In this exclusive interview, writer Stefani Robinson, director Stephen Williams and actress Samara Weaving talk to us about bringing the story of Joseph Bologne on the big screen in Chevalier.
Have you ever heard of Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges? Me neither, until a few months ago.
Turns out, even the people who made Chevalier, the major motion picture based on Bologne’s life, didn’t really know who he was either.
“I’m embarrassed to admit I had never heard of Chevalier until I got sent Stefani’s amazing script,” director Stephen Williams admits to me.
“I first read about Joseph when I was about 15 or 16 years old, my mom had given me a book that had mentioned him. And from then on, he’s been living in my brain, as they used to say, rent free,” Stefani Robinson, the film’s writer says.
Credit: Searchlight Pictures
“The fact that he wasn’t taught about or widely discussed, or anyone hadn’t made a movie or the fact that he wasn’t really part of popular culture was something that felt strange to me,” she adds.
So, who was Joseph Bologne? He was many things; an immigrant, a champion fencer, an accomplished musician, but as Chevalier shows, he was also one of the first prolific and most celebrated Black composers. Born in 1745, Bologne was born to an enslaved African woman and her owner, Georges de Bologne Saint-Georges.
Bologne’s father enrolled him in a school in Paris, where he excelled in fencing and the violin. He was in the running to be the next maestro of the Paris Opera. He would go on to be made Chevalier, which is the French equivalent of being knighted. Bologne’s story is one of extraordinary resilience and artistic prowess, especially considering the time he lived in.
The life of someone living in the 1700s might sound dry, but Chevalier is anything but, by design. It was a complete no-brainer for Williams to direct this film.
“The fact that I didn’t know about this person and his imprint on our collective cultural history felt really compelling and, as Stephanie has often quite rightly said, the hallmarks of Chevalier’s life are intrinsically cinematic. They’re crying out to be rendered in visual form on the big screen,” the director notes.
Stephen Williams and Minnie Driver on set of Chevalier. Credit: Searchlight Pictures
“The exciting part was imagining that time period as feeling contemporary,” Robinsons says, adding that Bologne was a “rock star” of his time.
“He had swagger!”
That swagger is portrayed in the film by Kelvin Harrison Jr. Samara Weaving joins him as the Chevalier’s secret lover, Marie-Josephine de Montalembert. Weaving hopes that the film will bring more attention to Bologne’s story and that he will be taught in schools eventually.
Weaving says she’s “grateful” for Harrison Jr., whom she describes as “talented and grounded”. Harrison Jr. has crafted a fascinating career of intense roles and his charisma lends perfectly to a character like Bologne, but surprisingly, Chevalier also explores women’s issues at the time.
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – APRIL 16: Stefani Robinson attends the Los Angeles Special Screening of Searchlight Pictures’ “Chevalier” at El Capitan Theatre on April 16, 2023 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Tommaso Boddi/Getty Images)
“How women were treated was so fascinating. The fact that they could be a queen, to rule the country, yet, women had no rights to own land or to have any income. They couldn’t work. They had no autonomy over their bodies,” Weaving ponders.
Weaving credits Robinson as her “biggest tool” in playing Marie-Josephine, who takes a huge risk by going behind her husband’s back not only in engaging in a secret affair with Bologne, but in performing on stage. Women barely had rights back then, making Marie-Josephine’s choice even more daring.
“If your husband wanted to leave you and give you nothing, then that’s totally in their right to do that. We really talked about how high the stakes were,” Weaving explains.
The character of Marie-Josephine fits in well with Weaving’s filmography. She was last seen in the opening sequence of Scream VI, but it was Ready or Not that made her into a proper scream queen. Weaving has a lot of appreciation for horror as the genre that has largely defined her career and when I ask if she’d love to pull a Jamie Lee Curtis and come back to some of her roles later on, she’s enthusiastic.
Kelvin Harrison Jr. and Samara Weaving in Chevalier. Credit: Searchlight Pictures
“I’d love that, what an honour! Horror fans are the best kinds of fans as well, they are dope!”
Weaving has also flexed her comedic muscles in films like Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and in Babylon earlier this year, but the actress says Chevalier’s period setting and melancholic narrative didn’t pose as much of a challenge as I was expecting it to have.
“Comedy is more of a challenge. It’s easy to make people cry, but it’s not easy to make people laugh.”
Weaving also notes that she hasn’t purposefully played particularly strong, defiant women.
“I just like well written women. Maybe I should play a weak, withered one.”
Credit: Searchlight Pictures
Williams had a particular connection to Bologne, which prompted him to take on the project.
“Joseph Bologne was from an island in the Caribbean, Guadeloupe, and he made his way to Europe. I was born on another Caribbean island, Jamaica, and made my way to England, at roughly the same age as Joseph, actually. There were many similarities between my own personal experience and Joseph’s trajectory through his life. All of those things combined made it just an irresistible cocktail for me,” Williams says.
Music also plays a huge part in the film. The film opens with a fierce battle between Bologne and Mozart, which immediately makes Chevalier feel a little more contemporary than your regular period drama.
“Classical music at the time wasn’t classical music, it was just music, and to somehow bring that into the contemporary culture that we’re in now, that was most exciting,” Robinsons says of the role of music.
Kris Bowers and Michael Abels, both acclaimed film composers, collaborated on the music of the film. The result is a symphony of classical music, infused with a modern sensibility. At the heart of the film though, is Black excellence, as Robinson emphasises. The writer describes Chevalier’s story as “familiar” and “deeply personal” to her.
“A more personal approach [to the film] was that feeling of Black excellence being an armour or a reason to survive, a means in which to survive when you’re trying to assimilate, trying to be accepted,” Robinson describes.
“I felt like maybe I could give a voice to that.”
Chevalier is in cinemas 9 June.
