of a character through that and then through his actions comes across somebody, who has… moral questions that aren’t answered in the way a normal human being would answer them. I find it fascinating,” David said. “As far as I’m concerned, Juan in ‘The Borgias’ and William in ‘Pillars of the Earth’ are both wonderful people, upstanding members of the society who just have mildly hedonistic streaks.

“I love it,” he continued, with a sly smile. “If you can beat someone around their head and torso and suffocate someone with a pillow, and be abused in a bath by your mother or slay people in a battlefield and people still want to kind of like you, then you’re really pushing people’s expectations of what they want from their television.”

The season finale of “The Borgias” airs on Sunday at 10 PM on Showtime.

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