Actor George Blagden remembers studying the 17th century period in which King Louis XIV moved his royal court outside Paris to the opulent Palace of Versailles. The lessons were brief, but there was one unshakable takeaway: there was a hell of a lot of sex.
“I studied this period for all of about three lessons in school, and even in those three hours one of the major things that one remembers from this time was that sexual politics was rife in this building and this court,” says Blagden, who plays King Louis in Ovation’s new drama series about that time, Versailles.
You can’t fault a splashy, expensive series—which has already aired in France on its Canal+ channel and in the U.K. on BBC2—for trying to make a mark on a fledgling American cable channel for leaning into that lesson, with boobs, bums, and bed-hopping as rampant in the early episodes of Versailles as blood, dismemberment, and brotherly bickering.
Liberty reigns in France, of course, so when it aired there not a lash was batted at the content of the show, about the power struggle between King Louis, a notorious ruler about whom many have strong opinions, and his younger brother Prince Phillipe (played by Alexander Vlahos in Versailles), a formidable military leader whom Louis all-but wrote out of his self-documented history. Oh, and, at least as portrayed in Versailles, Phillipe was a bisexual crossdresser.
But when the show premiered in the U.K., British sensibility had critics clutching their pearls, branding the show as “raunchy,” “saucy,” “steamy,” and “filthy”—“four racy scenes in just 17 minutes, along with gay sex, crossdressing and nudity galore," fretted The Daily Mail—all the while marveling at its monster viewership ratings.
How hilarious, then, that as Versailles geared up for its American debut this Saturday, the press, perhaps drawing parallels among British actors in fancy garb at grandiose estates, ventured that it might fill the void that Downton Abbey left for fans of period drama.
“It’s the complete opposite of Downton Abbey,” Vlahos laughs. “It won’t be filling any void.” The Dowager Countess is gasping at the very notion now.
While the premiere episode features no less than seven sex scenes and some unflinching gore, to boot, the cast and creative team saw no other way to accurately reflect the power plays taking place at the pivotal time in French history. After all, this is a show in which the based-on-history female lead Henriette, played by Noemie Schmidt, is married to Prince Philippe but having an affair with King Louis, all while Philippe is shedding his women’s clothing to have his knob polished by another man.
Blagden remembers his first meeting with the creative team and wondering how they’d ever be able accurately reflect the seediness that underwrote the Machiavellian glamour of this world, and being reassured that they were going to be bold and not censor it. He then went and had a pow wow with Mathieu da Vinha, the show’s historical consultant who had spent his career studying the brothers and the people around them. He asked da Vinha for his take, and he said, “In the script I’ve seen, you’re not showing the half of it.”
It was reassurance that they were never sensationalizing anything, Blagden says of having da Vinha on set nodding along to a fight scene where Philippe is in a dress, stabbing someone in the eye, knowing that’s only half as graphic as what might have really happened.
And while there is, in the grand tradition of, well, every show on TV, a stark imbalance in terms of female and male nudity, Vlahos insists that “it does equal itself out” as the series goes on. Season two, which is already in production, began with the news that Canal+ would now also allow full frontal male nudity on air. “That was wonderful news for me,” he jokes. “My opening shot in season two was a lot of male nudity.”
But Versailles offers more than just bodies to ogle at. In addition to being the most expensive French TV production ever—reported at roughly $31 million, more than twice the cost of Downton Abbey, if we’re comparing—the Palace of Versailles and the Chateau of Versailles cooperated with production. The landmarks, as any tourist knows (or frustratingly finds out) are closed to visitors every Monday, so the cast and crew were allowed to use that date to film there on a weekly basis.
The first day Blagden shot at Versailles he was filming a dream sequence of sorts, in which Louis gives a speech to a camera about his vision for the palace: this idea of light and beauty and luxury and power. The entire day was grey and overcast, but with about six minutes left to shoot, the sun suddenly dipped under the clouds and an orange light flooded in, giving him just enough time to deliver his monologue.
Oh, and it happened to be the 200th anniversary of Louis’s death, too.
Self-conscious of coming across as some sort of New Age spiritual, Blagden swears that meant something: “being someone like him, in this place that he created, at a magical moment like that.”
Over the course of the shoot, which kicked off in the summer of 2014, the two actors playing these historical brothers realized they had very distinct acting challenges. Everyone Blagden encountered on set had an opinion about the kind of person Louis was and how the actor should play him, all mined from tidbits of trivia, lore, and previous representations they’d seen of him on screen.
“I suppose Daniel Radcliffe was too young when he took on Harry Potter,” Blagden says, trying to liken the experience to another example of a famous character. “We all read the books, but I’m sure when we all went to see those Harry Potter films a lot of people were like, ‘That’s not the Harry Potter that was in my head!’”
Vlahos had the opposite problem. Or maybe it was a freedom. There was no one who said, “Philippe wouldn’t do that,” or, “This is how he acted.” So many books are written about Louis, sure, but a great number of them are based on writings Louis made himself, and Philippe is an appendage or an epilogue in most of those writings, if not erased completely.
“I kind of went down a path and no one really told me to stop,” Vlahos says. “I remember looking back thinking, ‘I can’t believe I’m getting away with some of the stuff that I’m doing.’”
That became a tricky journey when it came to playing the character’s crossdressing and bisexual tendencies. Sure, never once is the word “gay” ever uttered to describe Philippe, but when you see him giving a blow job and bragging about his fancy dress wardrobe, inferences are made.
“Actor’s instinct,” Vlahos says, when asked how he toed the line of camp and even offensiveness in his portrayal, particularly when Philippe is given catty throwaways like, “Well, you haven’t seen the shoes,” when Louis criticizes his flamboyant outfit. “I think I delivered that line five different ways,” he says.
There’s an amazing portrait both actors saw, though, that they say really helped in defining their relationship, which, really, is the crux of the series, for all the talk about its so-called racy content. It’s of a battle in the Spanish Netherlands. Louis is front-and-center, sitting proud amount a horse. Philippe is so obscured in the background that you wouldn’t even know he was in the portrait if someone didn’t tell you.
It was Philippe who actually won that battle. Louis was never even at that war.
“They’re brothers in one room at one second, squabbling over spilled porridge or whatever it is,” Vlahos says. “Then they walk out of the room and he becomes king and Philippe has no say. That’s the dynamic of the show, the public and the private.” And also, it’s fair to say, a lot of boobs.