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.”

Mavor did “quite a bit of research” to approach playing Jeanne and get into character, reading many books about the diamond necklace case and Jeanne’s personal writings. “It’s hilarious reading her memoirs. They’re so affected and flowery! She’s writing with the audience in mind to get them on her side.” She was born into poverty and suffered terrible abuse and neglect but was of noble blood: the descendant of royalty through one of King Henry II’s illegitimate children. “She’s this wild fantasist of a character living in this sort of delusional world. She believes she must fulfill this great destiny and will do so at all costs. [She] is hardened and ruthless and doesn’t give a f*** about anyone else’s desires other than her own.”

She was eventually discovered and brought to trial, where they sentenced her to public branding and life imprisonment. After being held at the Salpêtrière in “awful conditions” for at least a year during her trial, Mavor tells Telly Visions this was Jeanne’s reaction to her verdict: “She flew into a rage and bit one of the officers who was taking her away. She bites down so hard that his ear comes off in her mouth!”

Jeanne’s daring and will are truly impressive, especially for the time. Says Mavor, “She’s so formidable and strong and awe-inspiring that she would dare do this. I think [the audience should] leave feeling a little inspired. I found her so fun to play with because she was so gung-ho. She never hesitates about her decisions, even when she ends up in prison because of them. She commits.”

Ambition and entitlement are products of Jeanne’s upbringing, Mavor believes. “It’s a cliche to say rags to riches, but [she] had this story of their family being descended from Henry II, and her father being the bastard son of this king. I think [it was a] brainwashing narrative of ‘you deserve so much more,’ and you are royalty, so it’s in your blood that you are due riches and success and decadence. Her royal lineage [gave her] a right to be in Versailles and be this kind of grand dame, yet her life was so miserable and hard as a kid.”

What Mavor learned of Jeanne’s childhood is horrific indeed. “She was abandoned by her mother, who left her and two of her siblings. Who knows how much of this is true, but it’s said that her mother left a newborn on a windowsill [since] she just couldn’t look after [the baby].” Mavor tells Telly Visions that these kinds of deep-dive history shows are fascinating. “[The series] is showing us a much more nuanced version of Marie Antoinette and a much more rounded and less misogynistic one-liner kind of thing than we’re quite used to hearing.”

The affair of the necklace and the subsequent trial torched the public opinion of Marie Antoinette and became a kind of nail in the coffin for her execution. Mavor likened it to “media moments [which] leave such an imprint in our cultural consciousness, and have such a cultural moment. [The] state of the nation at the time was incredibly unsettled, angry, and frustrated. On top of rumors and the reality of Marie Antoinette buying property, this idea that she would then spend government money on jewels, right? I do think that everyone believed that she did it. That’s why it was such a successful ruse. It was almost a reason for everyone to blame and hate her, making it her fault. It’s always very, very easy to blame.”

Although historically, Jeanne was noted as Cardinal du Rohan’s mistress, the series chose not to explore this. Mavor explains this was to make Jeanne’s intellect and cunning the real highlight. “It’s more interesting to focus on the intellectual machinations. There is a sad reality to the fact that women [were treated like] property and cattle, pawns to be moved around, cows to be milked and provide offspring. There was this horrendous brutality in that state. It’s kind of a given that Jeanne would use every card she had: her intelligence, her sexuality, her body, her charm. So, to give her more credit nowadays, we drew much more from other aspects of her worldbuilding and manipulation. Sex would be probably the least interesting thing about those calculations.”

The thing Mavor found fascinating was Jeanne's being “wildly ahead of her times” in her personal life. “She had her husband, la Motte, but then apparently Villette, her sidekick, was also her lover, and they were all aware of it. So they were kind of in a throuple. I found that quite cool. I was like: go on, girl!”

In terms of personal inspiration, Mavor caught the acting bug after watching The Shining (1980), a movie she was probably too young for: “I was particularly traumatized watching that because I was eight and I watched it on my own. I don't think I slept for a month or two after, but I remember I was very affected because it's a terrifying film and brilliant. I was very bowled over by how terrifying I found Jack Nicholson in it and how realistically deranged he felt. And yet, I was at that age where I had enough intelligence to know it was make-believe. He wasn't a psychopath, and that dissonance was terrifying, but none of that's real. I found it fascinating, and it started to get me thinking about character and the power of storytelling and performance.”

Marie Antoinette Season 2 airs Sundays on most local PBS stations, the PBS App, and the PBS Masterpiece Prime Video Channel at 10 p.m. ET. All eight episodes of the new series are available on PBS Passport for members to stream. Season 1 is available to stream for members on PBS Passport and on the Prime Video Masterpiece Channel.