Maisie Williams Explains "How Far She Went to Portray Catherine Dior"

Maisie Williams on the Traumatic ‘The New Look’ Premiere

Maisie Williams Explains "How Far She Went to Portray Catherine Dior"

Famous fashion luminaries Christian Dior and Coco Chanel, who are at two very different stages of their famed careers, writhe and fight inside the morally and militarily restrained limits of Nazi-occupied Paris in the first episodes of Apple TV+'s new series "The New Look."

For individuals who are important to the Nazi cause, the risks are minimal in the French capital.

Chanel (Juliette Binoche) is drawn to the benefits—and safety—of being in the good graces of the enemy, while Dior (Ben Mendelsohn) is reluctantly recruited to design ball gowns for the spouses of Nazi officers.

However, those who oppose the ruthless occupying army witness firsthand the inhumanity of the Nazi agenda. 

That's where Christian's younger sister and first muse, Catherine Dior (Maisie Williams), who is involved in the city's clandestine French Resistance alongside her partner Hervé (Hugo Becker), ends up in the three-episode debut.

Maisie Williams as Catherine Dior in "The New Look"

In the first episode, which takes place in 1944, Catherine is caught and brought to The House, a Nazi detention facility, where the Gestapo presses her to identify her fellow conspirators. 

She eventually experiences actual suffering as a result of this pressure, but she is determined to keep quiet. She eventually ends herself in a prison camp, all the while Christian and his supervisor Lucien Lelong (John Malkovich) make a valiant attempt but are unable to arrange for her to be intercepted en way. 

Williams's decision to enter Catherine's story during one of its most horrific chapters put her to the test from the moment she started work on "The New Look."

“We launch right in at this monumental part of her life, but I think it is something she has always been mentally prepared for,” Williams tells Variety. “Being part of the French resistance was hugely dangerous, and Catherine, at the time, was going against her brother’s wishes and doing what she felt was right. I think for me, reading those first three episodes and realizing we were starting there, gave me the insight to start thinking about how she then might change and then might return.”

Scenes of Catherine not only being subjected to torture but also being transported to the German concentration camp for women, Ravensbrück, on a packed train car, are intercut throughout the second and third episodes. 

Maisie Williams as Catherine Dior in "The New Look"

She and the others are marched inside the camp, made to undress, throw their ragged garments into a pile, and then sit while their heads are shaved. 

The all-too-familiar scenario shows Williams' face being tightly cropped as Catherine, one of hundreds of people awaiting the same procedure, has her identity taken away from her.

Williams accepted to have her head shaved for the series as well as for the camera when she accepted the part.

“I had cut my hair short at the time, so some of the overwhelming part of that was gone before we did it,” she says. “But the women in these camps having their heads shaved, although we now look back and see how degrading and dehumanizing that was, I think of all the things that happened to them in the camps, it was probably one of the easiest moments. I guess for myself, kind of diving into Catherine’s psyche, I felt like it was a moment for her to prepare for what could come next.”

Williams, however, is open about the fact that she had to get used to digging so deep to comprehend Catherine while simultaneously observing a bodily change in herself.

“For me, getting used to my head being shaved wasn’t the most seamless, fun experience,” she says. “But it felt like it was bringing me closer to doing Catherine justice.”

The production of the show, which was filmed in Paris, recreated several locations significant to the city's renowned fashionistas, including Dior's residence and design house. However, some of Williams' most immersive sets were the ones that Catherine finds herself inadvertently, such as Ravensbrück's entryway.

Williams, who gained experience in one of the biggest productions in history, "Game of Thrones," claims that the world was more difficult to navigate during the Second World War because of its intensity.

Maisie Williams as Catherine Dior in "The New Look"

“I have done a lot of things where the world is fictional, and I feel like escaping into something like that can be easier, because it is all part of the imagination,” she says. “But when you are depicting something that is history and familiar to the public conscious, on sets like this, it can be hard to kind of escape and lose yourself in that. Being in Paris and being on these incredible sets that were built as direct replicas of Dior’s apartment or even his fashion house, it really just added to the role — and what I found within Catherine.”

Although Catherine kept her narrative near to her heart, Williams claims that she mainlined everything she could about it before filming started. 

Williams claims that although Catherine never discussed her experiences in public, she became engrossed in works like Justine Picardie's "Miss Dior: A Story of Courage and Couture," which tells Catherine's story via the stories of the ladies she met during the conflict.

For the remainder of the series, Catherine will be facing an uncertain future while her first three episodes are terrifying. Williams uses one term to describe her relationship with Catherine's character over and over again.

“‘Resilient’ is probably the most apt word we can use to describe who Catherine was,” Williams says. “Anyone who knew her who I have spoken to has said a similar thing. We, myself included, now project this image onto this woman that she was a beacon of hope for Dior, and she became the first muse of Dior. The Miss Dior as we know today. We think of this incredibly beautiful and strong woman who defeats the odds. But I think in the series, what we see is that she is not someone who wanted glory, or even wanted to be seen as a beacon of hope. I think she was just trying to do the right thing with the tools that she had, and she was going to stop at nothing in her life to stand by her country and stand by her people.”