Pierre Choderlos de Laclos published Les Liaisons dangereuses—about former lovers who keep their poisonous friendship alive by challenging one another to seduce targets in their elevated social circle—in 1782. Since then, his epistolary novel has been adapted multiple times, in multiple countries (Spain, Germany, the Czech Republic), in multiple forms (ballet, theater, opera). But it’s probably best known for its onscreen versions: director Stephen Frears’s multiple-Oscar-winning 1988 film Dangerous Liaisons, based on Christopher Hampton’s play; Milos Forman’s Valmont, the following year; and Roger Kumble’s 1999 salacious teen melodrama Cruel Intentions, which moves the action from pre-Revolutionary France to a setting governed by just as much back-biting and social climbing—a private Manhattan high school.
Now Starz has a TV-series take—which was picked up for a second season before the first premiered last month—but this time it’s a prequel to de Laclos’ oft-told story. When this Liaisons begins, Valmont lacks the title of Vicomte, having been outmaneuvered by his stepmother who arranged for his father to bequeath his estate to her own son from a previous relationship. The novel is told through letters exchanged between the characters, a medium that plays an equally large role here, as Valmont collects love notes from the aristocratic women he seduces with an eye to blackmailing them in the future to regain all he has lost. But, by chance, Valmont has also met Camille (Alice Englert), an orphaned and debt-ridden sex worker, and since he’s fallen in love with her, his focus has strayed from his primary goal. Also: there is a Marquise de Merteuil, and she is dallying with Valmont…but there’s a twist in their tryst.
Valmont is played by Nicholas Denton as a younger version of the a role formerly portrayed by the likes of Colin Firth, John Malkovich, Alan Rickman, Liev Schreiber, and Dominic West. Denton, a relative newcomer from Australia, has the opportunity to define Valmont’s character before he was one of literature’s most notorious sexual assassins. GQ spoke with him last week over Zoom from Australia to discuss working with an intimacy coordinator, if the world is ready for a Valmont who’s even more adventurous in his sexual appetites, and the after-hours chit-chat with co-star Lesley Manville that still haunts him.
GQ: We’re in a pop culture period that’s rich with prequels to stories and characters that audiences already know well. Your co-star Alice [Englert] was in Ratched, the One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest prequel. What do you think it is about this form that artists and audiences are so drawn to?
Nicholas Denton: I think what we’re managing to do is find new stories within the established ones. I think it would be very hard to do this one as a sequel. Malkovich has already done it to death. But there’s a license and a freedom for me to go, “This is a brand-new world that exists within the closed novel,” and I really have enjoyed that.
This is the first time you’ve done a period production, at least on screen. How did you prepare for it?
I mean, I come from the theater. I kind of work from the outside in. I like the costumes, I like the makeup. I adored the novel, and I was fascinated about why this kind of villainous, sometimes flappable, sometimes deeply violent and rage-filled man was the way he was. We’re going to show the audience the very start of this vulnerable, petulant, aristocratic, cynical man. Valmont is completely naive about what he’s actually doing to people. And I think that’s such a classic situation as a young person: you don’t know how painful, how damaging you can be to others, when you’re unable to see the reality around you.
Someone who wasn’t familiar with the story might think that it’s very remote from our time. What aspects of it felt the most timely and resonant for you?
Toxicity. Our characters essentially want to destroy each other, but also want to love each other. You look at social media, anything like that: we’re always yearning for something more than what we’ve got. You could be taken off the throne so quickly—society will make that decision for you.
There’s the conflict between wanting to construct the correct image, and the desire to be known on a deeper level. That’s something that comes up with Valmont and the letters from his lovers, too.
There are two trajectories for this character. Once he’s lost everything from his former life, his power and his title and whatnot, he’s got one mission: getting back everything that he believes he deserved to inherit from his father. And then the other is this side track where he’s met Camille, who actually is completely honest, and so unaffected by the aristocracy that he can imagine a life with her, with love and humanity and peacefulness. But his desire for the riches and the decadence and the power that comes with it is too strong. He tries, he puts his heart in his sleeve, but he messes it up, and things just keep getting worse.
It feels like this version draws a sharper line between sexual gamesmanship that’s consensual, and interactions that are not. Would you agree, and was that emblematic of working with your showrunner, Harriet Warner, and the way she tells this story through the female gaze?
Yeah, definitely. Specifically, looking at the intimacy scenes between Valmont and Camille, there is a sense of respect and love and deep connection, which makes it so beautiful to watch. The difference between those and the scenes between Valmont and Genevieve de Merteuil [Lesley Manville], Florence de Regnier [Paloma Faith], and then later with Carice [van Houten] as Jacqueline is that Valmont knows how to make people feel free and liberated, and also how to make them fall in love with him: He abuses his privilege. “I can see you, we can have the most amazing sex, but my ulterior motive is to get your letters to get ahead.”
Camille and Valmont are both sex workers in a sense, but his letters are worth more than money in the long run.
That’s actually an amazing parallel that Harriet’s shown: They both use sexuality to gain power, because what else do you have at that time? Sex is the most expensive thing you can use to buy and sell. You think about the Marquis de Sade, or you think about the debauched stuff that happened in the 18th century: fetish, kink, that was all commodifiable, and it also gave you power. You could be inside of a certain group, you could be in The Labyrinth [an underground sex club], or if you were boring, you’d be kind of an outcast. You wouldn’t be a part of that world.
Alice and Harriet gave an interview in which they both described the show’s “innate queerness.” And yet that’s one frontier that we haven’t seen Valmont explore. Is he limiting his social climbing capacity by not being more broad-minded?
Throughout the book, there are lots of allusions to Valmont’s liaisons with men. We don’t necessarily know how it’s going to shift in the second season. I think that the queerness that exists within this world is very prevalent. We see that with Camille’s character and Ariadne in that scene [in The Labyrinth in Episode 4]. There’s also the Chevalier de Saint-Jacques, and the other Valmont, my stepbrother [Prévan, played by Ahmed Elhaj]. I don’t know what’s going to happen with Valmont’s character in Season 2, but I do imagine that we’ll find ourselves in those kinds of places.
You brought up the wardrobe earlier as an element that helps you develop a character. The code-shifting that Valmont has to do is really reflected in his wardrobe. How did those costumes help you to get into Valmont’s various modes?
The bells and whistles, especially when he’s going to the opera and those elegant parties, are so lovely. You’re kind of navigating it, making sure you’re not too affected with the style and the costume, but also leaning into the more luscious, edible, decadent kind of characteristics. He’s much more expressive with his hands and language in that mode. Then once that’s all taken off, he’s allowed that space to just be himself, very raw and very free and very real.
Then as Lucien, he’s got a much more quiet, composed, delicate nature. But that comes with being in black. And I don’t have to push against anything or lean into anything.
There’s also the question of what we consider sexy. Valmont in all his finery—that, to me, is not the sexiest thing in the world. But to people at that time, in that space, it’s all about the frills: how much money you’ve got, how much color you can put into it. With Camille, we’re more in our linen. To me, that’s sexy.
There are a couple of scenes early on where we see you take your powdered wig off your “natural” long brown hair, which is…also a wig in actuality.
I know, at one point I thought I’d look like Marge Simpson. But that’s the first season of a show. They’re trying new things. For me, this is my first job on telly, really. I got to learn a lot about what I don’t want and what I do want.
One thing I really learned, from Alice, is to make sure you have your autonomy in this setting. Don’t get lost in this huge machine. It’s a huge production and you can really lose your sense of who you are in all of it and what you think is sexy and what you think is appropriate. You have that license to say, “I’m playing this character,” and I’m also very, very lucky to be having a major support network around me. But I also feel this great sense of relief, especially on this production, because they’ve gone, “How do you want to do it? How do you want to try and play it?” As all artists do, we’re finding our voice and then leading.
You really have to make sure that the space is conducive to that flow state. In acting, it’s only conducive when you’re in a safe space that allows for freedom. [Intimacy coordinator] Ita O’Brien made us a space safe, and the intimacy scenes are really beautiful because of it. And then we can leave that set and be like, “See you later. We’re done now, I’m going to go have a coffee and a hot dog.” No emotional destruction or power play. We just made some really cool stuff, and then you go home.
I’ve done a little bit of intimacy stuff in the theater world, but [an intimacy coordinator] is an incredibly welcome addition to any kind of creative space. I’m learning a lot about how a film set can be run in a respectful way. There’s so many stories—especially from Australia, where I’m from—where it’s just gone awry. I hear stories about how sets have gone to shit, or theater spaces and rehearsals have been so unsafe.
What was it like to shoot in the Czech Republic?
Champagne is cheap. When it’s sunny, it’s beautiful. When it’s cold, it’s still more or less beautiful. I was given a really nice apartment, so I lived in the top of this Gothic building in the Jewish quarter of Prague. I could paint in there, could do everything I wanted to do. I loved it.
You and your co-stars are like a traveling theater troupe descending on the city for a tour stop. Did you all hang out together outside of work as well?
Yeah, we’re like a traveling band. We just unpack our carriage and we do a little show. We got along really, really well. Between shooting, we were just having the best time of our lives. We were going to different bars, going to these big lakes outside of Prague where my family could come visit. It was a beautiful time.
There were a lot of productions shooting there at the time. There was The Gray Man, there was The Wheel Of Time, there was Chevalier. And we were like school houses. If we ever came in contact with each other, it was like, “What are you doing? This is our space.” We were like gangs in The Warriors, but then we’d have a champagne and be like, “It’s great to see you. Have the best time.” Just full of funny bloody actors that bop around having a nice time. You have a drink and you talk and you’re also there with these amazing cinematographers, talking to them about this amazing stuff. I never went to university properly. I was kicked out. But in some ways this was my university experience.
At one point I was standing at a bar with Lesley Manville, having champagne on a hot summer’s night. And I remember asking her if she had auditioned for this job.
Aw. Did she laugh?
Yes.
I think after you have an Oscar nomination, you’re offer-only.
“Did you do a self-tape for this job?” What an idiot.