Hi, Lucy.
How you doing? I'm good. How you doing?
I'm very well, thank you very much. Congratulations on the film.
Thank you.
It's gone very high up in my top ten list already.
I mean, it's only May.
All right, we'll see if it's that. We'll take it.
I'll take it. Well, thank you.
There's so much about this movie that I love, and there's probably so much
that you had to prepare for.
But take me through that, the big hair of it all, What was your
what was your process with putting the hair on and kind of using
that character?
The hair actually was smaller than when we began.
With the first few fittings.
The hair was like a foot taller than that.
And then I think with a few camera tests, we realized that might need
to be reined back just to ever have a shot at getting the entirety of her in.
It was really fun, though.
I mean, and those wigs
were actually surprisingly light somehow, thanks to Francesco Hair Designer.
But all of those elements, I think all of the elements that made
it feel the kind of exit from myself and entry into that character,
the clearer and all the more deliberate
I really enjoyed and was grateful for
and the extravagance of that era of Marie
Antoinette was definitely part of the the fun of it all.
When you mentioned that most of my brain
just went through the lady and other negativity
all the time, like, Oh my God, yeah, totally.
I was attacked. Yeah, on that scale.
Yeah. Oh, my goodness.
Yeah, that would be that would be something.
I mean, we've seen Marie Antoinette in films before,
portrayed by lots of different people.
But for you, what was the the hook for you in terms of playing that?
Because we see different sides of our lives
that we have maybe seen in other films.
But again, like Chevalier, it so much history that we do and don't know about.
Mhm. I think it was
I mean the main hook was being a part of telling this story about
Joseph Bologne who,
who I wasn't familiar.
Whose name I wasn't familiar with
and he's just such an extraordinary man and I think their relationship was really
interesting and one that just felt so contemporary
and relevant and, and I think it is one.
I mean, Stephen Williams and I, the director, spoke a lot early
on about convenient allyship, and I think she's just such a precise
example of that, our version of her in this film.
Um, and she, I think from an acting point of view,
she is just such a clear trajectory in the film
which was really satisfying to get to map out.
Um, and it starts as this really
seemingly beautiful relationship and that was so fun
to create with Kelvin Harrison Jr. and then the world that she dips into
because, you know, the audience just want to champion him.
And as any kind of decent human, you just want to champion him.
There was something that felt kind of,
I don't know, important about being the counter to that.
And I just wanted to play her in a way that elicited it, elicited
zero empathy and was just all venom, all
kind of fear and self-serving
and kind of acting on offense as a kind of cornered rat.
And so there's something, um, I don't know, just felt really extreme about that.
And as an actor, I think that's a kind of, uh,
a tempting place to go to, to go to those extremes,
especially when this, when you're feeding such a kind of
brilliant story.
This is a final question.
I spoke to you many moons ago.
So many, many moons ago,
if you look in looking from then to now, has have you
you must be delighted with the opportunities
that you've been given because, you know, seems
to has such an affection for people and seems to have so many people from that
go on.
And, you know,
because you all young actors at that at the time and you open on to this stuff,
how much do you put down to maybe the success of that film,
but that film giving you the opportunity and I to that so much of it.
I mean, I emailed we've worked together since John Carney, the director, and I,
but I remember emailing him a few years ago,
I think when I was doing Murder on the Orient Express
and just thanking him for the way that I work now because of the way
he talked to all of us, the ownership that he gave us about characters
and just those I mean, the gift that was that character of Rufina.
It completely changed the way and informed the way that I work now
and just working with him.
So, yeah, it was a really, really pivotal film
in my career, and it's one that
if anyone approaches me with a huge grin on their face,
I know it's because they're about to talk about seeing straight.
So it fills me with tremendous pride.
Yeah, but that soundtrack is so good.
Always. Always.
Lucy, thanks so much for your time.
As everybody's talked over a lot. Thank you so much.
Thank you for your time. Bye.