Marie Antoinette

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Nighy: I was finishing my second year of literature studies at the time, so during shooting I was also preparing for a six-hour Chaucer exam. I got to stay in a very nice hotel and wear these gorgeous costumes everyday and then go home to read Chaucer every night. What a loser, right? Lanser, Susan S. (2003). "Eating Cake: The (Ab)uses of Marie-Antoinette". In Goodman, Dena; Kaiser, Thomas E. (eds.). Marie Antoinette: Writings on the Body of a Queen. Routledge. pp.273–290. ISBN 978-0415933957. Barrett: The bedroom was the most historically accurate set. The fabrics we used for her bed and the walls were incredibly detailed reprints of the real thing. We built a lot of the furniture since it wasn’t like we could rent all those different antiques. We had to be honest not only to history but also to the craftsmanship of the period. Kate Mulleavy, Rodarte co-founder: Sofia has always made such personal films, and Marie Antoinette is one of our favourites. I remember seeing the film in a Paris theatre and just being captivated by [Dunst’s] performance and the whole world Sofia created. I knew I had seen something completely iconic. Johnson, Paul (1990). Intellectuals. New York: Harper & Row. pp. 17–18. ISBN 9780060916572. The 'facts' he so frankly admits often emerge, in the light of modern scholarship, to be inaccurate, distorted or non-existent.

Amy Pascal, then-Sony Pictures Entertainment co-chairman: I’m obsessed with Sofia. I worship her. After I saw Lost in Translation I was so blown away that I followed her around like a groupie. I basically stalked her until she agreed to make a movie with me, and Marie Antoinette was her passion project. Coppola struggled to condense the queen’s short but eventful life into a film that felt accessible. She enjoyed working her way through Marie Antoinette’s teendom – the parties, the fashion – but was less engaged by her tragic final years. Coppola often alternated between writing Marie Antoinette and the script that became her second feature, a story about a young American woman and a fading movie star in Tokyo. Dunst: Getting to work with Molly was such a huge deal to me because I was the biggest SNL fan in the world. Sofia is so good at casting people who work well off of each other. The cast was her reimagining of what the court would look and feel like at that time – there’s the funny one, that one’s the gossip, she’s the mean girl. It was like high school at Versailles. Nighy: I think I wore around 50 dresses. The petticoats were like a cage around your legs that made it impossible to sit or fit through doorways, and 18th-century corsets push up your boobs so you can’t really slouch. I met with a teacher at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts because I wanted to learn how to manage naturalistic movement in such restrictive costumes.

“There Was Plenty of Movie Magic Involved”

To commemorate its anniversary, Vogue talked to the cast, crew, and more about how Marie Antoinette came together. “I Was Less Interested in the Political Side of History’” Schwartzman: It was an experience I’ll never forget. I met my wife because of that movie in a way, because I had met her a few days before the premiere in Los Angeles. I asked her if she’d come as my date and that was pretty much the night I decided I was in love with her. So that movie kinda propelled me into the next phase of my life. With the sets constructed and the keys to Versailles handed over, Marie Antoinette began filming on March 7, 2005. While the palace has hosted 225 different productions since 1896, Coppola was granted unprecedented access. Having gotten her start as a child model at the age of three, Dunst was an industry veteran before she could legally drive. Shot between two Spider-Man sequels, Marie Antoinette signaled the type of auteur-driven material the then-23 year-old was interested in pursuing more. While most of the cast wore wigs provided by Italian wigmaker Rocchetti & Rocchetti, Kirsten began every shooting day in hair and make-up for two and a half hours. Famed hairstylist Odile Gilbert was brought in to craft Dunst’s rose-tinted curls and sky-high bouffants. Long accustomed to the fast-paced nature of styling runway shows for Chanel and Dior, Gilbert made her film debut with Marie Antoinette.

Antoinette Boulat, Marie Antoinette casting director: Sofia wasn’t making a conventional costume drama so I knew she didn’t want a conventional cast. We had some visual references since they’d be playing real people, but Sofia wanted to find actors she was excited about. She was more interested in the actor’s personality than their star power.Katz: I was pissed off. I told our publicist, “You’ve gotta get a hold on this, nothing happened the way it’s being reported.” We had people jump to their feet and give us a standing ovation at the premiere, so I was upset that it got lost because of something so petty as a few boos at a press screening. Shannon: There was a very “work hard, play hard” mentality. The studio got my family an apartment in the 15th arrondissement and I only had to work a couple scattered days over a month, so it kinda felt like having my maternity leave in Paris. Everybody lived in different neighbourhoods so we’d compare notes on the best restaurants and supermarkets. Blahnik: Working on this film meant I got to fulfil my boyhood dream of making shoes for Marie Antoinette – even if it was three centuries later and for a film. It’s one of the great masterpieces of the last 20 years. And I’m not just saying that because I was involved.

Kate Mulleavy, Rodarte co-founder: Sofia has always made such personal films, and Marie Antoinette is one of our favorites. I remember seeing the film in a Paris theater and just being captivated by [Dunst’s] performance and the whole world Sofia created. I knew I had seen something completely iconic. Fraser: There’s a historian who said “We should always be aware that what now lies in the past once lay in the future.” Marie never anticipated what sorrows lay ahead, and how could she? She was sad about leaving [her pug] Mops behind [in Vienna] but she was going to be the Queen of France. She expected to have a good time, and she certainly had one. Rousseau's first six books were written in 1765, when Marie Antoinette was nine years of age, and published when she was 26, eight years after she became queen. Dornan: Marie Antoinette was not only my acting debut, but also my first audition. I signed with my agent in London on a Friday and had a meeting with the film’s casting director the following Tuesday. Two days later they flew me to Paris to audition with a different casting director, and if it went well I was supposed to stay in town and meet Sofia in the Hemingway Bar at the Ritz. It went well, so Sofia and I had a couple drinks and she casually told me that I got the part. It was all very fast and very surreal. I thought, “Wow, this is gonna be an easy career!” And then I barely worked for eight years. But it was certainly a nice way to start. “There Was Plenty of Movie Magic Involved” Schwartzman: I knew Kirsten from over the years but it was a dream to actually work together. We would do these scenes in bed where we’re not connecting, but you’ve gotta be so connected to do that. It felt like we could just be together and laugh a lot. Those are some of my most vivid memories from set.With production over, some of the film’s more high-end contributions were returned to their owners, such as Blahnik’s eye-popping footwear. Sony and a private collector bought a bulk of the costumes while Canonero kept “a few.” Otherwise, the art department assembled a “fire sale” to sell off all the other luxury items used in Marie Antoinette. With production over, some of the film’s more high-end contributions were returned to their owners, such as Blahnik’s eye-popping footwear. Sony and a private collector bought the bulk of the costumes while Canonero kept “a few”. Otherwise, the art department assembled a “fire sale” to sell off all the other luxury items used in Marie Antoinette.

Nighy: Some of the dialogue was scripted, but Sofia left quite a lot of space in the script for improvisation. There were lots of descriptions that said “In X conversation, Y is said.” Sofia would just throw us into environments like the masked ball and start filming. Lance and his camera seemed incredibly discreet and very fluid throughout filming, which really allowed the actors to feel un-self-conscious. Tian Chi, quoted in Joshua A. Fogel, Peter Gue Zarrow, Imagining the People: Chinese Intellectuals and the Concept of Citizenship, 1890–1920, 1997, ISBN 0765600986, p. 173 Coppola struggled to condense the queen’s short but eventful life into a film that felt accessible. She enjoyed working her way through Marie Antoinette’s teendom—the parties, the fashion—but was less engaged by her tragic final years. Coppola often alternated between writing Marie Antoinette and the script that became her second feature, a story about a young American woman and a fading movie star in Tokyo. Coppola: Marie’s real bedroom was decorated with bright gold and turquoise fabric, so it wasn’t complete artistic license on my part. You never see those pops of color in period films, but I wanted to depict her world the way she saw it.Coppola: My friend told me that a lot of moms and pre-teen daughters watch it together as a sort of tradition. There was a screening a few years ago where I got to watch it on a big screen with my daughter, and it was so gratifying to see it through her eyes and how into it she was.