Maisie ‘up at 4am to start sweating’ to play Dior’s muse
GAME of Thrones actress Maisie Williams has detailed how she was “eating very little” and had to “be up at 4am to start sweating” to realistically portray Catherine Dior, the revolutionary younger sister of French fashion designer Christian Dior, in her latest TV project.
The West actress, 26, best known for playing Arya Stark in the popular HBO fantasy series, portrays Catherine, who is credited with being her brother’s muse and who fought as part of the French Resistance during the Second World War in upcoming Apple TV+ series The New Look.
It documents the rise of Christian Dior and his fashion contemporaries including Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel as they navigated the Second World War and launched modern fashion.
Starring alongside Williams, who grew up in North East Somerset, is Animal Kingdom’s Ben Mendelsohn as Christian Dior, Oscar-winning French actress Juliette Binoche as Coco Chanel and John Malkovich as Christian Dior’s boss and mentor, the French couturier Lucien Lelong.
Catherine Dior, who is said to have inspired one of her brother’s signature fragrances, was arrested in Paris and sent to Ravensbruck, a Nazi concentration camp for women.
Williams, who stars on the cover of the March issue of Harper’s Bazaar UK, told the magazine about her “strict regime” to realistically portray Catherine’s emaciated appearance when she returned to Paris, saying: “I was eating very little, meditating all the time, burning candles and incense in my apartment.
“I had to be up at 4am to start sweating. The night before, at about 7 or 8pm, I was allowed to have something salty and dehydrating – some smoked salmon and a tiny glass of wine.
“Then I had a boiling hot bath with lots of salts in it. I wouldn’t be able to sleep through the night at this point. I kept waking up and feeling like a marble inside a bottle, rattling around.”
Williams, who watched the opening ceremony of the 2012 London
Olympics to better understand Catherine’s patriotism, told Harper’s Bazaar UK: “I couldn’t really connect with what it feels to be so patriotic, because I’ve often felt disappointed and let down by the way that my own country has behaved. But I knew the times when I felt most
proud were during the Olympics.”
The first three episodes of The New Look stream globally on Apple TV+ from February 14.
The series also stars Glenn Close as Carmel Snow, who was editor-inchief of the American edition of Harper’s Bazaar from 1934 to 1958.