‘Napoleon’ Star Vanessa Kirby – Deadline read full article at worldnews365.me

Josephine Bonaparte was a woman with strength, elegance, and an unknowable nature that proved an irresistible combination for the French emperor Napoleon. In researching the role for Ridley Scott’s historical epic Napoleon, Vanessa Kirby discovered that behind this allure lay an unrelenting drive to survive, and, using that as a basis, she found a foothold: a way to show how this “internally mysterious” woman weathered a tempestuous relationship and its constantly shifting power dynamic. Although Josephine would ultimately fall from favor, due to her inability to produce an heir, Kirby notes that her integrity prevailed, in spite of the unbearable pressures she faced.

DEADLINE: Did you know a lot about Josephine before you got the role?

VANESSA KIRBY: Not really. Actually, when Ridley called me and said, “I’d really like you to play Josephine,” as soon as he said the name and the word, I had all these associations come up with her. Then after I got off the phone, I thought, “God, how interesting. I wonder whether any of those are accurate, and where I’ve picked them up from.” I definitely didn’t study that time period at school and hadn’t read any books on Napoleon myself, so it was very ground zero for me. My memory of hearing about her was that she was incredibly sensual, very powerful, and mercurial, and she did turn out to be those things. But it was just such an incredible journey actually getting to know her and going through the whole research process. 

DEADLINE: What was your research process for this?

KIRBY: It was as extensive as I could possibly do. I love most taking on things that scare me. This was scary just because it’s hard to play a real person and it’s a different kind of process. You’re not inventing their history, their lives, their childhood, their background, and their psyche. You are trying to accurately embody someone that really has lived, and lived such an extraordinary life that’s really, really far from any of ours or anything that I could relate it to personally. It’s a bigger stretch in that way. 

I spent hours and hours reading every single book I could possibly find on both of them. I went to Paris, went to her house in Malmaison, which was most iconically her. For her whole life, she built this house about an hour and a half outside of Paris and brought over loads of exotic animals and decorated it head to toe in all these different materials and fabrics that she got from all around the world, and she was really proud of it. It was very much an embodiment of her femininity in this very tough world that she was in.

I went to all the Napoleon museums, although eventually I started avoiding some of the military strategy because she wasn’t playing that in the movie so much. I saw lots and lots of hats, lots and lots of armor and things, and I thought, “OK, there’s only a certain extent of what she would’ve seen. She’d have seen that on occasion, she visited the front lines.” But the more you go through the research process, the more it teaches you what you need to know and what you need to follow.

DEADLINE: During your research, how did you view the relationship between Josephine and Napoleon? It definitely seemed a bit strange.

KIRBY: I’m so pleased that you think it’s strange. That’s exactly what we wanted it to be, because if you just read his letters to her, you see how strange it is. It’s volatile, it’s needy, it’s mad infatuation and obsession, kinkiness, jealousy, longing, desire… I mean, it’s all there. This man who was a military commander leading the battles and conquering land was running back to his army tent to write these letters to a woman who wasn’t replying to him. Most of her letters were destroyed, which is really disappointing because I bet they would’ve been just… To have that whole canon of her letters would’ve been amazing. But to me, those letters and his obsession continued right through to the very end of his life as, in the film, the last word he ever spoke was Josephine, despite the volatility throughout and the power struggles. 

We found it so fascinating and impossible to get hold of really, and just knew that we wanted to create something, a version of the strangeness that illuminated something about this military mind who could go out and conquer different acres of land, but couldn’t conquer this woman because she was the nature of personality who couldn’t really be possessed.

DEADLINE: It seemed like Napoleon was very tactical in his thinking but that really did not apply to Josephine.

KIRBY: That’s a really good way to put it. I’m going to start using that line. It’s so good.

DEADLINE: There is a really interesting power dynamic between the two. I think the first time you really see it is when Napoleon comes home to confront her after he finds out about the affairs. There’s that scene where, during the day, Napoleon is commanding her and she’s very submissive to him, and then right after at night, he just becomes so submissive to her. How did you kind of navigate those scenes, because it seemed like that dynamic was constantly changing?

KIRBY: It was constantly changing. There was no kind of arc or journey of it, to the point where both of them were crying as they were divorcing and didn’t really want to do it, but because of the pressures of… Oh my goodness, I could not imagine the pressure and pain of having your body needing to perform for the sake of the empire that your partner had created. I mean, that to me was the ultimate pain for her. 

We spoke continually about how this is going to feel strange to play, because these are two very strange psyches interacting. We played lots and lots of different things in all the scenes, and so there was never any consistency. It wasn’t like, “Oh, an ever-evolving love that matures into something stable and content in their older age.” It was always sort of emotional and fractious, and yet this codependent love somehow that they couldn’t really be without each other, even though they weren’t creating the life that was able to hold space for that and really have it healed.

It was really fun and Claire [Simpson], the editor, reminded me that sometimes we do 10-minute takes of those scenes and all sorts would happen in the middle. There could be many, many different versions of their story because of their nature. Sometimes I’d be shouting back at him, sometimes he’d be crying… So, this is the version that’s on the screen but it always felt to us that there were so many different versions. When you read the first account stories of them, sometimes she’s on her knees at his feet, clawing at him, begging him. Another time he was having an affair with a woman openly in their house, and she ended up storming in, ripping the girl off the bed and then them having this blazing row. It was really tempestuous, but really fun to play because of that.

DEADLINE: You mentioned the divorce, which happened because Josephine was unable to conceive an heir. But not only did she need to suffer through that overwhelming pressure, she was also blamed for not being able to get pregnant as if she was responsible, which is wild to think.

KIRBY: I know. I mean, it was the experience of so many women in that time. You needed to have a boy, it was your duty, and you need to fulfill your duty, and if you can’t… In that, I learned so much about her elegance actually, her integrity and her quiet power in a way, to last and to withstand that whole journey from when she was 16 on the boat from the tiny little island of Martinique, that never had seen any kind of conventional society, or at least not cold Paris that was harsh and difficult. She came over completely on her own and married this very young, very cold aristocrat who then basically ignored her. She had two children on her own, was hardly let out the house really into society at all. Then they were imprisoned, she watched her husband get beheaded, and she was 24 hours away from being beheaded herself before she got out. And then, she became part of the most iconic group of women who were leading the fashion movement and the new sensual, open feminine emancipation, and then met this general. 

It was just so fascinating. She was a complete survivor. I mean, she just withstood so much. Somebody that has the resilience of navigating all those things, and at no point said, “You know what? Actually, I’m just going to go back to Martinique. This is all just too much.” She just kept going.

She had a palm reading done in Martinique when she was 12 or 13, and her two friends were the witnesses and there’s these accounts of it. The palm reader said, “Oh, you’re going to be greater than a queen.” They all laughed, and there’s all these diary entries in the writing about it, and they all laughed about it because what does that even mean, greater than a queen? It was only when then she was crowned empress herself, and Napoleon actually put the crown on her head, which was really an unusual thing for someone to do in those times, and fulfilled that weird destiny that was always in her.

DEADLINE: Talking about that quiet power and elegance, it really hit me in that scene where Napoleon brings the baby after they’re divorced and her composure as all of these emotions must have been going through her head. What were you, as Josephine, thinking in that moment?

KIRBY: It was really hellish, actually, and so much of me wanted to just scream or just wail actually, but because he was right behind her and because you don’t want to upset the baby, you had to kind of hold it all in. I just so felt for her. I just so felt that this was the symbol of something that her body wasn’t able to do. In many, many of the books written about her, they describe how she used a certain form of contraception, it was very acidic, and it was just like acid really, because she was very promiscuous when she came out of prison. She was with a lot of the top generals, including Paul Barras who’s played by Tahar Rahim, and there was actually a scene we filmed of them having an affair, and she didn’t want to get pregnant all the time.

That time was a period of survival really, and she was getting money from it in order to support her children. Having to do all these things, as well as trying to liberate herself from her previous life, that contraception really hurt her body and then she couldn’t have a child when this pressure was on and the encroaching feeling of a vice that’s tightening for your womb having to do this. When she looked at the baby, I so felt for her. I felt, “God, how painful that would be to have wanted to do it so badly but it just won’t do it,” for the continuation of this incredibly masculine empire, which is pure masculinity.

DEADLINE: Seeing the relationship on screen, I started wondering if they actually loved each other. Was Napoleon just obsessed with her, or the idea of her, and was Josephine just trying to survive? Do you think that they actually loved each other?

KIRBY: We got asked this recently and I said, “Yes,” and Ridley said, “No, I don’t think so.” But, from having played it, I felt that there was this deeply profound love, it was just really dysfunctional because you are operating in a very dysfunctional environment. I mean, it’s about military strategy, conquering land and tactics, and yes, it’s very sophisticated, but ultimately still going out to war. When I went and looked at all the museums of Napoleonic-era stuff, and then I looked at her house, I really did imagine how tough it would’ve been to be that resilient. I feel like it really would’ve been a different kind of life for both of them if they were able to just be with each other somewhere quietly.

Particularly towards the end of her life, she was at home wasting away, heartbroken and wishing that he would visit. And he would always come visit, which was very strange because he was having affairs with lots of women and had a baby with his new wife and he was still coming to visit her all the time, and she just had to have integrity. 

When Ridley first asked me to do this, and when I learned about how infatuated Napoleon was with her forever, I thought a lot about how I wasn’t interested in exploring something that was about, “Oh, he just was attracted to her and he couldn’t get enough of her,” because his letters are very sexual. I was way more interested in exploring why. There must have been something so captivating about her, that wasn’t aesthetic, and that then made me realize that she must have a kind of… To be able to survive, she must have such an unknowability inside of herself. You know when you can’t quite get hold of someone and you want to? I think he could always get hold of stuff and was very logical, and she had this mercurial nature that was fascinating to him and that always alluded him in some ways, and he could never fully have. That was something I was really interested in trying to get inside, even though it was really challenging as an actor, just because it’s quite hard to play that. I much prefer playing more expressive, outwardly dynamic characters than internally mysterious.

DEADLINE: The whole film had this kind of humor to it that was a bit absurdist, and I think that’s really emphasized with the relationship between them. In those moments at war, he’s very straight-laced, planning everything, and then he gets home and he’s across the dinner table, making noises at her and crawling under the table. When you started this project, did you know that it was going to have this humorous aspect to it?

KIRBY: From what I felt as I came into the journey, I don’t think anyone wanted it to be too earnest or too sincere about itself. You’ve got this exploration of this psyche who’s made these decisions to go and do these things, and then we ascertain from that why he made that very specific singular choice of a life to live. That psyche is really unique. 

It’s not like in Gladiator, for example. That’s a father avenging the murder of his child and wife, and he’s the underdog coming up against the system. This is a completely different person. Therefore, that has to be sincere in many ways because you don’t want to undermine that grief, even though the world is incredibly intense and kind of unbelievable to watch that in the theaters. With this, it was on the world stage really, it was so heightened and yet, it almost felt like it couldn’t hold too much earnestness or take itself 100 percent seriously because the intensity of it and the extremity of the world needed to have levity in it, otherwise it’s incredibly brutal and harsh.

DEADLINE: What are you shooting in Australia right now?

KIRBY: I’m shooting a movie with Ron Howard, who’s wonderful, and it’s like a survival thriller. It’s wild. It’s totally wild. We’re having a really nice time. We’re just in week one right now.

DEADLINE: Very different from shooting Napoleon, I assume.

KIRBY: Yeah. God, I’m really grateful for it, actually, because you just always want to step into a very, very opposite world, as far away as you can from the last one. I play a German woman who has MS, and could not look further from Josephine, and they’ve been living on this island for a few years. It’s a real story, and it really is the opposite of Josephine in many ways.

DEADLINE: Do you have anything else coming up that you’re excited about?

KIRBY: Yeah, I do. I’m really excited about the next couple of years. What I’ve really been enjoying doing over the last 18 months is building a company with Lauren Dark and my sister, Juliet. We’ve got a really big slate of things now with a lot of people I love so much creatively—directors, filmmakers, writers—and we are just about to go into production with a few of them. That’s been the most fulfilling thing ever, because you get to create stories from the female experience that we’ve never seen on screen before. That’s my biggest dream, to put as many as possible in cinema because there’ve been so fewer female creatives. It’s really exciting because there’s so many spaces that haven’t been seen before, so that’s been our aim. It’s been really, really great.