For 21-year-old French actress Clémence Poésy,
filming Mary, Queen of Scots was a dream come true.
"Playing Mary, I was living my fantasy as an actress," she smiles.
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"I realised that since I was a child I wanted to
be an actress just to dress up in big fabrics and corsets and have adventures
riding horses with lots of blood and action! And I got all that and more
as Mary."
In fact, after two months of sweeping gracefully through court and galloping
across the countryside to battle, it was a bit disorientating returning
to real life.
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Clémence admits: "Sometimes filming was exhausting
and obviously not every day was perfect, but it was an adventure and going
back to normal life was strange.
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"For two months I'd been a queen with everyone bowing
whenever I came into a room. I could get used to that and I kept expecting
my friends and family to be curtseying for me when I got home!"
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Gunpowder, Treason and Plot is Poésy's UK and English-speaking
debut, but the young actress already has a string of credits to her name
on the continent.
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Alongside her television and theatre appearances, she
has starred in two French feature films, Bienvenue Chez Les Rozes and
Été D'Olga, making her one of France's hottest talents.
Poésy was born in the suburbs of Paris and has
spent her life in an around the capital.
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Her father is a theatre actor and director with his own
company, Théatre Du Sable, currently on tour in Spain and Belgium.
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Poésy first got the acting bug from her father,
who gave her her first part after she begged him for a role at the age
of 14.
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She confesses: "My sister and I were exhausting.
We kept asking him 'please give us a part' and eventually he gave in and
gave me my first two lines!"
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But her mother, a French teacher, was adamant that school
was a priority; so Poésy continued with her studies until she was
16, before getting an agent and going on to study acting.
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Her younger sister is now following in her footsteps,
training to be an actress in Paris.
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Although she is fluent in English, taking on such a major
role in a foreign language was still a challenge.
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"When I was learning lines I had to be more careful
about learning them in English. I had to make sure the pronunciation was
correct as well as understanding the meaning.
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"But in a way it really helped me to be playing the
role in another language because it became part of the character for me,"
she says.
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"Instead of just being me speaking in my usual French,
I could use the language to become a Scottish queen."
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Learning aspects of Scottish and English history was all
new to her.
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"I didn't know that much about Mary before I started
filming," she confesses.
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"But I knew that it had a tragic ending!
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"Before starting filming I read a biography of Mary
Stuart to try and learn more about her and her time in history but, since
the script and real history aren't always alike, I didn't want to confuse
myself by knowing too much about her.
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"In the end, I must follow the scripts.
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"Mary's a very bright woman - if that's the right
word. She's both intelligent and luminous. She was good at riding, poetry
and dancing.
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"She was really gifted and everything was in her
hands when she was born - including the crown. Maybe that made her a spoilt
child.
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"I think, that she had too much at the beginning,
whereas Elizabeth 1st had nothing and had to fight for everything.
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"Mary didn't have to fight and so maybe that's why
she fell so quickly. And, of course, she was in love with Bothwell!"
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During filming, Poésy worked alongside two of the
UK's biggest talents - Kevin McKidd as Mary's protector and lover, Bothwell,
and Paul Nicholls as her husband Lord Darnley.
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"Working with Kevin was great. He was fantastic and
so generous. He made our scenes lots of fun to do, as did Paul.
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"Obviously we don't have EastEnders in France, so
I had no idea who he was but it meant we could just be friends, which
was good as some of our scenes were quite tough and it would have been
a nightmare if we hadn't got on.
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"Although I did notice that Paul attracted the eye
of some of the other girls on set!"
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Having fallen off a horse at the age of seven and never
tried riding again, Poésy was more than apprehensive about the
scenes involving riding.
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"I was terrified!" she laughs. "When I
was a child, I never got into the 'little girls love horse riding' thing.
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"In the end, I was all right on set except for the
first day when I had a horse that hated me. But they soon found one that
didn't.
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"For most of the film I rode side-saddle; so it's
not so hard to start and stop.
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"But you have to remember that these horses are actors:
once they know where to go, they want to start even before they've called
'action'."
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But one particular day of filming Gunpowder, Treason and
Plot will stay in Poésy's mind - her 21st birthday.
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"We were night shooting at the time, so there was
no partying until the weekend, but the cast did give me a Romanian cake
with four candles and they all sang to me - which was a bit embarrassing!"
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Now settled back into her flat in Paris, Poésy
is currently preparing for a stint in the theatre, before spending the
summer shooting her next feature film, Les Animaux
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Domestiques, a love story that takes a wry look at the
world of reality television.
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