All About Jeanne: ‘Marie Antoinette’s Freya Mavor Revels in Her Villain Role

The second season of Marie Antoinette brings new faces and new rivals, the most prominent being Jeanne de Valois (Freya Mavor). Jeanne is almost as much a main character as Marie Antoinette (Emilia Schüle) this season, and her outsized role in the queen’s life and death are key set pieces. In real life (and in the series), Jeanne is the architect of “The Affair of the Diamond Necklace,” a scandal that rocked Versailles and destroyed the queen’s reputation. The plot involves a diamond necklace worth ₶2 million (~$34 million in today’s American dollars), initially commissioned for Madame du Barry. It is the country’s most expensive piece of jewelry – maybe even the world. King Louis XV died before payment was made, and Marie Antoinette declined to purchase it.

With her partner in crime, a master forger named Villette (Alexander Bhat), Jeanne exchanges letters with Cardinal du Rohan (Maximilien Seweryn), pretending to be Marie Antoinette and tricking him into carrying out the purchase in secret on behalf of “the queen.” When the necklace is delivered (to Jeanne) but no payment is made, the queen is accused of defrauding the jeweler. Meanwhile, at Versailles, Jeanne is making a name for herself as the newest haute courtier, claiming to be close friends with the queen and defrauding the nobles out of donations for her fake charity.

Who better to play the ambitious, outspoken Jeanne than the charming, bold Freya Mavor? “She’s such a wildly brilliant, juicy, shocking character,” Mavor tells Telly Visions. “The balls, or rather, the tits, I should say, that she had to pull that off and just go for it says a lot about her.”