'The Great' star Elle Fanning watched a video of her mom giving birth to her sister Dakota Fanning while preparing for a childbearing scene on season 2

• Catherine, Elle Fanning's character on Hulu's "The Great," is pregnant for most of season two.
• To prepare for the delivery scene, she watched a video of her mom birthing her sister Dakota Johnson.

Elle Fanning watched a video of her mother birthing her older sister Dakota Fanning to prepare for her delivery scene on the upcoming season of Hulu's "The Great," the 23-year-old told Entertainment Weekly on Tuesday.

On Tony McNamara's "occasionally true" sophomore season, premiering Friday, Catherine (Elle) is pregnant with her and Peter's (Nicholas Hoult) son for the majority of the episodes. Intent on accurately depicting a woman in labor despite never having given birth in real life, Elle studied up by conversing with a midwife and coursing through videos of deliveries, she told EW.

She also dug into her family's archive.

"I was born during a tornado, so they couldn't video when I was born because the hospital was in lockdown — which is very fitting, I think," the actress said.

"But I do have a tape of my mother giving birth to my sister," she added, referring to her older sister, fellow actress Dakota.

Heather Joy Arrington, Elle and Dakota's mother, "didn't have any drugs or anything" when she welcomed the now-27-year-old, the actress explained.

"It's scarred in my brain of what that's like!" Elle said.

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At the end of season one, which hit the streaming platform in 2020, Catherine organizes a full-fledged coup to overthrow Peter and assume control of the Russian throne. Once empress, she aspires to set her adopted country on a new and more progressive path.

While the couple embarks on a bloody battle for the crown, they're also awaiting the arrival of their first child together. The fact that Catherine carries the next generation of the royal bloodline offers her a degree of protection and makes for an interesting, hot-and-cold dynamic between the spouses going into season two.

"The season has a very parental theme running through it," Elle said, according to PopSugar.

The actress, who also serves as an executive producer, continued, "So [we're] having Catherine grappling with the fact that she is going to become a mother soon. But then the baby is also her protection because she knows while [he or she], we call it 'Paul,' while Paul's in there — she's safe, and Peter's not going to kill her with the baby in there."

Elle added: "So she's kind of understanding of that and then also having to become a mother to the country."

Season two of "The Great" premieres Friday on Hulu.