Vanessa Kirby (‘Napoleon’): Empress Joséphine was a ‘shape-shifter’ full of ‘resilience, rage and integrity’ [Exclusive Video Interview]

Rob Licuria
·4 min read
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“It was just before Christmas and I had one of my agents called me and say, ‘Ridley Scott‘s about to ring you about something,’ and so he rang me and asked me to play Joséphine,” reveals Vanessa Kirby. She took on a pivotal role in “Napoleon” at the eleventh hour after Jodie Comer had to bow out of the film after a post-pandemic scheduling conflict. For our recent webchat she adds, “I had the Christmas holiday to prepare, and that was it, and I just thought, ‘oh my goodness, if I come in late and I’m the least prepared, I’m going to be mortified and also I thought, ‘oh, I really owe her all the work that I can possibly do here, because she’s not as known as her life deserves.” Watch our exclusive video interview above.

SEE Janty Yates and David Crossman interview: ‘Napoleon’ costume designers

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In “Napoleon,” Oscar winner Joaquin Phoenix (“Joker”) stars as the titular French Emperor alongside Oscar nominee Kirby (“Pieces of a Woman”) as Empress Joséphine de Beauharnais. The epic historical drama film is directed by thrice Oscar-nominated helmer Scott (“Thelma & Louise,” “Gladiator” and “Black Hawk Down”) and written by David Scarpa. Based on the story of Napoleon Bonaparte, it charts the French leader’s rise and fall in the 18th and 19th centuries and his relentless pursuit of power, as well as his volatile and often obsessive relationship with the love of his life.

“A lot of people have said that they found her beguiling or enigmatic, and usually, I think if I had that word I would go ‘Oh, no, enigmatic is so hard to play,” Kirby recalls about the challenges of portraying a woman who was known to be charming and seductive, but also often quite mercurial and temperamental. “When I’ve played real characters before, it’s been quite clear that every book you read informs the last one, and it kind of builds to a very vivid picture of the person, because no matter what angle they’re coming from, there’s usually one coherent whole,” she says. “For Joséphine, every single book I read almost contradicted the previous one. None of them really added up into a whole. It was so weird, and as I went on, I got progressively more worried, because I thought, ‘oh, wait! So should I play this version of her, or is it this one?” she explains.

“Eventually after reading so much, I came to feel that she must have had such a quality of unknowability, or rather an ability to bury what she was feeling in order to survive every different phase that she went through. Whether it was in prison about to be beheaded or marrying an aristocrat, or on a boat from a tiny little island, Martinique in the Caribbean and entering this Parisian society. There were just so many elements of her ability to adapt, that I started to think that the best way of describing her felt like a shape shifter and very chameleonic, and those people are quite elusive. It was hard to play, because I find it so much easier to play somebody that’s very expressive or demonstrative or clear. So it was challenging, because I had to try to keep it all inside, and not betray the things that she was actually feeling with the words that she would speak,” Kirby explains. “She has this experience and this survivor’s resilience, rage and integrity, somehow, with having this really vast, deep lived experience. He could go out and conquer all these battlefields and all these different countries and these pieces of land, but he perhaps he never felt like he could fully conquer her and her internal landscape, because she was so hard to get a solid hold on.”

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