Welcome to the French Wolf Hall. Versailles, a historic court drama to rival the Hilary Mantel epic for sexual and political scheming, with lavish locations to dwarf Downton Abbey, is coming to BBC2 later this month. But amid the intrigue and affairs of the heart, the biggest surprise to viewers may be that this French production was made in English and stars two young actors from this side of the Channel.
“At first we thought we were going to get our heads ripped off,” said Alexander Vlahos, from Llantrisant, near Cardiff. “A pair of British actors daring to play these historic French characters. But it has gone down very well.”
Vlahos, 27, already known to British audiences as Mordred in the final series of the BBC1 family drama Merlin, plays the decadent role of Philippe I, Duke of Orléans, and is at the heart of the intrigue and many of the explicit encounters in the show. Known simply as Monsieur in court circles, the duke was the brother of the fabled Sun King, Louis XIV, who is played in the show by fellow British actor George Blagden.
“George is 26 and had been in Vikings on British television, while I had been in Merlin, but we were not household names, so playing the leads in this has been extraordinary,” Vlahos told the Observer this weekend. “This whole show is about the power game between the two brothers. We know there is a lot of interest in period drama at the moment, but the cast in this one are of an average age of around 25, so it does feel quite different.”
“People like labels so, yes, it is a period drama, but not in the conventional BBC sense, or even an ITV sense. Historically speaking, court etiquette should really have been more of a feature, but we didn’t want it to be too stuffy.”
The opulence of the 17th-century French court is central to the story. “It was insane that such young men had so much. And at that time in France there were not many maps, so the king really believed he was at the centre, not just of France, but of the known world.”
Despite initial misgivings about the English-language production, the show has been a huge ratings success in France. Its enormous budget, thought to be around £20m for the first series, and its stylised narrative tricks have provoked comment, but the second series is already filming back on location in Versailles.
Breaking from four hours of fight scenes, Vlahos said that he had not been prepared for the ambition of the project when he arrived on set to film the first series, which was broadcast in France from November last year.
“I didn’t quite know how big it was. I had done an audition and then gone out to New York to appear on Broadway with Kenneth Branagh in his Macbeth. Then the producers called to offer me the job in Paris. At the costume fitting I realised that they were spending £20m on it.”
The show is the most expensive ever made for French television. Canal+, which made Spiral and The Returned, has spent more than £2m on each of the 10 hour-long episodes. “It is political and it is raunchy,” said Vlahos. “The scripts lured me. I read two episodes and felt they were genuinely doing something new. I am proud of it for that. Philippe is a cross-dresser and a warrior. He has a wife, Henriette, and a gay lover as well. In one or two screen moments he has to express love, anger and then sorrow. George has had the opposite experience.
“As the king, he has to be very contained and regal. Even a royal smile was thought of as a weakness at that time. George got rather put in a collar for this role, while I was let off the lead.”
The first series follows the early years of Louis XIV’s reign, from when, at 28, he moved his court to Versailles to gain more political currency.
“There is a lot about pushing against the old form going on,” said Vlahos. “Instead of staying in Paris, Louis decided to uproot and set up in this swampland. He wanted to be seen as a real king and a king, as he said, not just of Paris, but of the whole of France.”
The show’s British creators, David Wolstencroft and Simon Mirren, are the latest examples of a long tradition of Brits to be fascinated by the court of Versailles. Fifty years ago Nancy Mitford scored a literary hit with her Louis XIV biography The Sun King, while Antonia Fraser’s study of the women of the French court, Love and Louis XIV: The Women in the Life of the Sun King, also remains popular.
Approaching the showy role of Philippe was a challenge for Vlahos at first. “I come from that school of acting where you trust your instincts, rather than endlessly researching things. But as far as Philippe’s cross-dressing went, my insecurities as a person, not as an actor, got in the way. But then the director asked, ‘How would Bowie or Iggy Pop do this?’ and that turned a key in my mind. As a child, Philippe had been forced by his mother to wear dresses to show that he was no threat to the king. He got to like it, partly because it was a way of showcasing his personality. He wanted all eyes upon him and he wanted people to talk about him.”
People will soon be talking about Philippe again, in the US as well as in Britain, when the show is screened there at the end of the summer.
PALACE HISTORY
1623 The Palace of Versailles symbol of the French ancien régime, begins as a hunting lodge, built for Louis XIII in a village 12 miles south-west of Paris.
1661-1678 It is expanded by architect Louis Le Vau, with gardens landscaped by André le Nôtre and fountains by designer Charles Le Brun. Highlights include the much-copied Hall of Mirrors.
1682 Louis XIV moves his entire court to Versailles and sets up his “gilded cage” of privileged Bourbons.
1779 Marie Antoinette, wife of Louis XVI, moves into the petit appartement de la reine, the queen’s suite. She played milkmaid in a faux dairy farm in a “village” in the park grounds.
1783 The Peace of Paris, in which Britain recognises American independence, is signed at the palace.
1789 The French revolution sees the beleaguered royal family return to Paris, staying in the Tuileries Palace under close guard.
