James Purefoy tells Chris Evans about starring in new drama series Marie Antoinette

Virgin Radio

20 Dec 2022, 10:08

Actor James Purefoy joined The Chris Evans Breakfast Show with Sky to talk about playing Louis XV in a new eight-part drama, Marie Antoinette.

The new series premieres on BBC Two on Thursday 29th December at 9pm, with all episodes then available on iPlayer. Regarding the show, James said: “It’s a chance to look through the keyhole of the maddest royal family.”

He continued: “There probably are one or two racy moments, aren’t there?

“This isn’t a royal family that go and open a care home or a railway station, or go and meet people. They’re just there, in Versailles, hunting, and, as far as I could see, just doing a lot of ladyfun in the afternoons.”

The show - which follows Marie Antoinette’s arrival at Versailles as she endeavours to stamp her vision on the French Court - is created by Deborah Davis. James said: “She wrote a film called the favourite, that Olivia Colman won the Oscar for, so she knows her onions. She will have done a huge amount of research into this period and into these people’s lives and she’ll be giving up her take on it.” 

All of the show’s writers are female. James told Chris: “I think it’s a feminist take, in the sense that Marie Antionette (played by Emilia Schüle) was only 14 when she arrived in the court of Louis, from Austria. She’d been... check this out, married by proxy. Which means they send someone to Austria, that person marries her in Austria, so that she is supposedly ‘married’ by the time she comes back to Paris, and then they have a second wedding to the actual person, which is my [character’s] grandson (played Louis Cunningham), who turns out to be Louis XVI.” 

Regarding his own character, James said: “He was on the thrones for 59 years, and about 15 years later, of course, there was the French Revolution, so that was just around the corner.

“Little surprise there, you look at them and you go, ‘really?’”

On playing the King, the Fisherman's Friends star said: “They teach you at drama school, they say, ‘You can’t ever be the King. Everybody else has to let you be the King’. So, it’s all about everybody else in the room’s reaction to you, not the way you do it to them. So, it’s about the way the guards stiffen up as you come into the room, and stand to attention. It’s the way everybody stands up. It’s all about everybody else, it’s not really about you at all.”

The costume department employed more than 65 people, and each outfit required nearly six weeks of work. James told Chris about filming the series. “It was beautiful. We were shooting in Versailles,” he enthused. “I would be dressed up as Louis XV of France, and I am a terrible wanderer on set. The assistant directors find it hard to keep track of me, because it’s interesting, isn’t it? And you want to have a little nose around, and I found myself in Louis’ office one day, and I had a security guard, who was assigned to me, because I had been found out to be a wanderer.

"And I said to him, ‘Please just give me five minutes in here, on my own.’ And he said, ‘No, you may sit at the desk. Do be careful, the desk is the most valuable antique in all of Versailles. It is valued at 50 million euros, so do not scratch it!’

“So I sat there in my wig and in my costume, in his office on my own, for maybe five minutes, which is just such a glorious thing for an actor. You really geek out on that, because you can sit there just inhabiting the space and being the character, with nobody watching you. You’re just sitting at Louis’ desk, looking at the extraordinary gardens at Versailles.”

He added: “You’re in the room, you’re in the place where it all happened, and it’s just thrilling.”

Marie Antoinette premieres on BBC Two on Thursday 29th December at 9pm, with all episodes then available on BBC iPlayer.

For more great interviews listen to  The Chris Evans Breakfast Show with Sky, weekdays from 6:30am on Virgin Radio, or  catch up on-demand here.