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Emilia Schüle and Louis Cunningham are the breakout stars of the PBS series Marie Antoinette, which explores the origin story of the French queen and her husband, King Louis XVI. As history and the show will tell you, Marie and Louis didn’t have a passionate love story, but a love built on close friendship as they faced an exorbitant amount of pressure at young ages. HollywoodLife spoke EXCLUSIVELY with Emilia and Louis about redefining the relationship of the royals onscreen.
“The two of them, first of all, had to create a bond and a relationship and a friendship in order to, in the end, consummate the marriage,” Emilia said. “I think, until the end of it, the nature of their relationship is more friendship than desire. But what Deborah Davis wrote is that there is a true bond and intimacy between them, but just not really sexually.”
Emilia Schüle as Marie Antoinette. (PBS)
Louis added, “Sex becomes kind of the necessary part of that relationship, but they do find this love and other forms of friendship and admiration. I think Louis begins to admire her creativity and ways of shaking everything up. I think she begins to admire his drive and his intellect. It’s a slow-burner relationship definitely.”
Marie and Louis famously did not consummate their marriage for 7 years, but history often forgets to mention that they were just teenagers when they married. In the series, Louis avoids Marie at all costs upon her arrival. Marie goes to great lengths to connect with her husband, but he’s resistant at first.
“Louis at the beginning of this series is 15 years old,” the actor noted. “His parents both died. His older brother has died, who was supposed to be king, so he wasn’t necessarily supposed to be the dauphin at any point. And yet, he’s thrust into this environment. He’s then got an arranged marriage, so I think he’s angry at the place he’s found himself and angry at the fact that he’s forced to marry, scared of how to approach all these things, and then awe of this woman who comes into his life, who has vibrant, intelligent, fierce, and everything that he is not. Everything that he kind of almost should be. I think it’s probably a weird combination of teenage angst, this general dread of his entire situation, and awe for this woman. He just bottles up and just does not know how to express anything, so he runs away from the situation physically and emotionally.”
Emilia continued, “And then on top of that, they are supposed to have sex, and no one’s really educated them about that. So they, of course, are just terrified of each other because they know they have to accomplish this huge task, and there’s all this weight on their shoulders. It’s just scary, so that’s creating a lot of distance between the two of them.”
Louis Cunningham as Louis XVI. (PBS)
Marie and Louis shared their first moment of real connection in episode 2 when Marie followed her husband up to his secret turret. Louis told HollywoodLife that the scene was the first “romantic moment and moment of joy between them.” Emilia said it was the “beginning of a friendship” between the couple.
Things started out even more difficult for Marie, who was brought from Austria to marry Louis. Everywhere she turned, Marie was met with criticism and people waiting for her to fail. “She is so stubborn, and she definitely doesn’t take no for an answer,” Emilia said about Marie’s evolution. “That causes a lot of trouble for her. But it also is the key in establishing a relationship with Louis, for example, because she doesn’t follow the rules. She tried to approach him in a way that people were expecting her to do so, but that didn’t work. The only reason she can secure her place in the palace is by finding her own way and just being the rebel that she was.”
The series has already been renewed for season 2. Emilia and Louis revealed that the second season is expected to start filming “later this year.” New episodes of Marie Antoinette air Sundays on PBS.
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