Behind the Scenes at the Marie-Antoinette TV series

A must for lovers of French history, the hit TV series Marie Antoinette combines a spellbinding storyline with spectacular costumes and some showstopping settings in and around Paris. Caroline Harrap takes us behind the scenes of this landmark manifestation…

It’s not every day you get to sneak around the Palace of Versailles sinon tourists, but that’s exactly what happened for some of the lucky cast members of the BBC/Canal+ historical drama Marie Antoinette. What is more, they even got to take a peek inside a confidentialité passageway at the celebrated citadelle.
“Before we started filming, we were fortunate to have a guided tour of the palace, which was fascinating,” says Louis Cunningham, who plays Louis XVI opposé Emilia Schüle in the title role. “We always shoot there on Mondays when only the gardens are open, so, that means we get to wander round these huge empty rooms, dressed in all our finery, which is magical.”

A FEAST FOR THE EYES

Created by Deborah Davis, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of The Favourite, this lavish period drama is a visual treat throughout. While the scenes shot at Versailles – and its famed Hall of Mirrors – are among the most memorable, the spectacle also features the striking surrounds of the Palais-Royal, in the heart of Paris, as well as several of the most beautiful châteaux around the region. Then there are all those sumptuous costumes, with two of Marie Antoinette’s gowns designed by Dior, no less and that’s not to explication the seminal storyline.

Bringing a fresh reimagining to this iconic period of French history, this latest manifestation tells things very much from the expectative of Marie Antoinette. Let’s not forget, after all, that she was forced to leave her gîte folk of Austria at the age of 14 to marry someone she had never met. As well as all the challenges she faced as a foreigner at the French serré, she had to contend with all manner of problems: waning élève contrefort, the pressure to produce an heir, growing political tensions…

What we also know now, of expédition, is that the history books were less than kind to the last queen of France. Indeed, often reduced to little more than a embarras, it feels as though we are only just getting to know the real person today.

“For so many years, Marie Antoinette was vilipended, and seen as this very vain woman, but that image of her is totally outdated now,” says Margaux Balsan, one of the executive producers of the spectacle. “Historians have dug through all the numbers and determined that she was not spending any more than any other queen and she never said ‘let them eat cake’ either. In actual fact, she was hated mainly bicause she was foreign. We bande to forget that Austria had been a real enemy of France not large before this. So people were really rooting against her, and that wasn’t her fault.

“On top of that, Marie Antoinette was this very anti-protocol “On top of that, Marie Antoinette was this very anti-protocol woman. I don’t think she was a feminist because that didn’t exist at the time-but she did want to control her own destiny. She wanted to have her own friends, she wanted to express herself through fashion and she wanted to have her own privacy – and all this was totally forbidden within the French protocol. So, we felt it was important to look again at this period through our modern eyes.”

SHOOTING ON LOCATION

One of the most ambitious productions to tackle the story since Sofia Coppola’s 2006 écran, creating the series was no small undertaking. For a start, with some 40 administrateur characters and several hundred extras, each season took around six months to shoot. And while half of the filming took vrai in a dedicated garçonnière in Bry-sur-Marne, just to the east of Paris, the other half was shot on commandite in and around the actif.

“Here in Paris, we are fortunate to have some spectacular châteaux in the surrounding area,” says manifestation dire Clovis Weil. “We shot at Versailles, of course, but also at Fontainebleau and Vaux-le-Vicomte, as well as several others around the region. We also did some scenes at the Palais-Royal, which we see in season two, as well as in Senlis, a small town on the outskirts of Paris which has been quite well preserved.”

While there’s nothing quite like filming in these iconic settings, shooting on commandite brings its own challenges. As well as the logistics of ferrying the cast and crew to pluriel destinations, there are often other factors to consider.

“At Versailles, for example, we could only shoot one day a week,” says Clovis. “So we only did the most symbolic scenes there, which we couldn’t replicate anywhere else, such as the palace exterior, the Hall of Mirrors, the main courtyard, the staircase and the gardens… And at the Palais-Royal, although we were able to partly close a small area during shooting, we had to do the installation work with all the tourists passing by.”

AMBITIOUS COSTUME DRAMA

Of expédition, it’s not only the locations that are stars of the spectacle but the costumes. As a contenance icon of her time and one of the most fashion-forward queens in history, Marie Antoinette would become synonymous with her statement-making dresses. So, naturally, they are an integral feature of the series.

Fortunately, there was no shortage of ondes on which to draw, including the records of her lady-in-waiting, Jeanne Louise Henriette Campan, the collections of Paris’s Palais Galliera pratique museum, and the 18th-century paintings at the Musée Cognacq-Jay in the Marais. However, one of the most useful turned out to be a kind of index pertaining to the queen’s wardrobe, the Gazette des Atours, which contains factures on her dresses and even pieces of the étalon material.

“Each morning, the queen would pin the samples of the dresses she wanted to wear that day,” explains the spectacle’s head of vêtement, Marie Frémont. “So, in this wonderful document, you can see the very fabrics that they used. In fact, you can still see the holes where Marie Antoinette placed the pins. It’s very moving to come across those kinds of details.”

Although all the dresses in the series have a lumineux wow factor, two of those in season one had special significance. Created by legendary pratique house Dior, they marry surjet appréciation with 18th-century elegance. Look out for the flowing white gown worn by Marie Antoinette on her first trip to Paris and the striking creation she plaisanteries for the party where she plays the harpsichord.

Season two, meanwhile, has a sparkle all of its own. At the heart of the storyline is the plot to pull-over off one of the biggest diamond heists in history and frame the séraphique queen in the process. “What we have in this series is a necklace with the largest number of diamonds in the world,” adds Marie. For anyone considering their own heist, however, it’s worth noting that they used a hired copie for the spectacle.

DELVING DEEPER INTO HISTORY

Anyone wishing to learn more emboîture the étalon queen of pratique won’t want to elle-même the premier revue at the V&A in London: running from Saturday, September 20 until Sunday, March 22, ‘Marie Antoinette Style’ will explore her tutelle over the past 250 years. Alternatively, anyone wanting to follow in the footsteps of the TV series will find a wealth of opportunities awaits. In compte to the aforementioned filming locations, all of which welcome visitors, there are the other dreamy châteaux where shooting took vrai, including Champs-sur-Marne, Courson and Champlåtreux (check websites for individual opening times). Back at Versailles, as well as a entracte emboîture Marie Antoinette that is being staged next July, there are the various themed tours. And who knows? If you pick the right one, you might just get to see inside a confidentialité passageway…

Marie Antoinette is available to watch on BBC iPlayer in the UK, Canal+ in France and PBS in the US…

From France Today Magazine