Dangerous Liaisons Star Nicholas Denton on Villains and Vulnerability
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It might be tempting to play a young Vicomte de Valmont as a villain. After all, the rakish Frenchman who makes up half of Dangerous Liaisons’s legendarily gruesome twosome ends up being one of the great bad apples of literature (and film, and the stage). But that isn’t what Nicholas Denton had in mind.
“Valmont is this young cat who’s existed in a well-to-do world with no consequences for his actions; he has an ego complex and feels like he can do whatever he wishes,” explains the actor, who plays Valmont in the new Starz series Dangerous Liaisons, which charts the beginnings of Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’s infamous characters. “But once that world is ripped out from under you, what lengths will he go to get back what he thinks is his? That’s a strong anchor for an actor, and also an audience.”
The seduction and betrayal and gleeful troublemaking that Valmont and his sparring partner the Marquise de Merteuil so famously take part in might be very well known, but for Denton and his costar Alice Englert, the fascinating part of the work lies elsewhere. “It’s this seminal piece of literature and cinema, but we get to create a place that grounds it,” he says. “We’re looking for the human components to these monsters.”
And the pair certainly finds it. While the series doesn’t lack the steaminess or the duplicity that has made Liaisons a touchstone for generations, it gives the two characters reasons for their later actions, and shows viewers the experiences—young love, bad choices, broken hearts—that will turn them into who they will become.
“Nicholas is so intelligent and instinctive in his work,” says series creator Harriet Warner. “From the very beginning of the casting process he inhabited everything I’d wanted for Valmont in a way that no one else did. Along with Valmont’s ego, swagger, and humor, he brought this fragility and compassion and gave him a humanity that makes the character such a complex, gorgeous, and challenging watch.”
And while Englert came to the project as a longtime fan of Liaisons and its various iterations, Denton—who began his career in theater—arrived from a different perspective. “I feel like a phony because I knew about the play and the book but hadn’t read them, and I knew of the film, but I’d never seen it,” he says. “Once I got the audition, I did read the book, but the films I’ve steered clear of for the time being. I’d be doing a disservice to myself by watching someone as amazing as Colin Firth, John Malkovich, or Ryan Philippe in the role.”
For a new generation of fans, however, Denton will be the actor who embodies Valmont—and for his costars as well. “I knew he was the right person to play Valmont; I just knew that they'd nailed it,” Englert says. “There is something about the way he plays vanity so well, but he actually doesn't have it. He's got such a playful, self-deprecating ability with it that I knew that we'd be able to go to the places we needed to because he wasn't the character.”
Though that’s not to say that Denton—who also works as a writer and director of his own work—doesn’t enjoy thinking about where Valmont could go next. Dangerous Liaisons was renewed for a second season before it even premiered, and he isn’t without ideas about the dastardly roads on which his character could travel. “The latter part of this season finds the venomous nature of Valmont,” he says. “You’ll see how dark it can get, and I think it’s important to carry that into the second season. He’s gone through the trials and traumas of growing up, and now he’s going into his next phase with a lot more ammunition.”
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