


She was pregnant with her second son, Nero Claudius Drusus, when Gaius Julius Caesar - later the emperor Caesar Augustus - arranged for her to divorce Nero and marry him. Her first husband was her cousin Tiberius Claudius Nero and their son, Tiberius, was the future emperor. Her father was Marcus Livius Drusus Claudianus. Livia Drusilla was born on January 30, 58 BC, and died in AD 29. Here is the lowdown on the real-life figures behind four key characters in Domina - Marcus Livius Drusus Claudianus, Tiberius Claudius Nero, Gaius Julius Caesar and Livia Drusilla herself. If nothing is known at all about them, then fine – we can invent as much as we want.” What we know of their character, we will put that in. “But it’s about the first royal family of Rome and those characters are well-known - where they were born, where they died – and those characters are all faithfully represented. “We didn’t invent any characters except slaves or murderers or the owners of a brothel.

Within the framework of stuff that really happened, we were able to invent new reasons for why it happened while staying faithful to history. “But in between you have the how and the why, and that was what we were just able to take a very different, invented fictional direction. However Burke recognises that some creative licence was needed for the show – and that some characters like slaves (such as Antigone, played by Melodie Wakivuamina and Colette Dalal Tchantcho) and the brothel owner Balbina (played by Isabella Rossellini) were invented. “What happened and when it happened and where it happened and who did it, those things are written down in sources which we have and we were very faithful to those.” “We were very authentic and very accurate because Sky Italia really wanted something based on fact,” said creator Simon Burke. Largely, yes – the show’s production team were keen to be authentic as possible.
