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The Contradiction of Using Anachronistic Music and Authentic Settings and Period Costumes: “What I was trying to do was make it impressionistic of what it would feel like to live there at that time, so I wanted it to be a style of acting," explained Sofia Coppola. "The setting is as natural as possible, and that’s the real place as opposed to an artificial movie set so in that way it was the style we were working from. But then we take artistic license in altering things to convey more what it would feel like at that time, using music that gives the emotional quality that I wanted the scene to have as opposed to what actually might be the song [from that period]. A combination to create the impression of what it might have been like.”
Kirsten Dunst as Marie Antoinette: Coppola directed a then 16-year-old Dunst in The Virgin Suicides and immediately thought of her for the lead role in Marie Antoinette. “She was the one that came to mind when I was reading the Antonia Fraser biography. When they described her personality I thought this was something that Kirsten could portray. She has the bubbly, silly, not serious side, but then she has the real depth and substance for when she evolves. I felt like she had both and also that she could carry the whole film. And being German, she looks like how they described her.”
Creating the Costumes: “It was amazing working with Milena Canonero. It was so much fun to go to her costume shop. There were all these Italians selling these dresses and feathers. It was important to me to build a lot of the costumes that just weren’t the standard ones that they use for everything. So yeah, it was always fun to come to set and see how they all came together.”
Deciding on the Where to End Marie Antoinette’s Story: “In the early draft, I wrote to the end of her life and then I realized that I was really rushing it. That’s a whole other movie. We weren’t making a miniseries; we only had two hours so I had to focus on what I want to tell. Then I decided to just focus on her time in Versailles and start the film with her arrival in Versailles, end it with her departure at the Revolution. For me, the end of the story is her personal evolution and the scene on the balcony of her coming into her own and implying what happens. But it’s a really long story of her in prison and a trial, and I felt like it was another movie.”
