Accuracy: The Good Kind
The desire for historical accuracy is real and well-intentioned. Directors want to get it right. Writers want the world to feel textured. Designers want to avoid pastiche. And sometimes, accuracy delivers. A correctly tailored cloak. The right liturgical gesture. A loaf of bread that looks like it was baked under Henry VIII (so to speak).
Some parts of history are easy wins on screen.
Coronations? Yes. Executions? Even better. A procession through the streets, ideally in the rain, with a cheering or jeering crowd? Sign me up. These are moments built for spectacle. They explain themselves. Nobody needs a footnote to understand that the king is dead, the heir is nervous, and the crowd is watching.
There’s a kind of authenticity that doesn’t need justifying — it simply works. Used well, historical detail gives the world weight. It reassures the viewer, even subconsciously, that this place has rules, memory, structure. That people lived here before the cameras arrived.
When It Doesn’t
But not all history is helpful.
Some of it is good on paper and dead on arrival on set. A 14th-century land dispute over the grazing rights of some pigs. The correct way to address a bishop’s nephew. The proper seating arrangement of a council chamber in 1327. All fascinating (for me, anyway). All unwatchable. Of these three, the first should never have made it to script, and the second two I would not take to the director (too fussy, and ‘who cares’, respectively).
And then there’s visual detail.
There is something called Selective Attention Theory. It explains how our brains filter out a huge amount of sensory information so that we’re not overwhelmed by sights and sounds. Recall being engaged in a conversation at a loud party, not tuned into any of the other conversations around you. Until you hear your name? In film-making, it’s crucial to remember that our brains are better at applying this filter in real life than on screen. The film-maker has to apply Selective Attention; know when to use clamour, and when to drop the name.
In short, historical detail can become noisy and distracting. Detail for detail’s sake. Not every fact is a building block. Some are sandbags.
Even the useful bits — etiquette, gesture, social codes — only help if the viewer can follow the logic. A character standing behind a chair but not sitting might be signalling deference. Or waiting to be invited. Or maybe they just missed their mark. Without context, that kind of accuracy reads as confusion. Or worse, bad blocking.
Accuracy vs. Story
This is where historical consultancy earns its place. Not by throwing books at the production office, or lecturing about sleeve lengths. But by helping teams spot which details matter, and which ones are going to get in the way.
Thomas Seymour on the block, in Becoming Elizabeth.
When on set for Thomas Seymour’s execution on Becoming Elizabeth, I was asked by the director to arrange the actors (executioner and victim of course, but also a priest, attendants, and so on) and the set dressing, so that it was as accurate as possible. I pointed out that the block was too far forwards – almost at the very edge of the scaffold. Is this a point of certain historical accuracy? Not really. It goes back to my Golden Rule of Historical Authenticity (see earlier blog). With the block so far forward, when the head is severed (which was not a clean process, in the case of Seymour…), it would roll off the scaffold to the ground – how undignified. The director’s reply? “Very good point. But for the camera angle, this will work best. How big a deal is this?”
“No biggy,” said I. “Not something anybody will notice, I reckon.”
Together we were absolutely right. The scene looked great, uncluttered, dramatic. And authentic.
The Real Job
There’s a basic question we come back to again and again: does the audience understand what they’re seeing? If yes, good. If no — can we fix it with context, or does it need to go? These are the questions we, with directors and writers, ask all the time. This, in fact is most of my job.
In the end, we’re not there to issue certificates of historical purity. We’re there to help the production build a coherent world — one that supports story, tone, pace, and performance. And yes, that sometimes means cutting things that are correct.
It’s not about getting everything in. It’s about getting the right things across.
Use the past. Don’t explain it.
And if it’s accurate but boring? Bin it.
For more on this topic, take a look at Can we lie about history?