Is it possible to get more period-drama-iconic than Marie Antoinette? The ludicrous wigs, the massive frocks, the juicy (if incorrectly attributed) quips (she never said “Let them eat cake”). The latest woman to play the ill-fated queen, British actor Lucy Boynton who depicts her in the film Chevalier, is no stranger to time travel having hopped back to the 19th century for her screen debut aged 12 playing a young Beatrix Potter in Miss Potter, the early 20th in Hugh Laurie’s riotous Agatha Christie adaptation Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?, the swinging sixties in ITV’s remake of The Ipcress File and the 70s in Oscar winning film Bohemian Rhapsody (where she met her now-partner, Rami Malek).
It seems appropriate for someone whose personal style seems to hail from a glamorous bygone era (she’s wearing a grandiose floor-length black and gold vintage dress when I meet her in a plush Soho hotel) but the last queen of France is a particularly fascinating challenge for Boynton, partly because she’s been played so many times before.
