In Chevalier, Lucy Boynton Has Her Cake and Eats It, Too

It wasn’t just the opportunity to play Marie Antoinette that first drew Lucy Boynton to the new film Chevalier, in theaters now, but instead the chance to play the infamous royal in way she’d never before seen.

“I was really drawn to this very different side of Marie Antoinette,” Boynton says. “I went in expecting the same rhetoric around her that we're all familiar with—and I think assume is her entire self and story—and instead saw this very different side of her, which was a catalyst for me remembering to challenge the perception of people as they've been presented to us.”

That’s something Chevalier does well. The film tells the story of Joseph Bologne (played by Kelvin Harrison, Jr.), a multitalented Black man in 1700s France, whose skill in classical music and fencing—and a propensity for peacocking—landed him in the royal court before he became part of the Revolution. His friendship with Boynton’s royal helped Bologne climb the Parisian social ladder, but when Marie Antoinette snubbed him for his rival Christoph Willibald Gluck, the falling out between the two was just as impactful.

“When you watch Lucy, she feels like she embodies a full character arc in such a disarming way,” says Chevalier’s screenwriter, Stefani Robinson “She tapped into the kindness of Marie Antoinette so well, and that's the thing I think a lot of people don't really know about her; per our research, she was a good friend, she was kind, and she was open. She was just this girl caught in an impossible situation who made a lot of enemies and was very popular and unpopular at the same time, and Lucy makes all of that so apparent.

While Boynton’s Marie Antoinette isn’t exactly the hero of this story, the 29-year-old actress did relish the chance to think beyond what she already knew about the much-maligned queen.

“I realized that I had reduced her to this one quote that she never even said and this one side of her from when she's very young,” Boynton explains. “So, it was a real insight into the multifaceted nature of people. And it was freeing to get to explore her, especially in the context of a story that isn’t her’s. Getting to see someone who we've [made] the main character from a different perspective was really interesting… It was interesting exploring this side of her that’s more adult than I think we've seen; she’s more grounded in fear and therefore operating from a place of aggression. And I think previously we've seen her in frillier way, so I was excited to see the darker part of her.”

Boynton wasn’t alone in wanting to see a new depiction of a historical figure who’s had more than her fair share of screen time. “Marie Antoinette is such a well portrayed, well trafficked road, so it's a tough ask for an actor to try to come in and carve out a brand-new lane,” says Stephen Williams, Chevalier’s director. “But Lucy was more than up for the challenge. She totally understood the requirements of the role and delivered a really complex, layered, contradictory, but supremely grounded performance as this character. As a result, the role of Marie Antoinette in the film is deeply affecting and humanizing.”

While Boynton’s notably played plenty of fictional characters—including a driven high-school student in The Politician, a mysterious musical bad girl in Sing Street, and Countess Elena Andrenyi in the Kenneth Branagh-directed 2017 Murder on the Orient Express—she’s not one to shy away from roles based in real life. She’s played the writer Claire Douglas (Rebel in the Rye), Freddie Mercury’s fiancée Mary Austin (Bohemian Rhapsody), and Beatrix Potter (Miss Potter), and lights up when asked what other historical women she might want to portray.

“There's a group of women surrealist artists who have been really overlooked. Some of them are contemporary of Dalí’s, some were earlier, like Gertrude Abercrombie, who painted the most dark, witchy, strange pieces, or Leonor Fini—people who I think were painting from this place of rage and passion and the female experience,” she says. “I'm so fascinated by their work and would love to find some world where you could explore them in a kind of collective.” (It’s worth noting that Boynton’s father, Graham Boynton, is an author and journalist whose most recent book was a biography of Peter Beard excerpted in T&C.)

Indeed, the idea of playing with the past is something that the actress finds fascinating. “Even though the context, era, and lifestyle is foreign to us, I don't think human nature has changed that tremendously,” Boynton says. “So, it is really interesting to get the opportunity to hold that mirror up at society—and at history and at ourselves—and observe the ways that we have improved and the ways that we haven't, or even just the poignant ways that we totally relate to those people living in such a different way to our modern life.

But playing Marie Antoinette was about more than just taking on a misunderstood historical figure for Boynton, it also involved helping to create the world in which she existed. “She wanted to be a co-author of people's perception of her, and therefore enjoyed those eyes on her when she has had such a hand in what she's wearing and the message she's putting across,” Boynton says. “When I was in those dresses, the wigs, the shoes, I walked a bit more upright. There's this electricity and enthusiasm that comes with a character like that, which makes you immediately more confident and comfortable in it all. When you look in the mirror and it’s someone completely other, it is really satisfying and quite thrilling.”

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