Not tonight, Josephine... I’ve just survived an assassination attempt
The Crown’s Vanessa Kirby and biopic co-star Joaquin Phoenix recreate dramatic night Napoleon almost met a grisly end
WHEN she agreed to take the role of Napoleon Bonaparte’s wife Josephine, actress Vanessa Kirby might well have expected fireworks. But probably not quite like this.
The former Crown star last week filmed a dramatic scene from the much-anticipated biopic of the French emperor, recreating the moment they were both almost killed in a monarchist bomb plot.
In our exclusive pictures – the first to show the actress as fashion-loving Madame Bonaparte – she scowls at Joaquin Phoenix, who plays her husband, following the failed assassination attempt.
The Apple TV production, directed by Sir Ridley Scott, chronicles Napoleon’s rise to power through the hot-and-cold relationship he had with his adulterous wife. The dramatic scenes shot in Greenwich, South-East London, on Thursday depict a key moment in Napoleon’s
‘The scenes are sensational... so much attention to detail’
ascent when his enemies tried to kill him in Paris on Christmas Eve in 1800.
As the couple travelled to the French premiere of Joseph Haydn’s work The Creation, a horse-drawn cart packed with gunpowder and stones exploded. But both survived and four years later Napoleon proclaimed himself emperor of France
An on-set source said: ‘The work that has gone into this is incredible, the scenes are sensational… so much attention to detail.’
According to historical records, Napoleon survived the blast thanks to a fastacting coachman and the fact that the conspirators expected him to have a cavalry escort. Mme Bonaparte was travelling in a carriage behind her husband with her daughter Hortense de Beauharnais and Napoleon’s sister Caroline Murat.
The party was running late after fussing over Josephine’s shawl.
The attempt did not apparently rattle Napoleon, who arrived at the theatre and said: ‘The rascals wanted to blow me up. Bring me a book of the oratorio.’ The new film, called simply Napoleon, is tipped to feature a host of raunchy scenes when it is released early next year.
Sir Ridley said: ‘Napoleon is a man who has always fascinated me. He came out of nowhere to rule everything, but in the meantime he was waging a romantic war with his adulterous wife. He conquered the world to try to win her love, and when he couldn’t, he conquered it to destroy her. And he destroyed himself in the process.’
It is the first time US actor Phoenix, 47, has worked with Sir Ridley since starring in Gladiator in 2000.
The film was previously titled Kitbag, which referred to the saying: ‘There is a general’s staff hidden in every soldier’s kitbag’, meaning any soldier has what it takes to be a leader. Miss Kirby, 34, who played Princess Margaret in the first two series of The Crown, was cast after Killing Eve star Jodie Comer was forced to pull out when filming was delayed due to coronavirus.
ARMCHAIR psychologists diagnose Vladimir Putin with a Napoleon complex, over-compensating for his 5ft 6in stature with an aggressive megalomania. So is it a real syndrome?
Evidence is inconclusive. In 2014, Oxford researchers used computer trickery to make men feel 10in shorter on a virtual train ride, and they reported feeling inferior and paranoid.
Elsewhere, Dutch academics found that men of 5ft 4in were 50 per cent more likely to be jealous of possible romantic rivals than 6ft 6in guys. And in another Dutch study using game strategies, smaller men – but not women – greedily grabbed more resources for themselves, especially if they didn’t have to co-operate with others.
Researchers at the University of Central Lancashire found short men were actually calmer than average. Their 2007 experiment involved hitting volunteers with sticks until they lost their temper.
Where might the idea of ‘short man syndrome’ come from?
Maybe because shorter people get a raw deal. Academics have claimed they have lower average IQs than taller counterparts, who are generally healthier, wealthier (every extra centimetre of height equating to ten per cent extra salary) and seen as more attractive. No wonder a 2012 study found that people who achieved power feel taller than they are.
Who else has a Napoleon complex?
One candidate might be John Bercow. Also 5ft 6in, he’s been exposed for being a bully while he was Commons Speaker. He sometimes joked about his height – quipping that the only predecessors shorter than him were those who were beheaded – but after one MP called him a ‘sanctimonious dwarf’, he likened insults about his physical characteristics to racism.
And Napoleon?
He wasn’t actually that short. Although his height at the time was given as 5ft 2in, that was in obsolete Parisian units, which translate to about 5ft 6in, the average for the time. However, British propaganda cartoons depicted him as tiny. He was small in other ways: those who have seen his penis, amputated at his autopsy and now kept by a private (no pun intended) collector, say it’s just an inch long.