Movies - TV
Why Marie Antoinette's Jamie Dornan & Kirsten Dunst Had To Be Kept Apart
By DANIELLE RYAN
Actors are often kept apart on-set so that they have more genuine reactions when their characters first meet onscreen. This was the case on the historical drama "Marie Antoinette."
Actors Jamie Dornan and Kirsten Dunst first met one another on set. Dornan played the Swedish count Axel Fersen, who ends up in a torrid love affair with Dunst’s Antoinette.
Director Sofia Coppola kept Dornan and Dunst separate in order to really catch their potential chemistry authentically. They never even saw each other until they met on-screen.
Dornan said, "I was kept in the shadows until we rolled [...] so that was the first time we ever spoke to each other. It was an incredible way to get thrown into the character."
The film’s romance scenes feel effortless, likely because Coppola tried to create a party-like atmosphere on set to help the actors get into character as the decadent ruling class.