‘The Bluff’: Was Bloody Mary a Real Pirate?

“The Bluff” is now streaming on Prime Video, bringing viewers into the action-packed story of former pirate “Bloody Mary.” It’s a pretty sick name, and the film does pull inspiration from real-life piracy, so it might make you wonder: was Bloody Mary actually a real pirate?

Priyanka Chopra Jonas stars as Ercell “Bloody Mary” Bodden in the film, a woman living a peaceful life in the Cayman Islands with her husband T.H. (Ismael Cruz Cordova), their son Isaac (Vedanten Naidoo) and her sister-in-law Elizabeth (Safia Oakley-Green). But, she has a secret; she used to be a pirate.

When her former captain, Connor (Karl Urban), arrives at her home seeking revenge for stealing his gold, Ercell is forced back into her violent past, and must fight to protect her family and alert the British Royal Navy, so they can provide assistance to the residents of the island. Along the way, viewers get glimpses into her past, and learn just how deadly she was — well, is.

“The Bluff” marked the first pirate-based script that both Chopra Jonas and Urban had ever gotten in their careers — perhaps unsurprising, considering the only truly successful modern pirate movie up to this point was Disney’s “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise. And those were expensive movies; the first film had a $140 million budget, and it only increased from there.

“I think ‘The Bluff’ was an interesting opportunity to do something completely different in that genre, and to treat it a little bit more gritty, and to, you know, add a little bit more sort of realism as to what it actually was like in 1846 and what it would be like to be to be hunted by a group of pirates and have to defend your family,” Urban told TheWrap. “It’s frightening, but it just makes for, you know, a fun, action-packed spectacle well.”

But was Bloody Mary herself part of that realism?

Was Bloody Mary a real pirate?

Alas, despite having a very good pirate moniker, Bloody Mary was not a real pirate. You’d be forgiven for thinking she was though, because in real life, there is in fact a very famous pirate named Mary.

Mary Read was an actual pirate who served under John Rackham, during the Golden Age of Piracy. At the start of “The Bluff,” a title card informs viewers that the year is 1846 and that the Golden Age is coming to an end, which could help you think it’s a true story as well. In actuality, the Golden Age of Piracy was long since over by 1846, ending in 1730.

Read served in Rackham’s crew alongside another famous female pirate named Anne Bonny, but not much is actually known about her life. She did reportedly claim to be pregnant after she was arrested and scheduled to be hanged, but it is believed to be a lie, and she died in prison shortly thereafter.

Still, Chopra-Jonas infused the character with real-life elements, after learning for the first time herself that female pirates actually existed.

“When I first read the script, I had no idea female pirates could even exist in reality,” she admitted to TheWrap. “So I thought it was some sort of a fantasy character, until I started doing research and came across Mary Read, and Grace O’Malley, and Ching Shih, and so many women across the world that had done these amazing things and had really brutal lives.”

Was Captain Connor a real captain?

Likewise, Karl Urban’s Captain Francisco Connor was also not a real pirate. But, he does give some real information in “The Bluff,” when he expresses anger over how he and his crew had come to be treated.

In real life, pirates really were created by the government, hired as privateers to take over vessels that the government couldn’t openly attack themselves. These men and women would receive cuts of the haul and were largely given free rein on the seas until the government eventually branded them criminals. That realism helped Urban ground the fictional pirate captain.

“We are people that were hired by an empire to do a job and then outlawed and ostracized,” he explained to TheWrap. “So, for me, Connor was betrayed not only by his country, but then by his lover and his partner. And I just found that to be such sort of interesting and rich territory to kind of ground this character and launch him into this story.”

“The Bluff” is now streaming on Prime Video.

The post ‘The Bluff’: Was Bloody Mary a Real Pirate? appeared first on TheWrap.