Anna Brewster
THE PALACE OF LUST! Prime-time porn! A bodice-ripping bonk-fest! Welcome to
Versailles, the BBC’S sumptuous £21 million headline-grabbing series. You may not have seen a single episode, but you most certainly would have come across the sensationalist coverage about, well, the lack of coverage. To say the sex scenes caused ripples would be understating it. How striking, then, to meet Anna Brewster, who played the highly sexual, clever and ruthless Madame de Montespan, one of the Sun King’s mistresses, and find her so far removed from her character. The sign of a brilliant actress. Wearing jeans, hoops and a Saint Laurent bag, she is super-cool but also super-friendly. And breezy about all the fuss. ‘I find the whole thing hilarious. It’s as much a part of the show as it is any other TV show. It is simply a story about what was going on at the time. And,’ she laughs, ‘there wasn’t much else to do; there was war and there was sex.’
Anna had her fair share of getting naked. How comfortable was she with that? ‘Well, sex is a large part of my character’s appeal – she was very confident in her wit and sexuality. She is supposed to match [the men] in intelligence and also in stamina in the bedroom,’ she says, ending the sentence in a hyperbolic voiceover before bursting into laughter. It isn’t all a riot, however. There is, she concedes, a price that comes with portraying such characters. ‘There were naked stills taken of Noémie (Schmidt, who plays Henriette). I did feel a bit angry because
you do something that’s part of a TV show and then someone takes it and puts it in another context… it’s just horrible. It can make you feel vulnerable – especially as you have no control over it.
Still, Birmingham-born Anna (her accent, incidentally, is neutral: ‘There are only so many Brummie roles out there!’), who has appeared in Star Wars with Harrison Ford and Hippie Hippie Shake with Sienna Miller, isn’t deterred from playing roles that involve nudity. ‘I’m totally comfortable with it. I’ve been offered parts where, as a female character, you go in for one episode, get naked and leave. These are the parts you turn down. If it’s part of a story you are telling, it’s different. Besides, Versailles is not a sexist thing. It’s not just the girls who are getting naked. It’s an equal thing. I know what story I’m telling and that’s what’s important.’
Besides, says Anna, it’s a choice. ‘If you don’t want to do it, you can say so. If you are not that kind of actress then go for different parts.’ Her laissez-faire attitude to nudity stems from her years as a model; she worked for many high-profile brands, including Hermès, Aquascutum, American Glamour,
Dazed And Confused, Japanese Vogue…. ‘I’m quite easy with my body. Being you get used to your body being Contrarily, as we move on to the own sexiness – not as a model – Anna becomes coy. Fidgeting, quite aware of the irony, that she ‘terribly shy’. ‘But when I work, another person. Which is great. can become this confident person the cameras turn off and you become this again.’ (She imitates a timid laughs.) ‘But I don’t mind that. you can show a side of you without who you really are.’ Never is this evident than when you watch modelling in front of the camera she’s wearing an Armani black suit shirt, a red caped chiffon concoction Simone Rocha or Miu Miu’s brocade Victoriana frock, she channels different sexual being. It is fascinating
Despite having a French boyfriend tells her ‘you are sexy’, Anna’s reticence about her own sexiness shouldn’t mistaken for lacking in a sense of Though she doesn’t explicitly reveal brand of sexy, the clue might be words before she rushes off to Eurostar to see her Parisian lover. was growing up, my first proper indie kids. They were really confifident, loud and brash… They were the what I was but I learned from them. were themselves. And that was thought, f**k it, I’m going to be