‘It Was Like Hosting the Ultimate Party’: An Oral History of Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette 

Near the start of 2001, Sofia Coppola wrote to Lady Antonia Fraser on a piece of personalized, pale-blue stationery.

She had optioned the film rights to the esteemed British historian’s best-selling biography, Marie Antoinette: The Journey. Of all the books Coppola read about the doomed teen queen, she considered Lady Antonia’s to be “the best one… full of life, not a dry historical drama.” Unlike other portraits, which drew her as an overindulgent harpy who deserved to lose her head, Marie Antoinette: The Journey approached its subject with a radical sense of empathy. “The elegiac should have its place as well as the tragic, flowers and music as well as revolution,” Lady Antonia wrote in her author’s note. “Above all, I have attempted to tell Marie Antoinette’s dramatic story without anticipating its terrible ending.”

Coppola wanted to do the same with a film. There would be no beheadings in her script—nor much to do with the French Revolution at all. Rather than reduce the queen to a sentence she never actually said—“Let them eat cake”—Coppola wanted to show Marie Antoinette as she was: a young woman never taught to consider life outside the gilded gates of Versailles. “Marie was just 14 when she got sent over from Austria to become the Queen of France,” Coppola recently told Vogue. “I felt compelled to portray how her story had been misrepresented over time. I had this idea of how to interpret her life in a way that felt youthful and girly instead of academic.”

Lady Antonia certainly had no reservations. Already an admirer of The Virgin Suicides, Coppola’s lush directorial debut, she gave the filmmaker her blessing immediately. “I told Sofia she wouldn’t have any trouble from me and that I’d answer any questions she had,” Lady Antonia recalls. “I wrote a brilliant book, so I told her to go make a brilliant film.”

Starring Kirsten Dunst as the titular monarch, Marie Antoinette is a high-fashion arthouse drama costumed as a big-budget period piece. If it’s difficult to imagine a major studio funding a project of its scope and vision today, that’s because there hasn’t been anything quite like it since. Released 15 years ago this month, Marie Antoinette still feels like something of a revelation, and is regarded as a cultural touchstone for so many filmmakers and designers that it’s easy to forget just how polarizing it was upon release.

“I’m so happy it has an audience now because at the time it was not successful. People didn’t go see it; they didn’t really know what to make of it,” Coppola says. “It means a lot to me that it continues to live on.”

To commemorate its anniversary, Vogue talked to the cast, crew, and more about how Marie Antoinette came together.

“I Was Less Interested in the Political Side of History’”

Coppola struggled to condense the queen’s short but eventful life into a film that felt accessible. She enjoyed working her way through Marie Antoinette’s teendom—the parties, the fashion—but was less engaged by her tragic final years. Coppola often alternated between writing Marie Antoinette and the script that became her second feature, a story about a young American woman and a fading movie star in Tokyo.

Sofia Coppola, Marie Antoinette director/writer: My attitude was, “How would Marie want a movie about her life to look?” I’ve always loved that period, and she’s such a mythic figure. I grew up in the ’80s so my first exposure to that era was through bands like Adam and the Ants. I thought it’d be interesting to approach 18th-century France through that New Romantic lens. I wanted to adapt Antonia Fraser’s book because her attitude was so different from other biographies about Marie.

Lady Antonia Fraser, author of Marie Antoinette: The Journey: She was a childhood passion of mine. As I researched her story, I began to realize she was very different from what history has portrayed her as. Many historians behave as if she was born in France, when in fact one of the most dramatic moments in Marie’s life—which Sofia told me really struck her in my book—is when her doggy is taken away and she is stripped of her Austrian clothes in the forest. 

Coppola: There was so much detail in Antonia’s book that I had to edit down based on what gave the best impression of Marie’s story. I was less interested in the political side of history, just like Marie was, so I tried to put in the least amount of politics as possible. It was really fun to take social dynamics from history and interpret them in a way that felt relatable. When I got stuck on Marie Antoinette I would just work on my script for Lost in Translation.

Fraser: There’s a historian who said “We should always be aware that what now lies in the past once lay in the future.” Marie never anticipated what sorrows lay ahead, and how could she? She was sad about leaving [her pug] Mops behind [in Vienna] but she was going to be the Queen of France. She expected to have a good time, and she certainly had one.

Coppola: For me, the story began with Marie arriving in France as a 14-year-old and ended with her leaving Versailles. There’s a whole portion in Antonia’s book about Marie’s imprisonment at the end of her life, but that felt like a whole other movie. I wanted to focus on her youth at the palace and how she found her way within it. Once the revolution hits, it’s sorta like the party comes to an end and everyone has to go home. Plus, we already know what happens next.

Kirsten Dunst, Marie Antoinette: Sofia is not the type of person who wants to show soldiers knocking down doors and people getting beheaded. It’s not in the visual vocabulary of what she likes to see in her movies.

Fraser: I read a draft of her script and got a slight shock when it ended the way it did. But that’s part of the way Sofia saw the story, and it works so well. When Marie looks back at Versailles and Louis asks what she’s staring at, I remember getting a bit teary when she responds “I’m saying goodbye.” It’s terribly moving.

“It Was Totally Unexpected”

Music is as foundational to the texture of Marie Antoinette as dialogue or costumes. Coppola’s vision for the film evolved alongside the soundtrack, which was largely assembled from mixtapes supplied by her longtime friend and collaborator, Brian Reitzell. Instead of Christoph Willibald Gluck—the queen’s favorite composer—Marie Antoinette would feature the music of Coppola’s youth: New Order, The Cure, Bow Wow Wow. She wrote her script while listening to the batch of 40-ish songs on the mixtapes, dubbed “Versailles Mix 1” and “Versailles Mix 2." 

Brian Reitzell, Marie Antoinette music supervisor: Sofia asked me to be the music supervisor on The Virgin Suicides because I’m a geek about music and have a huge record collection. The soundtrack for Lost in Translation came from two mix CDs that she listened to while writing the script. It was the exact same process with Marie Antoinette, and it took three months of me scratching my head trying to figure out what her version of a period piece would sound like.

Coppola: I thought about using contemporary music from the beginning. I didn’t feel like classical music would evoke that same feeling. I mainly wanted to show that these were teenagers, and I associate this music with my teenage years. I wanted it to feel like those Adam Ant music videos I loved as a kid.

Reitzell: Sofia would Xerox photographs of artists that she liked or fashion photography that caught her imagination. One of the photos was Bow Wow Wow recreating a [Édouard] Manet painting [Le Déjeuner Sur L’Herbe]. That whole New Romantic sensibility was the spirit of the film from the get-go. It wasn’t there yet musically, but visually Sofia steered me towards that music.

Hamish Bowles, International Editor-at-Large, Vogue: The New Romantic movement emerged from the punk movement, so they both came from a place of extreme iconoclasm. But whereas punk was anarchic and about breaking down barriers of acceptability, New Romanticism was about flamboyant self-expression. It was looking at the outrageous self-presentation of late-18th-century France through a punk lens. 

Reitzell: We invented our own way of making a soundtrack when we did The Virgin Suicides because we didn’t have any money but we had expensive taste. I got in touch with every artist and I either showed them the movie or I got Sofia to write them a letter. Lost in Translation opened doors for us because artists understood we were gonna use music in a cool way. Sofia and I really owe the musicians on Marie Antoinette a lot for playing ball with us. Robert Smith wrote to his label so both Cure songs could be used on the soundtrack for reduced royalties. Everyone took less money than they should get because they wanted to be in the film.

Coppola: I grew up with bands like New Order and The Cure so it was exciting to use them in this context. The opening image is based on a Guy Bourdin photograph of a woman lying back with a maid at her feet. The idea was to introduce the queen via this decadent perception we have of her. The Gang of Four song [“Natural’s Not in It”] was meant to embody that punk energy and establish the tone of this story. It has this spirit of, We’re the kids who took over the castle and we can do whatever we want.

Jon King, Gang of Four lead singer: I loved it. The opening with Andy [Gill]’s dry guitar riff—it was totally unexpected. Sofia is a a brilliant film maker and I knew she'd do something fresh and wild. A teenage girl, saturated in wealth but from birth a commodity to be traded, is plucked from all she knows to wed one of the most powerful men in the world. It was a beautiful vision that fit my lyrics—“The problem of leisure / what to do for pleasure / ideal love a new purchase / a market of the senses…” 

“You Wanna Shoot in France? Go For It!”

Lost in Translation became a word-of-mouth sensation in the fall of 2003. Produced for $4 million, the indie raked in over $120 million and won its cast and crew a slew of accolades, including a best-original-screenplay Oscar for Coppola. She hadn’t even gotten her name engraved on the statue yet before studio heads began propositioning her and producer Ross Katz about their next film.

Coppola: Usually when you have a successful film, you get one free pass to make something you’re passionate about. After Lost in Translation, I thought I could use that pass on Marie Antoinette because it was gonna be such an expensive film.

Ross Katz, Marie Antoinette producer: I wanted to catch up with Sofia after the Oscars since you don’t really get to talk much during the ceremony. I walked into the Governor’s Ball and saw Sofia sitting with Amy Pascal, and I remember hearing [Pascal] say something to the effect of “I have to do the next one.”

Amy Pascal, then-Sony Pictures Entertainment co-chairman: I’m obsessed with Sofia. I worship her. After I saw Lost in Translation I was so blown away that I followed her around like a groupie. I basically stalked her until she agreed to make a movie with me, and Marie Antoinette was her passion project.

Katz: A lot of studios were interested, but all of them wanted us to shoot in Bulgaria or somewhere other than Paris because it would be much cheaper. But Sofia stood her ground and said this wasn’t the type of film where Toronto could substitute for Versailles. Sony said, “You wanna shoot in France? Go for it!”

Pascal: For me it’s always about the director. My belief is that you find filmmakers you wanna work with and then you back them. There’s nobody else like Sofia. She’s one-of-a-kind and when you decide that you’re gonna make a movie like Marie Antoinette with a filmmaker like her, there’s no point in curtailing their vision.

Coppola: Amy was totally behind me. She pursued the project so adamantly and was willing to give me the budget to make it the way I wanted. She totally got it, whereas some straight guy at another studio maybe wouldn’t have.

“I’d Do Anything for Sofia”

With Sony backing the production’s $40 million budget, Marie Antoinette officially had a greenlight. Coppola wrote the script specifically with Kirsten Dunst (her Virgin Suicides muse) and Jason Schwartzman (her cousin) in mind as the sexually incompetent newlyweds. The painfully shy Louis XVI refused to consummate his marriage to Marie Antoinette for several years, much to the chagrin of a court that expected the queen to get pregnant tout suite. It was the only reason she was sent over—to secure an alliance between Austria and France by producing a male heir. 

Coppola: I thought of Kirsten while writing the script because I’d just worked with her and really loved that experience. She just has that sparkle that I imagine Marie Antoinette had. And Jason is just so sympathetic, which is what struck me about Louis while reading Antonia’s book.

Dunst: Sofia was staying at the Chateau Marmont and I came over to hang out. She sorta shyly handed me Antonia Fraser’s book and said, “I really want you to read this and play Marie Antoinette!” I’d do anything for Sofia, but I was definitely intimidated. At that point I really only knew Marie as the “let them eat cake” lady.

Fraser: If I’m being candid, when I first heard Sofia wanted an American to play the queen, I had to pinch myself a bit. I went with it because Kirsten is a talented actor, and she ended up being so perfect for the part.

Jason Schwartzman, Louis XVI of France: Sofia said, “I wrote this movie and I was hoping you’d play the king,” which is a wild proposition. I’d never done anything set in the past before, and as a very nervous person with a lot of insecurities, I wanted to do the best job I could.

Coppola: There’s a really touching quality about Kirsten’s acting that I thought made sense for telling Marie’s story. Also Kirsten is German and Marie was Austrian, so I thought she could easily look like her. I thought Jason could look like Louis if he gained weight.

Jamie Dornan, Count Axel Von Fersen: Do you know how much weight Jason had to gain? I remember asking him what he did to put it on and he said he just ate donuts and drank beer and melted ice cream cartons, which I don’t think is great for you. He may have been lying to me.

Schwartzman: Oh, I wasn’t lying. I read somewhere that your metabolism slows down at night while you’re sleeping so I would set an alarm for 3:00am, wake up, eat a plate of donuts, and go back to sleep. I started around 135 pounds and got up to something like 180 before filming. I’d go to dinner and order a plate of spaghetti for an appetizer and a pizza for dinner. My body was resilient to a certain point and then boom, the weight came on immediately. It was pretty hardcore.

“It Was Like High School At Versailles”

With Dunst and Schwartzman locked in, Coppola decamped to France in the fall of 2004 to ramp up pre-production. She worked with casting directors out of Los Angeles, London, and Paris for six months to find the numerous counts and mesdames that populated the Palace of Versailles.

Antoinette Boulat, Marie Antoinette casting director: Sofia wasn’t making a conventional costume drama so I knew she didn’t want a conventional cast. We had some visual references since they’d be playing real people, but Sofia wanted to find actors she was excited about. She was more interested in the actor’s personality than their star power.

Coppola: I definitely wanted the casting to have a pop aspect, hence having people like Marianne Faithfull and Molly Shannon. I think you can pretty much put powder and make-up on anybody to fit a certain aesthetic. It was fun because I got to cast people I really admire.

Marianne Faithfull, Empress Maria Theresa: Sofia asked my manager if I wanted to play an Austrian queen and I thought it was a great idea. I was very gratified because my mother, Eva [von Sacher-Masoch], was an Austrian aristocrat.

Molly Shannon, Madame de Victoire: I was pregnant with my son and my agent called, saying, “Sofia Coppola wants you to be in some movie but it’s in Paris so we said you’re not available.” I was like, “Wait, you did what?” I told my ob-gyn, “Look, there’s this movie I’m dying to do but I’d have to be in Paris…” and she said, “When do you need to be there? I’ll induce you, we’ll make this happen.” Now that Sofia has kids she always says, “I cannot believe you told your doctor to push the baby out so you could do my movie.”

Dunst: Getting to work with Molly was such a huge deal to me because I was the biggest SNL fan in the world. Sofia is so good at casting people who work well off of each other. The cast was her reimagining of what the court would look and feel like at that time—there’s the funny one, that one’s the gossip, she’s the mean girl. It was like high school at Versailles.

Asia Argento, Madame du Barry: I was surprised when Sofia asked me to be du Barry without even meeting me. I was shooting in France at the time and we were all talking about the big Marie Antoinette movie coming to town. Everyone in the business was curious about it, so I was very flattered when she thought of me for a role.

Coppola made it clear from the beginning that she didn’t want her cast to adopt French accents. If no one in the film was speaking the language, she argued there was no point in attempting an imitation.

Coppola: I thought it’d be weird if everyone spoke with some Ye Olde Mid-Atlantic tone. I thought as long as nobody was speaking French, everyone might as well just speak with their preferred accent. It’s kind of a mish-mosh, and was maybe a weird decision at the time, but that was my thinking.

Schwartzman: I asked Sofia, “How can I fulfill your vision? Should I learn French?” And she said, “No no, please don’t.” She didn’t want everyone to try and speak with the same accent. She thought it was distracting in other movies and just didn’t find it necessary.

Mary Nighy, Princess de Lamballe: I was very aware of all the differing accents. Jamie is Irish, Al [Weaver] and Sebastian [Armesto] are English, Clémentine [Poidatz] is French, Rose [Bryne] is Australian, and Kirsten and Jason are American. Every day my English ear was just like, “What the hell is going on here?”

Argento: So the Austrians are British and the French are American—who cares? I’m Italian and everyone is speaking English! This is a film by an auteur with a point of view, not a documentary.

Coppola filled out the core cast with a colorful collection of character actors, including Steve Coogan as an Austrian diplomat and the late Rip Torn as King Louis XV. The most challenging role to fill was that of Axel von Ferson, a Swedish count who some historians believe had an affair with the queen.

Coppola: I asked Antonia Fraser if she thought Marie Antoinette and Count Fersen really had a love affair and she said, “Well, I’d certainly like to hope they did.” There’s enough evidence to suggest so, but did it get physical? Who knows.

Rachel Desmarest, Marie Antoinette casting assistant There wasn’t a single handsome young actor in Europe we didn’t interact with for that part. We went through the whole of France for six months. But Jamie Dornan was so cute and such a down-to-earth bloke. He totally won us over.

Dornan: Marie Antoinette was not only my acting debut, but also my first audition. I signed with my agent in London on a Friday and had a meeting with the film’s casting director the following Tuesday. Two days later they flew me to Paris to audition with a different casting director, and if it went well I was supposed to stay in town and meet Sofia in the Hemingway Bar at the Ritz. It went well, so Sofia and I had a couple drinks and she casually told me that I got the part. It was all very fast and very surreal. I thought, “Wow, this is gonna be an easy career!” And then I barely worked for eight years. But it was certainly a nice way to start.

“There Was Plenty of Movie Magic Involved”

As casting came together, Coppola assembled a crack team of behind-the-scenes collaborators to bring the decadence of 18th-century France to life. She rehired many of the same people who made Lost in Translation such a magical experience, including production designer K.K. Barrett. Only permitted to film at Versailles one day a week, Barrett and his team had to recreate palace interiors at various châteaus across France.

K.K. Barrett, Marie Antoinette production designer: Sofia is an amazing director for production designers because she’s very trusting. I’d never done a historical film before so I don’t know if I was the ideal person for the job, but I was adaptive. I’d been to Paris before but had never visited Versailles. I wanted to explore this new world through Kirsten’s eyes as she’s thrust into it. Sofia trusted my sensibility and I trusted hers, so we figured it out together.

Anne Seibel, Marie Antoinette supervising art director: K.K. and I made a very good team. If you asked me to design an American period film, I’d need to work with an American who could speak to the minutiae of their culture. K.K. didn’t know much French history and needed me to provide a certain perspective. He and I broke down the script by rooms and designed them according to the locations we had access to, then I coordinated the building and dressing of the sets.

Barrett: I didn’t just get to design historical interiors but also opera sets, horse-drawn carriages, all kinds of stuff I’d never done before. We pieced sets together throughout France because we had to fill four days a week with other scenes. Then we’d go back to Versailles every Monday to shoot everything that couldn’t be recreated, like Marie’s arrival or anything in the Hall of Mirrors. 

Coppola: We shot a lot on location so we wouldn’t have to shoot on sound stages. The atmosphere from being in actual places brings so much to the finished film. You can tell on the screen. But there was plenty of movie magic involved.

Véronique Melery, Marie Antoinette set decorator: I researched photographs of the interiors and various color combinations and patterns. I went to several studios with silk swatches from that era and galleries that specialized in 18th-century antiques. It was a period film, but Sofia was clear that she wanted it to have a contemporary feeling.

Barrett: I researched historical portraits from the era only to discover that they’re all lies. They were commissioned by people of wealth to make them look good and not an honest representation of what life actually looked like. Even the docents who worked at Versailles would argue amongst themselves about what the correct information was. Once we saw that, we realized there was some wiggle room for interpretation. For example, when she crossed the border into France, there was no documentation for where that took place. We invented a royal tent made for that moment with a long corridor passage where Marie gets stripped of her Austrian heritage.

A team of up to 150 constructed all the various sets in the months leading up to production. The team’s favorite one to work on was also the most expensive: the queen’s bedroom. They spent €300,000 (close to $500,000 today) building an identical recreation out of a run-down château in the French countryside.

Barrett: The bedroom was the most historically accurate set. The fabrics we used for her bed and the walls were incredibly detailed reprints of the real thing. We built a lot of the furniture since it wasn’t like we could rent all those different antiques. We had to be honest not only to history but also to the craftsmanship of the period.

Seibel: When Marie came to Versailles, everything was new. Sofia said everything should look bright and clean, not faded. We designed Marie’s boudoir with an eye towards opulence. The bedding was hand-embroidered and we did a lot of camera tests with different fabrics to nail down what looked best. No one can say there wasn’t a lot of effort put into making everything accurate.

Coppola: Marie’s real bedroom was decorated with bright gold and turquoise fabric, so it wasn’t complete artistic license on my part. You never see those pops of color in period films, but I wanted to depict her world the way she saw it.

Melery: We knew there were gonna be a lot of close-ups in the bedroom scenes so the amount of detail had to be immaculate. We wanted to recreate the feeling of this little woodland creature enveloped in a nest of luxury who still feels terribly lonely. We wanted it to look real to contrast with the scenes in the Petit Trianon where Marie has more freedom and there’s lots of flowy white curtains. Every set requires making choices that match the architecture of the period, but also help tell the story.

“I Learned Everything Through Sofia’s Filter”

Per Coppola’s impassioned recommendation, nearly everyone in the cast and crew read Lady Antonia’s biography. With an ensemble pulled from every imaginable background—a sketch comedy veteran, a model-turned-first time actor—their approaches to character research varied.

Dunst: At the time I worked with someone who was a little airy-fairy. I wouldn’t call her an acting coach; she was more like a mood person. She’d write me these long messages about character motivation and fax me all kinds of ideas. I’m very into the inner-self and dream work and this was sorta in that realm.

Rose Byrne, Yolande de Polastron, the Duchess of Polignac: I’d really only done Troy and Wicker Park at that point, which were both fairly serious. Marie Antoinette was the first time I’d done something funny, since it quickly became apparent that the Duchess was the film’s comic relief. Sofia compared her to an uncorked champagne bottle: warm and fizzy and fabulous.

Dornan: Sofia told me her reference for Count Fersen was Adam Ant, who oozes sex appeal. The more I researched him the more terrified I was, because I was just some skinny, insecure Irish guy. We ended up not going too far visually but that was the type of guy Count Fersen represents to Marie. He’s the rock-and-roll alternative to Jason’s buttoned-up king.

Schwartzman: I met with two different historians at UCLA and they would give me completely different answers about certain things—specifically Louis’s sexual issues. One would say something was true and another would say it’d been disproven. That was liberating in a way, because there’s not a ton of information about Louis compared to Marie. I could just focus on the script and learn everything through Sofia’s filter.

Argento: Madame du Barry was a kind of mythological figure. She was a courtesan who became the king’s lover, and even though he made her a Comtesse, she was not aristocratic. I could relate to du Barry feeling like she never belonged. She endured a rough life to get where she did and become the king’s favorite. The spoiled brats at Versailles despised her because she wasn’t like them, so she created this glamorous façade to protect herself.

“We Wanted the Film to Feel Fashionable”

For Coppola’s take on 18th-century life, no amount of research helped the actors ease into character more than slipping into Milena Canonero’s Oscar-winning costumes. The real Marie Antoinette famously never wore the same thing twice, and the same is true of her onscreen counterpart. Working out of ateliers in Rome overflowing with silk, satin, and taffeta, Canonero designed over 70 outfits for Dunst (and hundreds more for her costars).

Milena Canonero, Marie Antoinette costume designer: Sofia brought me a big box of delicious Ladurée macarons as a present, but she also said that she wanted the pastel colors to inspire the palette of the costumes in Marie Antoinette. 

Coppola: I made reference boards that had a lot of New Romantic visuals and John Galliano’s work at Dior. He designed some dresses inspired by Marie Antoinette and I loved that mix of 18th-century fashion and couture. Milena is a genius and completely understood what I was going for. She interpreted the era with such a fresh feeling and palette. Marie was into fashion so we wanted the film to feel fashionable.

Dunst: Milena and I would just play around with different fabrics and ideas. I was trying on so many dresses that would end up going to other characters as she figured out what looked best for Marie. Everything was a very delicate collaboration, and Milena was really open to what I had to say. For the scene after Marie’s child has died, I wore a pale-blue dress and I suggested that I wear a red ribbon around my waist that made it look like I’d been cut in half.

Coppola: I visited the Costume Institute at the Met and looked at some dresses from that time period. They were much more vibrant than you’d imagine because historical paintings always seem to depict them as so dull.

Canonero (in 2006): [Sofia’s] vision is not necessarily American; she’s lived in France a lot. She wanted to have a fresh approach, to paint a canvas. She did not want me to reproduce in a cinematic way the paintings of Marie Antoinette that you see at Versailles.

Katz: Milena is very intense but also incredibly funny. She’s a perfectionist, and given she won an Oscar designing costumes for Stanley Kubrick, that’s not a huge surprise. She basically had to build a wardrobe for the entire court of Versailles over two decades and it was up to her to figure out how she wanted to pull it off. When Sofia and I went to Rome to see Milena in the costume department, there were sketches and pieces of fabric covering every inch. If you had put a sign outside and charged admission, there would’ve been a line down the block.

Coppola: There were racks and racks of wigs and every color of ribbon you can imagine. Milena was a complete perfectionist. Watching her work on a batch of silk flowers was a highlight of my life.

Byrne: For the Duchess, [Canonero] had this intuitive understanding of what Sofia’s interpretation of an 18th-century party girl would look like. I wore a few costumes that Marisa Berenson wore in Barry Lyndon, which tickled me. Marisa was also once an “It girl” of her time, so to be wearing her costumes for Sofia’s movie felt very special.

Canonero: I pulled pieces from my archive of 18th-century waistcoats, lace, and trimmings. All the outfits for the principal actors were made new, while I obviously rented some stock costumes for the background actors, as one always does to keep in budget.

Nighy: I think I wore around 50 dresses. The petticoats were like a cage around your legs that made it impossible to sit or fit through doorways, and 18th-century corsets push up your boobs so you can’t really slouch. I met with a teacher at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts because I wanted to learn how to manage naturalistic movement in such restrictive costumes.

Coppola: I asked the Phoenix guys to do a really small cameo and they ended up in fittings for six hours. They were such a small part, but she still wanted to make sure they looked perfect.

Argento: I started to get an idea of who du Barry was through working with Milena. We had meetings so she could study my face and body before I even met Sofia. They wanted my character to look different from the rest of Versailles. She chose a lot of deep reds and purples for me compared to the pastels all the other girls wear to show that du Barry wasn’t like them.

Canonero (2006): I dressed [du Barry] like an exotic bird, in contrast to the rather naive, innocent queen-in-waiting.

Lance Acord, Marie Antoinette cinematographer: It was important to find the right combination of lenses, film stock, and lighting that would work well with Sofia’s color palette. Milena’s costumes really set the mood with the exception of Asia’s; her costumes were slightly more garish. Everyone else’s are in a very specific pastel range of pistachio and light raspberry shades. The film has a softer look than you’re accustomed to seeing in a period piece.

Designer Manolo Blahnik was also enlisted to craft the film’s footwear. With his brand memorialized on series like Sex and the City as the most decadent thing you could slip your feet into, Blahnik was the only person who could design shoes fit for a queen. Blahnik had previously worked with Canonero when he provided the pair of classic black Julia pumps that Catherine Deneuve wears in The Hunger (1983). Marie Antoinette, however, became the first film that he essentially designed a full collection for.

Manolo Blahnik, Marie Antoinette shoe designer: I’ve been mad for Marie since I was a little boy because she’s the maximum of elegance. My mother used to read Stefan Zweig’s biography of her to me. Mind you, she always stopped when the Revolution kicked in and Madame de Lamballe got decapitated. She skipped those sections and focused more on the parties. 

Coppola: I thought Marie would’ve ordered her shoes from Manolo Blahnik if she was around today. He was our first and only option to design them.

Blahnik: Most films buy their wares second-rate or secondhand but [Sofia] wanted everything custom-made, and I love that kind of discipline. Milena said, “Don’t be too academic, design shoes for the Marie Antoinette of now.” I went to Versailles for inspiration and London to look through archives that sold antique materials. I took all of this incredible silk that cost a small fortune and I spent hours fringing and looping it through antique buckles. My assistant would visit the set with my materials to get Sofia and Milena’s feedback, and every single time they went absolutely mad for the bloody shoes.

Coppola: It was a very fun day when the shoes arrived in these big gorgeous boxes wrapped in ribbon. It felt just like the “I Want Candy” montage.

Jewelry also plays a significant role in her vision of the French court: Luxury jeweler Fred Leighton supplied $4 million worth of diamonds to the production—the equivalent of Lost in Translation’s entire budget. The New York-based retailer has since sold every piece featured in the film, including a 95-carat pink topaz necklace worth $95,000.

Rebecca Selva, Fred Leighton chief creative officer: When Sofia shared that she wanted to bring jewelry into a film she was making about Marie Antoinette with Kirsten, I was on board. I just knew her face so well from working with her and her stylists over the years. It started with a pair of late 18th-century earrings that Sofia saw in our collection.

Dunst: On Marie Antoinette I got to wear these amazing crescent-moon earrings for some of the more decadent scenes, like my 18th birthday party. Actors typically never get to wear real diamonds on a movie set. Usually the props person has a box of rings that are all cubic zirconia.

Selva: Sofia thought those earrings encapsulated the fantasy of 18th-century France and wanted to use them in multiple scenes. From there, she and Milena gave me some broad guidelines in terms of a color palette. I have an art history background, so I thought of [Jean-Honoré] Fragonard’s Rococo paintings as a reference point. It was a very easy process; I got a big tray and I just started putting some pieces together from what was in our collection.

Dunst: Every other day on Marie Antoinette there was someone coming up to me saying, “Now you’re gonna wear these gorgeous diamond earrings with this priceless antique necklace.”

Selva: We didn’t wanna limit ourselves to only jewelry that was produced between 1780 and 1794. There’re very few 18th-century jewels and they tend to be heavier, so I selected mostly 19th-century jewels that communicate the youth and hope of the young queen. Sofia wanted the magic of jewelry to help bring the richness of that world to life.

“It Was Like Hosting the Ultimate Party”

With the sets constructed and the keys to Versailles handed over, Marie Antoinette began filming on March 7, 2005. While the palace has hosted 225 different productions since 1896, Coppola was granted unprecedented access.

Jeanne Hollande, shooting coordinator at the Palace of Versailles: Marie Antoinette was presented as an intimate film, more of an artistic creation inspired by the historical figure. Versailles used to be quite restrictive, with a desire for projects not to stray too far from the historical truth. We are much more open-minded today; now the important thing is to show off the palace and make you want to understand more about its history. We immediately agreed to host Sofia.

Katz: There was a very good chance we were gonna get turned down. But one of the reasons the palace said they approved us was because Sofia’s film didn’t sound like another dusty costume drama. They said “Versailles is not a museum, it’s alive.” They didn’t want a movie that felt like a museum piece and Sofia presented a really vibrant take on a person we’ve only really seen in paintings before.

Coppola: I’m still surprised to this day that Versailles welcomed us. It was kinda like hosting the ultimate party. I think people could see my heart was totally in it and that I was doing something I love.

Byrne: There was something so magical about being at Versailles. We were in these extraordinary costumes recreating some of the events that happened at those locations. It felt a bit like time-travel. 

Argento: I had visited Versailles when I was 13 and I remember looking at the king’s bed from behind a barrier. Suddenly, there I was 15 years later, jumping into bed with the king himself.

Shannon: We would shoot in the castle during the day and then we would run around once it got dark because there were no guards. We had full access, so after we finished shooting we would just start playing hide-and-seek around the palace. It was mind-blowingly fantastic.

Katz: We literally had the keys to the castle. Once, at the end of a 13-hour day, I was so exhausted that I almost sat on Marie Antoinette’s bed. We got a little too comfortable.

Dunst: We got to see a lot more than there is in the film. The docents showed me the little secret backroom in Marie Antoinette’s bedroom. It’s very tiny but it had the only toilet in the entire palace and a few of her personal items. I asked for a private moment so I could just be alone and look around.

Coppola: A lot of friends came to visit, like Marc [Jacobs] and Anna [Sui]. Pedro Almodóvar was in Paris hanging out with Wes Anderson, so I invited them over too. We were just so excited to show everything off at Versailles.

Schwartzman: I started to know the palace so well that I was giving tours to new cast members or anyone who came to visit. Cribs was big at the time, so one day I just started messing around and giving a tour in character as Louis while Roman [Coppola] followed me around with a camera. I didn’t even know it was edited together until someone told me it was a bonus feature on the DVD.

Dunst: It was kinda like the original 73 Questions. 

One of the areas of Versailles that Coppola and her team got to know most intimately was the Petit Trianon. The château was a gift from Louis XVI to his wife, who would go there to escape the stuffy formalities of the palace. No one was permitted to enter the property without permission from the queen, whose greatest joy was lounging in the gardens with her children and members of her inner circle.

Coppola: It was really sad and sweet to be at the Trianon. It was basically this little play farm where she could pretend to live a simple life with her sheep. It was considered unusual that she wanted to spend so much time with her children and play with farm animals rather than constantly stay in a gilded cage. There’s something really touching about her wanting to feel connected to something real.

Dunst: My favorite dresses were anything I wore at the Petit Trianon because I didn’t have to wear a corset. My head didn’t throb and my ribs didn’t hurt when I wore them. The Trianon was Marie’s time to relax and loosen up, so [they] were like much more bohemian versions of the proper court dresses.

Acord: The real Marie Antoinette enjoyed that area of Versailles much more than life at the palace. That entire sequence that shows her life at the Trianon is probably my favorite part of the movie that we shot. Sofia wanted the camerawork to feel intimate, like you were actually beside the characters instead of just staring at a beautiful tableaux from a distance.

Coppola: Lance understood that I wanted those scenes at the Trianon to have a really intimate, youthful feeling. Lance’s style doesn’t have that typical formality you expect from a period piece, there’s a certain looseness to it. I wanted to have a more intimate connection with how you see and connect to the character of Marie Antoinette.

Barrett: We really wanted a white Rolls-Royce peeking out of the background of the dinner scene outside the Petit Trianon. We were trying to say that royalty is kinda timeless when you live in that much of a privileged bubble. I wanted one of those long White Ghosts from the ’60s, but we ended up getting a Rolls-Royce from the ’80s with a vinyl top that just wasn’t iconic enough. Sofia thought it didn’t feel right. The famous Converse, on the other hand, did feel right. 

Roman Coppola, Marie Antoinette second unit director: It was an in-the-moment idea of, Is this crazy? I think it spoke to the spirit of the movie’s thesis that these are young people. Plus it’s just a fun little detail. I think those Converse belonged to the stand-in we used for Kirsten and we just shot her feet.

“Sofia is Very Good at Setting a Vibe”

Every person I spoke with who worked on Marie Antoinette commented on Coppola’s ability to make even the most chaotic day on set feel mellow. She’d play music from the film’s soundtrack over the loudspeakers while extras in full period attire took cigarette breaks and ate macarons. 

Coppola: It’s important for me to have an atmosphere. Your days are long and you spend so much time with these people that you wanna make it pleasant. We definitely lived the spirit of the movie while filming. If we were about to shoot off fireworks, someone would go grab a bottle of champagne so we could have a little toast.

Byrne: Sofia is very good at setting a vibe. There was always gentle music playing depending on the mood of the scene. She creates another world for everyone working on her films, which lends itself to having the same experience as a viewer watching it. The film is so irreverent and fun, and Sofia instilled that in the day-to-day process.

Shannon: Sofia was so calm even when she was shooting these giant set-pieces. I really hadn’t seen a woman making a movie of that stature before, and I felt so lucky to be a part of it every day. It felt like making a movie with a cool girl business partner. I was pinching myself.

Coppola: Everything was so beautiful and we couldn’t get over it. My mom has hours of footage showing close-ups of all the flowers and diamonds. I wanna make a documentary with it someday. Thierry Boutemy provided the flowers and would drive in from Belgium once a week to deliver them. One of my favorite things on set was watching him make these incredibly delicate flower arrangements. 

Thierry Boutemy, Marie Antoinette florist: I was quite anxious. Filming took place in winter so even the simplest flowers became exotic. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to meet the demands of the production. At the end of the first day of shooting Sofia asked for me: “Who is Thierry? Who made the flowers?” She told me she liked them a lot, and that gave me a lot of courage to continue. It was difficult, but I knew that I was participating in a project that would remain in time. Flowers are ephemeral and on film they become eternal. 

Dunst: Even the food was a piece of art. Every scene had fresh pastries you could really eat instead of some prop cake that had been sitting in a fridge for three days. Sofia and I joke that we should’ve invested in Ladurée after the movie, because they blew up after the film came out. Macarons literally became the thing to have at a party, and I really feel like we had something to do with it.

Acord: Sofia’s style of filming is to create an environment that’s fun to be in. When there’s music playing or the cast was eating and drinking with one another, I would essentially be a fly on the wall. It was all about creating a mood and then capturing it. A lot of moments that feel so natural are because the people on camera are having fun in the moment.

Nighy: Some of the dialogue was scripted, but Sofia left quite a lot of space in the script for improvisation. There were lots of descriptions that said “In X conversation, Y is said.” Sofia would just throw us into environments like the masked ball and start filming. Lance and his camera seemed incredibly discreet and very fluid throughout filming, which really allowed the actors to feel un-self-conscious.

Dornan: My first day was the masked ball scene at the Palais Garnier with hundreds of extras. Sofia had cleverly arranged it so that Kirsten and I didn’t meet until we met in the scene. I was kept in the shadows until we rolled the cameras so that was the first time we ever spoke to each other. It was an incredible way to get thrown into the character.

Argento: They were serving rivers of champagne with oysters. I was pretty tipsy during one of the dinner scenes so I decided, as a sort of punk gesture, to burp and say “Nobody here treats me like a lady!” I felt du Barry would probably do something like that to shock everyone. That’s what the king liked about her—she was carnal and not ritualistic like the rest of Versailles. Milena was mortified. She said, “Madame du Barry would’ve never done that!” But how does she know? I know because I’m playing the character. 

“He Was One of Those Actors With a God Complex”

Before his death in 2019, Rip Torn earned a reputation as one of Hollywood’s true eccentrics. The cult icon once struck Norman Mailer in the head with a hammer and was fired from a London theater production over his “corrosive attitude.” Torn may not have pulled any weapons on his Marie Antoinette costars, but he certainly caused a delay or two.

Argento: I’m a huge fan of Rip’s movies from the ’70s. Payday is one of my top-five favorite movies of all time and I wanted to know everything about it. Rip and I became friends and felt really comfortable together, which was useful because he wasn’t very kind to Sofia. He didn’t have a problem with me because I flattered his ego.

Dunst: Rip Torn was a little grumpy but I thought he was funny. He wouldn’t take off his cowboy boots so that just became his character’s “thing.”

Katz: He wasn’t mean, just cranky. It killed the vibe a little bit. If he wouldn’t leave his trailer, I’d go up to Asia and say, “I hate to do this since it’s my job, but can you get him?”

Argento: I was sorta Rip’s middleman. He wouldn’t come out of his trailer whenever we were supposed to shoot the love scenes between du Barry and the king. I think he was scared to present himself in that way. He kept yelling. “I’m not coming!” and I said, “Rip, we’re gonna look like a painting, it’ll be sweet.” He eventually came out but would only talk to me. Sofia would try to direct him and he’d just shake his head. He was one of those actors with a God complex who had to dominate the set as a way of saying, “I’m the guy in charge here.”

Desiree Corridoni, Marie Antoinette hair stylist: Rip was so serious when I first met him, so I just got straight to work. When I finished, he looked in the mirror and started crying. I thought “Oh fuck, I’ve done a horrible job.” But then Rip kissed my hand and said, “Go get Sofia and show her my hair because you’re a genius. I’m the real lead of this movie, and you understand that.” After that he was always very nice to me.

“Kirsten Was a Trooper”

Having gotten her start as a child model at the age of three, Dunst was an industry veteran before she could legally drive. Shot between two Spider-Man sequels, Marie Antoinette signaled the type of auteur-driven material the then-23 year-old was interested in pursuing more.

Dunst: Usually people in the kind of movies I was making didn’t make movies like Marie Antoinette. I was so nervous to show my butt in that tent scene because it was the first nude scene of any type I’d ever done. In the scene where Jamie and I are making out and he slides me down the bed, I did one take where I showed my breasts and one without. Sofia didn’t end up using that take, but at the time I figured if I was gonna go for it, it should be in her movie. I was never leered at and always felt really beautiful through her eyes.

Katz: Kirsten had to be up earlier and leave later than everybody. She’s in virtually every frame of this movie so she was always having to learn or do something. She filmed under these hot, heavy lights while wearing multiple layers of corsets every day. I could see when she was exhausted, but I never heard a peep about it.

Dunst: There was a lot of jumping around because we could only shoot at Versailles one day a week. We had to shoot a lot of important scenes on Mondays so it wasn’t uncommon for me to play old and young on the same day. In the morning I’d be a 14-year old arriving at the palace, and then in the afternoon I’d be grieving the death of my child. It was all very tiring.

Coppola: Kirsten was really a trooper and never complained, even though I know how hard it was trekking around in those corsets all day.

Shannon: I really began to understand what it must’ve felt like to be a child star from my conversations with Kirsten. We talked about her growing up at the Oakwood apartments with her mom and grandmother near the studios and making money to help support them. She learned to bring friends to set because she would get lonely as a kid. I loved hearing her perspective. I feel like I learned so much talking to her even though she’s younger than me.

Schwartzman: I knew Kirsten from over the years but it was a dream to actually work together. We would do these scenes in bed where we’re not connecting, but you’ve gotta be so connected to do that. It felt like we could just be together and laugh a lot. Those are some of my most vivid memories from set.

While most of the cast wore wigs provided by Italian wigmaker Rocchetti & Rocchetti, Kirsten began every shooting day in hair and make-up for two and a half hours. Famed hairstylist Odile Gilbert was brought in to craft Dunst’s rose-tinted curls and sky-high bouffants. Long accustomed to the fast-paced nature of styling runway shows for Chanel and Dior, Gilbert made her film debut with Marie Antoinette.

Odile Gilbert, Marie Antoinette hair designer (Ms. Dunst): I wanted Marie’s hair to be extravagant while still within the bounds of reality. I designed her hair through the lens that she’s a young rich kid without any sense of reality, so anything is possible. She goes through phases, so sometimes it’s massive and sometimes she wears it down. I would say I designed around 30 looks, but I didn’t sketch anything. I would just start styling Kirsten’s hair and Sofia would say, “That’s so cute, I love it!”

Dunst: Hair took a very long time. Each morning was an event because Sofia liked my hairline and didn’t want me to wear a wig. Odile would put these spongy rings in my hair to form a base, and then apply pieces on top. She used full cans of this dry shampoo called Klorane so my hair wouldn’t break. Makeup, thankfully, was very fast because it was just rosy cheeks and pale skin. I didn’t even wear mascara.

Gilbert: Sometimes the hair would hurt Kirsten a bit because it was so heavy. Everyone was telling me, “Okay Odile, in this scene you can go crazy, put in flowers and birds and whatever you want.” I never say no to other people’s wildest fantasies. In the moment I don’t think, I just go and go until I step back and think, “What have I done?”

“It Was a Perfect Time to Be Young and Dumb in Paris”

Production was based in Paris, roughly an hour away from Versailles, and there was no better hostess for the curated experience of living in France than Coppola.

Coppola: It was so fun to be in Paris with Kirsten. She was 16 when we made The Virgin Suicides, so she’s always been like a little sister to me, but [on Marie Antoinette] she was old enough for me to take her out all over Paris.

Dunst: Marie Antoinette was kinda like studying abroad during college. Two of my best girlfriends came to live with me because I had a free apartment in a great area. If I ever got off early, some of us would go to this corner place called La Palette to have cheese and wine. I’d go to Isabel Marant and Vanessa Bruno every weekend to see what was new. No one in America knew about them yet, so I felt so cool coming back to L.A. with my French-girl clothes.

Shannon: There was a very “work hard, play hard” mentality. The studio got my family an apartment in the 15th arrondissement and I only had to work a couple scattered days over a month, so it kinda felt like having my maternity leave in Paris. Everybody lived in different neighborhoods so we’d compare notes on the best restaurants and supermarkets.

Nighy: I was finishing my second year of literature studies at the time, so during shooting I was also preparing for a six-hour Chaucer exam. I got to stay in a very nice hotel and wear these gorgeous costumes everyday and then go home to read Chaucer every night. What a loser, right?

Byrne: I arrived mid-shoot and on the weekends everyone would go dancing at this one place in Paris I can’t remember the name of—I bet Kirsten would. We were all around our early twenties, so it was a perfect time to be young and dumb in Paris.

Dunst: We would go out dancing at this nightclub called Le Baron. We had the best time.

Dornan: It takes a lot of shots for me to start dancing, and I remember dancing quite a lot, if that tells you anything.

Coppola: Le Baron was really small club, so it kinda felt like it was our place that we would go to all the time. It was like our version of The Peach Pit in 90210. We were all young and didn’t have many responsibilities outside of the movie, so we went there almost every weekend. The Phoenix guys would come, too, and that’s when Thomas [Mars, the band’s lead singer and Coppola’s husband] and I first got together.

Schwartzman: I went to Le Baron maybe four times total, but the others went much more. I was busy trying to crate-train my dog.

“It Needed to Sound Organic” 

While Marie Antoinette’s soundtrack is best remembered for its use of ’70s punk and ’80s pop hits, music supervisor Brian Reitzell also coordinated the handful of 18th-century compositions featured. With the assistance of film composer Roger Neill (20th Century Women), the duo indulged in the film’s stylistic contrasts by putting their spin on classical and contemporary pieces for several key scenes.

Roger Neill, Marie Antoinette historical music consultant: I worked on Marie Antoinette about eight years after I got my PhD in music from Harvard, so I was still very much in scholar mode. I was brought in to work on some orchestra arrangements with Vivaldi and Siouxsie and the Banshees. A big part of Sofia’s vision was to contemporize everything so audiences could get a sense of what it felt like to hear Vivladi in the 1780s. She found ways to close that gap and give the classical pieces a punk-rock sensibility, and vice versa.

Reitzell: I asked Roger to compose an orchestral intro to “Hong Kong Garden” and he just mocked up a delightful little arrangement, threw it up on the stand one day, and had the musicians play it.

Neill: I wanted it to be a marked contrast to the song itself. I took the harmonic elements of “Hong Kong Garden” and arranged it in an orchestral mode that’s very dainty and lightweight. We wanted the song to be a sort of cheat as Marie and her friends are scurrying to the ball, because at first it sounds like the music you’d expect from an 18-century costume drama—until it doesn’t.

Acord: The masked ball was challenging because of the style of dancing. The period choreography would’ve looked so arch and goofy, and we wanted it to look fun and a little reckless.

Corinne Devaux, Marie Antoinette choreographer: Sofia said, “Corinne, can you create classical choreography for modern music?” and I said, “But of course.” She really wanted to use “Hong Kong Garden” for the ball scene because that was the first type of music to get an emotional reaction out of her as a teenager. I said I’d find a way to make it work.

To round out the soundtrack’s aural template, Reitzell wanted to include a handful of contemporary acts that aligned with the mood of the film. Dustin O’Halloran’s piano compositions had a “youthful” quality that Retizell responded to, while dream-pop acts like The Radio Dept. provided a comedown from the sugar high of Bow Wow Wow.

Reitzell: I was trying to find modern Aphex Twin-type piano music that I liked but everything sounded like the stuff you’d hear at a massage parlor. It needed to sound organic, and Dustin’s music was very earthy and sophisticated.

Dustin O’Halloran, Marie Antoinette composer: In the process of Brian distilling what Sofia liked, my song “Opus 23” stuck out to her. Brian told me a lot about trying to license stuff from The Cure and New Order, which is the era I grew up in. All that music is in my DNA and comes through in my compositions even though it may sound quite different. I have more Joy Division in my music than Chopin. I felt ended up writing a lot of music with those references in mind.

Reitzell: There’s a youthfulness to Dustin’s piano that I quite liked. I arranged for him to come into the studio to record on a piano forte. Back then you mostly had the harpsichord and the virginal. We didn’t have the piano as we know it, so I didn’t wanna use any proper piano pieces. I went into the studio with him and recorded a few pieces, three of which we ended up using in the movie.

Johan Duncanson, The Radio Dept. lead singer: We got an email from Brian; I remember him saying later that it was hard to get a hold of us. He said he’d read a review of our first album [2003’s Lesser Matters] saying “they missed a band in Lost in Translation, these guys should have been on the soundtrack.”

Reitzell: You couldn’t find The Radio Dept.’s records over here but I really loved their sound. I went to Sweden to meet the guys and show them some scenes from the film.

Duncanson: We did think a period film with pop music sounded like an odd combination, but we were very flattered. At first they were talking about using one or two of our songs, and then it became three. We were over the moon. It was a little weird hearing music we’d recorded in my bedroom in a big movie theater, though. 

“We Should’ve Been Arrested”

Ending its planned 12-week shoot on time and on-budget, Marie Antoinette officially wrapped on May 27, 2005. To celebrate, the production team threw a lavish wrap party (DJ’d by Jarvis Cocker of Pulp) inside the Versailles Orangerie that went into the wee hours of the morning. Unsurprisingly, the cast and crew couldn’t recall too many key details from the evening.

Barrett: France has extremely bitter winters so the palace took all of the orange trees throughout the gardens inside this beautiful glass room called the Orangery to protect them from the cold. But in the summer they’d bring them all back outside so we got to have a dusk-till-dawn wrap party inside. We took any excuse to get together and celebrate, but the wrap party was certainly the best. 

Desmarest: Anyone who did anything on that film was there that night. I tried to stay responsible, but it was difficult because I drank copious amounts of alcohol. Everyone was so relaxed that we ended up having a proper party with lots of drinking and dancing. It was very informal and there was no hierarchy. We all took photos of each other on the steps of Versailles. I think I finally left around six in the morning.

Dornan: I just remember doing a lot of shots of vodka and dancing terribly.

Byrne: It was the most extraordinary wrap party I’ve ever been to. It was summer in Versailles with all of my wonderful friends that I’d just made. At one point a drumline came in to play for 45 minutes. We were all drinking and rocking out to these drummers. Jason got pretty sick of them towards the end and said, “I’m finding these drums a little oppressive.”

Dunst: Io [Bottoms] played one of my ladies-in-waiting and we became thick as thieves on Marie Antoinette. I remember her and I holding up our dresses and prancing through the fountains in the orange garden. We should’ve been arrested. It was so magical and I just kept thinking, “Who gets to do this at Versailles?”

With production over, some of the film’s more high-end contributions were returned to their owners, such as Blahnik’s eye-popping footwear. Sony and a private collector bought a bulk of the costumes while Canonero kept “a few.” Otherwise, the art department assembled a “fire sale” to sell off all the other luxury items used in Marie Antoinette.

Barrett: Films always have a lot of things left over at the end of production. You don’t wanna just throw it away, but you can’t really archive everything forever. We had a sale at the end of filming to try and recoup some of the money that was just spent.

Melery: Costumes, fine china, dolls, games, dog beds, fans. We sold a lot of fabrics to another period movie that was coming to France right after Marie Antoinette and set in the same period. Quite a lot of people in the crew bought small items. I kept some papier-mâché flowers and a shoebox covered with my favorite fabric.

Barrett: When you watch the film and see all of the gorgeous drapery and furnishings in each of those rooms—all of that was on sale for absolutely nothing. We put out a couple notices and told friends and family, but it was open to the public. To this day my wife is still mad at me for not going. But I kept a trunk from the scene when Marie moves into her boudoir at Versailles. It has all of my drawings from the film and some fabric samples.

Coppola: I kept one of the ships from the play battle scenes at my dad’s winery. I also saved one of Marie’s bedrooms in a storage crate in Napa because I always wanted to rebuild it somewhere. I couldn’t have it destroyed.

“Their Expressions Can Say a Lot”

Coppola spent the remainder of 2005—and the first half of 2006—back in New York editing Marie Antoinette. Working through hundreds of hours of raw footage with her longtime collaborator Sarah Flack, they eventually pieced together what became the finished film. But not without a note or two from Sony that would make it more “marketable.”

Sarah Flack, Marie Antoinette editor: Sofia and I both have very similar taste in terms of picking and choosing moments in the raw footage to craft the performances. In Marie Antoinette I loved all the looks among the characters during the dinner party with Louis XV. There was so much subtext among all the characters and the politics at Versailles.

Coppola: I always love working with Sarah. We find our tone in the editing room as we go. She has a great sense of humor and subtlety that helps so much in knowing how to capture performances the way I like. While shooting the “Morning Dressing Ceremony” scenes, I wanted to capture that idea of it feeling like showtime first thing in the morning. I was thinking of Roy Schneider’s morning ritual scenes from All That Jazz.

Flack: When I got the dailies, the repetitive nature of that court ritual reminded me of the “It’s showtime, folks” scenes in All That Jazz. In those scenes, Roy Scheider’s character listens to a Vivaldi track [“Concerto in G”] every morning. I thought the “Morning Dressing Ceremony” scenes in Marie Antoinette would play well with that Vivaldi piece, but I was hesitant to make such a strong reference to another film in my rough cut. The next day Sofia emailed me, “Why don’t you use that Vivaldi piece from All That Jazz for the ‘Morning Dressing Ceremony’ scenes?”

Reitzell: Sofia had a negative pick-up, which means she got to deliver the film the way she wanted. I think the studio gave her a few notes and she didn’t do any of them.

Coppola: Sony wanted to add a voiceover to explain everything more clearly, and I said, “We can’t do that.” They suggested a few things that would’ve made the film more traditional. It wasn’t Amy in particular, but more her team. They just had more conventional expectations that executives typically do.

Katz: I don’t believe we screened Marie Antoinette for test audiences. We brought the film to Cannes “dripping wet” from the editing room, as they say. That was the first time all of us experienced it with an audience.

“To Be Clear, Yes, There Was Some Booing”

Getting booed has become something of a badge of honor at Cannes, where everyone from David Lynch to Martin Scorsese has stirred up some controversy over the festival’s 75 years. An American director tackling the most divisive political figure in French history was always going to ruffle some viewers’ feathers, and, as reported by the New York Times, “though no one called for the filmmaker’s head, Marie Antoinette filled the theater with lusty boos and smatterings of applause.”

Andre Caraco, then-SVP of Publicity at Sony Pictures: Taking Marie Antoinette to Cannes was an unbelievable experience, but it was also quite rough. To be clear, yes there was some booing. But I don’t think it was as thunderous as perhaps reported. It wasn’t a debacle, but it could’ve gone better for sure.

Coppola: I knew that an American taking this film to Cannes was obnoxious, but it was in the spirit of Marie. I was trying to be irreverent in the same ways that she was. A few people booed at a press screening, but it was not as dramatic as the headlines made it sound. I think we also got a standing ovation.

Dunst: No one booed at our premiere but there was a press screening earlier in the day where I was told a couple people booed. Cannes is such a celebration that we just thought “Whatever, who cares?” We had fun and I never felt any negative energy. I’d just played a French queen, so I felt pretty great.

Katz: I was pissed off. I told our publicist, “You’ve gotta get a hold on this, nothing happened the way it’s being reported.” We had people jump to their feet and give us a standing ovation at the premiere, so I was upset that it got lost because of something so petty as a few boos at a press screening.

Kenneth Turan, The Los Angeles Times (in 2006): Hard as it is to believe in the U.S., a country whose citizens have a hard time getting upset about what happened last week, much less centuries ago, the French take their history very seriously. And the film’s undeniably sympathetic look at Marie Antoinette goes contrary to a fierce cultural bias against the queen that made her the most hated woman in France.

Fraser: I was of course furious to hear about the booing, but as an Englishwoman who had written about Marie Antoinette, I wasn’t surprised. I would visit exhibitions at Versailles and see a French teacher point at a photo of Marie Antoinette and tell young children, “Voila, le reine maschent.” [“Here, the evil queen.”]

Coppola: At the time, the media made such a big thing about how the film seemed like a failure compared to Lost in Translation. But we had a good time at Cannes. The studio went all out with our after-party. There was a fireworks show that felt very appropriate for the occasion.

Caraco: Don’t forget that the pug who played Mops took home the Palmes Dog. Everyone talks about the booing, but not the fact that we also won an award!

Dunst: Our premiere got a standing ovation and we had the greatest after-party of all time. Once the film actually came out, it hit me that people didn’t really seem to like it.

“Honestly, It Hurt My Feelings”

Released in theaters on October 20, 2006, Marie Antoinette failed to live up to pre-release hype. Opening with a muted $5.3 million at the box office, Marie Antoinette quickly faded from theaters. Ultimately grossing $61 million worldwide against a $40 million budget, the film was neither a financial smash nor a critical hit. Reviews were polarized down the middle, with many critics comparing it unfavorably to Lost in Translation and just as many hailing it as a one-of-a-kind triumph. 

Katz: Two and half years of work and you’re judged by the Friday night of your opening weekend.

Coppola: Everyone who worked on the film loved it. We made something we were really proud of and how much money a movie makes doesn’t really matter to me. You just want them to be successful enough so you can keep working. But nobody saw Marie Antoinette at the time. People didn’t seem to know what to make of it. I can’t typically look at reviews, but I know The New York Times did a side-by-side because their critics disagreed about it.

Dunst: I don’t remember the reviews being very good. Plus, you only hear the negative stuff when you’re younger. Now if someone says they don’t like my movie it’s like, whatever, but I was very sensitive then. I was 23 and the lead of this movie so it hurt to watch it get trashed. I was bummed because people didn’t seem to like this thing that was really sensitive to me, and honestly it hurt my feelings. I expected people to love it more because I thought we made something really special.

Coppola: Kirsten is so tough. She knows the work is more important than what people think. But it did bug me that she didn’t get proper recognition. I felt protective of her because she was so young. She was the face of this big movie so I think she had to deal with the brunt of the criticisms. Some people didn’t like her performance, but I think the movie is so lovely because of her. I thought critics were being close-minded because we didn’t use old-fashioned accents.

Schwartzman: It’s not like anyone was hung out to dry. We all felt like we supported Sofia’s vision and worked hard to make it come true. I just didn’t anticipate those reactions. On the one hand it doesn’t feel good to hear someone say something you made isn’t good, but you also can't really argue with them. We made the movie we wanted to make and all we could do was stand by it.

Coppola: I thought that young girls would be into it, but I just don’t think it ever found its way and the marketing didn’t find that audience. But it wasn’t disappointing because I have such good memories of the whole experience. I was also having a baby in Paris so by the time it came out, I had other things on my mind.

“It’s Like a Piece of Art You Can Watch”

While Marie Antoinette ultimately didn’t light up the box office, it went on to develop the sort of fervent cult following that every filmmaker dreams of. Before Coppola co-opted the genre, studio costume dramas tended to look more like Joe Wright’s ultra-traditional Pride and Prejudice from 2005. Marie Antoinette preceded a wave of period projects that explore the past through an irreverent, high-fashion lens: The Great, Emma, The Pursuit of Love and Wright’s own Anna Karenina among them. It’s impossible to watch the cast of Bridgerton dance to a classical cover of an Ariana Grande song and not recall the masked ball in Marie Antoinette.

Barrett: When you’re making a film, you know it’s going out into the world and that it’ll have a long shelf life. Whether it keeps getting renewed by personal interests is up to viewers. I think it’s pretty obvious that Marie Antoinette ended up touching a lot of people. Not everyone is still booing.

Pascal: Films find their audience when they find them. What was important to me about running that studio for 20-something years was backing great filmmakers and making movies that would endure. We made some movies people still remember that I’m extremely proud of, and Marie Antoinette is one of them. I feel really honored that I got to work with Sofia and be a part of that movie in any small way.

Dunst: People started coming up to me around my late 20s who would mention Marie Antoinette, or I’d see it playing on a TV at some bar in Silver Lake. I could see it getting appreciated by the people who grew up watching me as we got older together. Even our behind-the-scenes photos became iconic. I always see the ones of Jason and I together on his little Vespa. You never think about where those photos are gonna end up. It’s nice for my life to be documented that way and that my kids will be able to see those.

Dornan: You’re making an erratic life choice when you decide you wanna get paid for dressing up, so I’m really proud of the fact that Marie Antoinette was my first job. I’ll be excited to show it to my girls in a few years so they can laugh at how young their dad used to look.

Coppola: My friend told me that a lot of moms and pre-teen daughters watch it together as a sort of tradition. There was a screening a few years ago where I got to watch it on a big screen with my daughter, and it was so gratifying to see it through her eyes and how into it she was.

Faithfull: I always thought Sofia’s film was a masterpiece. People are not always understood as the geniuses they are at the time—I don’t think I have been! But with time one gets proper recognition. People will only come to understand Sofia’s vision more as time goes by. I haven’t had much of an acting career so Marie Antoinette is something I’m very proud of.

Reitzell: The soundtrack was a tremendous amount of work so it’s nice that people still dig it. I’ll occasionally meet some 20-something who tells me they discovered New Order or Gang of Four because of Marie Antoinette, and that always really makes my day.

Blahnik: Working on this film meant I got to fulfill my boyhood dream of making shoes for Marie Antoinette—even if it was three centuries later and for a film. It’s one of the great masterpieces of the last 20 years. And I’m not just saying that because I was involved.

When Dunst graced the cover of Vogue’s September issue in 2006 styled as Marie Antoinette, she wore custom-made couture inspired by the film’s 18th-century fashions. Oscar de la Renta, Alexander McQueen, and John Galliano were among the designers who contributed looks, and it didn’t take long for the film’s candy-coated aesthetic to pour onto the runway. Designer Anna Sui visited Coppola while filming at Versailles and drew from the film as inspiration for her spring 2007 collection.

Anna Sui, Designer: When designers are talking about pastels or anything ultra-femine, a lot of times they’ll say “You know, like in Marie Antoinette!” It’s become a reference point that everyone understands.

Bowles: Sofia is one of those artists that her fellow image and fashion makers really revere and look up to. There wasn’t a fashion designer who didn’t see Marie Antoinette that season. The juxtaposition of 18th-century dress with blue Converse is exciting to designers who are trying to do similar things on the runway. Nicolas Ghesquière’s Vuitton collection that was all 18th-century frock coats with state-of-the-art trainers probably owes a debt to Marie Antoinette.

Kate Mulleavy, Rodarte co-founder: Sofia has always made such personal films, and Marie Antoinette is one of our favorites. I remember seeing the film in a Paris theater and just being captivated by [Dunst’s] performance and the whole world Sofia created. I knew I had seen something completely iconic.

Jeremy Scott, Moschino creative director: My 2020 collection was not my first time dipping into the 18th century. I remember talking to Kirsten about how she was the muse for my 2009 collection and the film was such an inspiration. I played “I Want Candy” in both of my Antoinette-inspired shows as it’s simply perfect. 

Dunst: It’s become a movie people turn on when they just want something nice to look at. It’s like a piece of art you can watch. 

Coppola: I feel lucky that I got to indulge that maximalist side of myself, because I’d never done something on that scale before. It was really difficult and when it was all over I didn’t wanna make another movie ever again. Somewhere was totally a reaction to Marie Antoinette and my desire to just work with two actors in a room at the Chateau Marmont. I’m working on another period piece right now and in the mood for that kind of opulence again, but it took 15 years to get my energy levels back up.

“The Film is Still Debated Within the Walls of Versailles”

It’d be irresponsible to claim Coppola’s film single-handedly redefined the legacy of Marie Antoinette; today, many Bastille Day celebrations still include playful recreations of the queen’s beheading. No film was going to course-correct over 250 years of villainization, but Coppola provided a new perspective on the monarch that still resonates today.

Fraser: The film is about a young woman without any support who, for various diplomatic reasons, is sent abroad and has to make something of herself. And that’s really what Marie’s story is—the loneliness of her plight and how she dealt with it. Sofia’s film is very different from my book, and I adore it. It greatly increased attention to her image in a new way.

Lynn Hunt, Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA: It’s hard to imagine a male character arousing the same range of feelings that Marie Antoinette did. The film came at a moment when there was a transition in the view of Marie from an overloaded symbol of everything wrong with the aristocracy to more of a tragic figure. She’s a very different kind of character than she was even two decades ago. There’s an incredibly more sympathetic view of her among historians, and the film helped push that ideology forward.

Hollande: The film is still being debated within the walls of Versailles. We receive many requests for visits from people who want to know more about the film and see where it was shot. I was still learning my trade on Marie Antoinette, so I will always have a special love for this movie. There is no one at Versailles who doesn’t talk about it with stars in their eyes.

Schwartzman: It was an experience I’ll never forget. I met my wife because of that movie in a way, because I had met her a few days before the premiere in Los Angeles. I asked her if she’d come as my date and that was pretty much the night I decided I was in love with her. So that movie kinda propelled me into the next phase of my life.

Dunst: The Virgin Suicides and Marie Antoinette taught me to have a very healthy relationship with my work. Sofia filled up my creative sensibilities as an actress and kinda balanced my experiences at that time in my career. We started our relationship when I was so young, and The Virgin Suicides was my first time being seen as a mature woman. This industry can mess with your self-esteem in a way that I didn’t experience as much because my example of a cool older girl was Sofia. She was a great example for me as an older sister that I could always look up to.

Coppola: My first three films all felt tied together by these themes of girlhood and womanhood. They all felt related in the way they were about finding your identity during those early stages in life when you’re first coming into your own. By the time I finished Marie Antoinette, I was in my early 30s and had my first baby. It kinda felt like I was entering a different chapter of my life, so it means a lot to see how much it’s appreciated now. I’m really proud of it.