{"id":24605,"date":"2026-02-18T10:33:44","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T15:33:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/behind-the-scenes-of-lucy-worsley-investigates-the-american-revolution\/"},"modified":"2026-02-24T20:55:35","modified_gmt":"2026-02-25T01:55:35","slug":"behind-the-scenes-of-lucy-worsley-investigates-the-american-revolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/behind-the-scenes-of-lucy-worsley-investigates-the-american-revolution\/","title":{"rendered":"Behind the Scenes of\u00a0Lucy Worsley Investigates: The American Revolution"},"content":{"rendered":"

To commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, BBC Studios is offering a two-part special, Lucy Worsley Investigates: The American Revolution<\/em>. Historian, author and curator Lucy Worsley returns to the small screen to visit key sites, speak with experts and examine how a band of American rebels broke away from the British Empire. Worsley and executive producer Amanda Lyon discuss the program, some of the little-known facts it reveals and the value of presenting the emotional truth of history.<\/p>\n

TV REAL:<\/strong>\u00a0How did the show come about?
\nLYON:<\/strong>\u00a0We\u2019ve made two series with Lucy already called\u00a0Lucy Worsley Investigates<\/em>, which look at a quite well-known piece of history and try to do a bit of myth-busting on it. With the anniversary of the American Revolution coming up, it felt like the perfect opportunity to do a two-parter and a bit of a deep dive into a piece of history that had a bit more international recognition. On\u00a0Investigates<\/em>, we do things like Jack the Ripper or Bloody Mary. This is a bigger subject, and we thought we\u2019d give it two episodes.<\/p>\n

TV REAL:<\/strong>\u00a0Is it from the British perspective?
\nLYON:<\/strong>\u00a0We realized that the American Revolution is not taught in depth in either the British or the American school systems. But the topline you get if you\u2019re a British person is that George III lost the American colonies. And if you\u2019re an American person: We won our freedom from the British. But in the middle, there\u2019s a whole load of nuance and a whole load of questions about how that happened. Was it as binary as that? Of course not, and we thought there was a lot to play with.<\/p>\n

It is from the British perspective, insofar as we look at people based in Britain who supported the Americans, such as radical politicians like John Wilkes and Thomas Paine, who lived and worked in Sussex before emigrating. We\u2019re also looking at the things you don\u2019t know about. There\u2019s a guy who called himself John the Painter. Today, we\u2019d call him a terrorist. He launched arson attacks on the British docks to try to scupper the British navy, and he was doing that in support of the American cause of liberty. There were lots of things that happened in Britain that we simply don\u2019t get told but are kind of revelatory, and so we wanted to do a lot more on that. We did film in America, but a lot was filmed in Britain.<\/p>\n

TV REAL:<\/strong>\u00a0Lucy, you have such an engaging way of explaining events, mysteries and little-known facts from history, even putting yourself in your subjects\u2019 shoes! What do you want to offer viewers?
\nWORSLEY:<\/strong>\u00a0The flattering way in which you\u2019ve asked me this question shows that you have impeccable taste in TV viewing! I like to think I make history programs for people who don\u2019t even know that they like history…\u00a0yet<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I hope to coax people in over the threshold and invite them to make themselves at home in the wonderful world of doing historical research.\u00a0My dream is that viewers will get the bug, and one day be reading books or doing courses or even visiting archives for real.\u00a0I often imagine, if I need to explain something historical on screen, that I\u2019m talking to my brother, who\u2019s an engineer, so someone whose mind works very differently from mine.<\/p>\n

LYON:<\/strong>\u00a0It\u2019s wonderful working with Lucy. She has this enormous range of knowledge and communicates it in a very accessible way. She is super smart and can communicate with everyone brilliantly. She\u2019s interested in the small things that throw light on real life, and that\u2019s so compelling. In this series, we\u2019re not talking about battles and who shot who and what the casualties were. We\u2019re talking about hearts and minds, how the dial has moved and how people feel about things. That\u2019s what she\u2019s really good at: the emotional truth of history. And I think that\u2019s why people like her programs.<\/p>\n

TV REAL:<\/strong>\u00a0When and how did your passion for history develop?
\nWORSLEY:<\/strong>\u00a0As a kid, I devoured the historical novels for young readers by British author Jean Plaidy.\u00a0One of them was called\u00a0The Young Elizabeth,\u00a0<\/em>and it was about Queen Elizabeth I growing up at Hampton Court Palace.\u00a0It had a picture of the palace on the cover, and I\u2019m pretty sure it\u2019s one of the reasons I ended up working at Hampton Court myself in later life, becoming chief curator there for 20 years.\u00a0I also visited an open-air museum in England with my mum, where the Tudor farmhouse had an open-drop toilet\u2014literally a hole in a bench suspended\u00a0over thin air in the corner of the bedroom.\u00a0I remember being very struck with how strange that was.\u00a0It\u2019s why, as a grown-up, I\u2019m quite willing to engage with funny or silly aspects\u00a0of history that just might open up a window in people\u2019s minds into the strange, lost world of the past.<\/p>\n

TV REAL:<\/strong>\u00a0Was it difficult to get access to the experts and locations for these two episodes?
\nLYON:<\/strong>\u00a0No, it wasn\u2019t. We always try to have a range of voices\u2014academics who aren\u2019t generalists but have specific types of knowledge. One of my favorite scenes is when we go to a museum in Manchester where they hold a collection of what we think of now as political merchandise, because John Wilkes, this radical politician, made teapots with his name on them that you could buy, and said, \u201cWilkes and Liberty,\u201d and you could pour a cup of tea. Amazing things like that. Then, in the opening scene, we found that until the year we\u2019re commemorating, there was a huge statue of George III on horseback like a Roman emperor in Battery Park in New York City. After the Declaration of Independence was read, some people went downtown, and they pulled this statue down, a bit as they did with Saddam Hussein\u2019s, or some of the slave-owning people we\u2019ve had in the U.K. They pulled the statue down and melted a lot of it down to turn into musket balls. They literally melted the king down to fire on his troops. But we found that there\u2019s a bit of it remaining\u2014the tail of the horse. The tail of the big bronze horse George III was sitting on is still at the New York Historical Society, and we got them to take it out and have a look at it. We\u2019re always trying to find things that aren\u2019t documented but that shed light on history. So, no, we had a lovely time finding people to talk to us and things to look at.<\/p>\n

TV REAL:<\/strong>\u00a0PBS has been a partner on several of your shows. How did they become involved in this? What was the catch for them?
\nLYON:<\/strong>\u00a0I think it was the American Revolution. They get us to make a program about their history, and weirdly, that was one of the things that we were slightly nervous about. When we were making it, we were worried, [thinking], gosh, are American viewers going to know too much? Are we going to have to make radically different versions for the British audience and the American audience? What interested me was that although perceptions of what had happened were kind of binary and in opposition, I think most Americans are as sketchy on the details as the Brits are. They might know Paul Revere, and they\u2019re probably a bit more familiar with Lexington and Concord, maybe Yorktown, but it felt like in both territories, people were ready for some detail.<\/p>\n

TV REAL:<\/strong>\u00a0Is there any moment from the show that really stood out to you?
\nLYON:<\/strong>\u00a0I was quite taken with Benjamin Franklin\u2019s treason machine. Benjamin Franklin is known for his experiments with electricity, and we got a prop made because we found records of him having this treason machine made. It was a picture of George III that he had basically electrified so that if you said something nasty about the king, you got a little electric shock. This was when Franklin was a royalist. We got a prop maker to build a machine, and it appears in both the drama and the interview. It\u2019s an unexpected insight into how his political perspectives changed, but also that here\u2019s a real person who was a bit cheeky, and I like that. I like that little moment where you get an insight into a person that makes them a bit more real.<\/p>\n

TV REAL:<\/strong>\u00a0Why is it important to revisit history today?
\nWORSLEY:<\/strong>\u00a0Well, the work of a historian is never, ever done, because each new generation that comes along deserves its own fresh look at the old stories.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s always a new discovery that changes our interpretation, or a new perspective to take into account.\u00a0History\u2019s really just a subtle way of reflecting on and discovering what we believe to be true about our world today.<\/p>\n

Lucy Worsley Investigates: The American Revolution<\/em> will be presented to global customers at the BBC Studios Showcase on February 23 and 24.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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