“It’s like, ‘Fanny Adams, 7 Drury Lane, a pretty girl, bit overweight, smells a bit in summer, six pence, gives a guy a good time.’” It’s so matter-of-fact as well,” Alison Owen, an executive producer on the series, said. It was this list that had inspired Buffini to write “Harlots” in the first place. To keep track of the hundreds of prostitutes, an annual underground publication known as “Harris’ List of Covent Garden Ladies” was basically a visitor’s guide that summed up each of the whores in the city. So there was a huge market for female flesh, basically, and it was an incredibly lucrative and profitable market, and some of those profits did stay in the hands of the women.” “Harlots” Liam Daniel/Hulu It had just been the Seven Years War, so there was a vast army, and all the soldiers needed attending to as well. Young men came to London to train in all manner of professions, and didn’t have the money to marry until they were maybe 30 or so, and spent their 20s whoring. “Americans would come in droves as tourists and for reasons of trade, and many of them didn’t bring their wives, they would go whoring. “London was the sex capital of the world at the time,” said Buffini. There was just no escaping from sex in London, which is why it was such big business. The way she talked about it, the way she reacted to people having sex, the way she discussed it with her children, with the girls, that was kind of one of the other really interesting singular things about it.” Sex is just sort of part of everyday happenings, and Samantha was brilliant at that. Executive producer Debra Hayward said, “Sex is very everyday… You see in that opening scene when the girls come in and the two children are listening at the door. Protecting her daughters from sex wasn’t a consideration at all merely because sex was everywhere and not a hidden activity. READ MORE: TV Imports: The Best Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Acquired Series You’re Not Watching “So what you have to do is do the very best for them that you can within that profession, and that’s what Margaret tried to do, she’s passionately ambitious for her daughters, and she’s really doing this from the motives that all mothers have, you want the best thing for your children.” It’s going to be very difficult for you to move them from your outlaw society into decent society,” explained Buffini. “If you’re a whore, all your daughters are automatically considered to be whores. Having a mother and her daughters in the same flesh peddling business was not uncommon during that time. While Charlotte is an accomplished harlot with many admirers and one patron in particular, Lucy still has her virginity, a commodity that Margaret does not want to squander for too low a price or on the wrong man. Wells has a particularly vested interest in two of her girls: her daughters Charlotte (“Downton Abbey’s” Jessica Brown Findlay) and Lucy (Eloise Smyth). Even though their incomes were probably higher, their freedoms were much more limited than the women who worked for Margaret Wells.” “Harlots” Liam Daniel/Hulu “They’re beauties, they all have to behave in a certain ladylike way, they have to have certain accomplishments that were the accomplishments that all young, educated, upper-class women would have had at the time. “Lydia Quigley sees her girls as kind of much more homogenous,” she added. Margaret sees all these things as a plus. She sees them having a bit of character as being a good selling point, and being able to talk back to the men and to basically give the men a good time in terms of their personality as well as their body. “Margaret Wells encourages the individuality of her girls. “Every house was different as well, and it would kind of depend on whose house you ended up in, what your experience was like,” observed Buffini. Her chief rival is Lydia Quigley (Lesley Manville), a madam who tries to set her prostitutes apart by giving them education and then charging a pretty penny to her higher-ranking clientele. Through writing about their survival, you sort of see all the darkness and see the way that society is set up to give them no rights.” “Harlots” Liam Daniel/HuluĪt the center of “Harlots” is Margaret Wells (Samantha Morton), a brothel owner for the people who grew up in the business herself. And we sort of thought, we should write about how they survived, rather than how they were oppressed. They’re full of laughter, that they’re very ebullient, larger-than-life characters. “The women that it’s about use humor as a weapon and as a sort of shield. “It is dark subject matter, but we didn’t want it to be a miserable show,” co-creator and writer Moira Buffini told IndieWire in January. Holy Hulu! The 7 Juiciest Reveals from Bombshell Disney vs Comcast Report
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