Sweet Marie meets a master swindler

We’re about to meet (or re-meet) two vibrant women – one famous, the other oddly obscure.
The first is the title character in “Marie Antoinette,” which starts its second season at 10 p.m. Sunday (March 23) on PBS. Marie (shown here) has a surplus of sweetness and a shortage of frugality.
And the other? Jeanne de Valois-Saint-Remy is another story entirely.
“I had never heard of her” before being cast to play her, Freya Mavor said. Then “I was obsessed. I read everything about her. She was just wild – a wild, wild woman.”
This was someone with a slender claim to nobility (via a royal tryst, two centuries earlier). She married a guy with even less of a claim, but she called herself a countess and mingled with the elite in Versailles. She stole, scammed and pulled off a legendary jewelry heist.
She was pure evil, perhaps. But in stories we’ve often had a fondness for pickpocket and scammers, from Oliver Twist and the Artful Dodger to the Newman-Redford characters in “The Sting.”
“There’s a hint of the underdog,” Mavor said. “She wasn’t someone who was born into luxury.”
Quite the opposite. Her father was descended from a 16th-century English affair between King Henry II and his mistress. The dad was alcoholic; his three children sometimes begged for food, before being rescued by clergy.
Eventually, she was given an annual stipend (from a fund for impoverished nobility) and was expected to become a nun. Instead, she married, moved to France and wedged herself into Versailles splendor.
This is fresh turf for Mavor, who, some sources have said, decided to be an actress when she saw “The Shining” at age 10.
“I was actually 8,” she said, adding (approvingly): “I had quite lax parents.”
Some kids might have been jolted by the Stephen King horror story. Mavor was appreciating the craftsmanship by director Stanley Kubrick and his star.
“I was very impressed by it,” she said. “There was something about Jack Nicholson’s performance; he was so convincing.”
She’s descended from theater people. Her father is a playwright who teaches screenwriting in college … Her grandfather was a theater critic and then director of the Scottish Arts Council … And her great-grandfather was a playwright who started a theater college.
Other kids might start their theater life in “Annie” or “Grease” or such; Mavor’s first two plays were Shakespeare – “The Tempest” and “The Merchant of Venice.” She sang in the National Choir, played piano, acted in the National Youth Theatre.
None of that made her reluctant to take lighter roles, she said. She did two seasons in the British teen show “Skins,” had some French-language movies and has a supporting role in HBO’s “Industry.”
Now “Marie Antoinette” sweeps her back to costume dramas – with impressive costumes. “It just makes the job easier.” she said.
Especially when scenes were filmed in the Chateaux de Versailles, where Marie Antoinette prospered.
“It’s completely mind-blowing,” Mavor said. “The windows are golden. When the sun comes trhough, there’s just this overwhelming sense.”
The job involved five months in Paris, which was fine with Mavor – who spent four childhood years in France and speaks the language.
She absorbed the culture and the world that an elegant schemer patrolled. “It’s an amazing slice of hisory.”