Vanessa Kirby is Reaching New Heights in Ridley Scott's 'Napoleon'
Widely recognized for her breadth of staggering performances, actor Vanessa Kirby is poised for one of her most challenging roles yet: Empress Joséphine in Ridley Scott’s Napoleon.
Photography Celeste Sloman
Styled by Brie Welch
It’s early November when I meet Vanessa Kirby at a private club on New York’s Lower East Side. The actors’ strike is still in full effect, although sluggishly inching toward a resolution. When she arrives, Kirby is anything but sluggish. She bounds through the atrium like a prima ballerina about to take the stage in a fashionably oversized tan Raey coat. After she sweetly proffers a hug, we settle into a banquette. Ridley Scott’s historical epic Napoleon is due in theaters soon, with Kirby taking on the role of Empress Joséphine. As the strike is still on at the time of our initial meeting, Kirby is not able to discuss the tiny despot in the room. “So, you come here often?” is the joke as we order tea and awkwardly dance around her leading lady status as if it is NBD. (Spoiler alert: it is a very big deal.)
Kirby, 35, is a native of Wimbledon, UK. When she was in her early twenties, she cut her teeth as a stage actress, starring in classic productions of All My Sons, Ghosts, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream at a small but reputable theater in northern England. By 2014, she was headlining shows at London’s National Theatre—as the “she-wolf of France,” Queen Isabella in Edward II—and at the Young Vic as Stella in A Streetcar Named Desire, opposite Gillian Anderson and Ben Foster.
Kirby says that her formative years onstage allowed her to develop a musculature that informs both her physical performance as well as the roles she considers taking on. By seeking out parts akin to Shakespeare’s heroines and Ibsen’s feminists, Kirby has come to embody a range of substantive characters. Citing Dames Judi Dench and Helen Mirren as exemplars of the careers that she admires most, Kirby prefers to dig into the human condition rather than just play a pretty face. “When I was just starting [out], the scripts were more of these trope-y type female roles,” she says. “I really like the kind of actors like Jack Nicholson who are really alive and chaotic and have a danger to them as well.”
For proof of this inclination, look no further than Kirby’s BAFTA-winning performance as Princess Margaret in Netflix’s The Crown. The actress spent time with the Princess’s former ladies-in-waiting and read everything she could to understand and channel Margaret’s potent energy. The vividness of her royal character—who would stub a cigarette into her dinner plate because she didn’t like the food, or force people to stay at a party by playing the piano until 5 a.m., when she wanted to leave—was a thrill for Kirby. When talk of the current season comes up, Kirby admits that she’s excited to watch.
Kirby’s heart-rending portrayal of a mother named Martha who suffers a tragic home birth in director Kornél Mundruczó’s Pieces of a Woman also garnered critical buzz, in the form of the Volpi Cup Best Actress Award at the 2020 Venice Film Festival and a Best Actress Oscar nomination in 2021. The film came out during the pandemic, a tough time for audiences to watch anything too grippingly real, but the instantly legendary 30-minute birthing scene, shot in one continuous take, is a profound cinematic experience.
How does she go about her research? “Self-discipline is a big thing,” says Kirby. “The prep process is everything to me.” For Pieces, this meant spending time with midwives and doulas, and even watching a live birth. Kirby is currently preparing for her role in director Ron Howard’s upcoming survival thriller Eden, in which she plays a German woman with multiple sclerosis. “I would say I’m disciplined, mostly out of fear because I’d be so scared of going onto the set and not knowing what I was doing.”
By seeking out parts akin to Shakespeare’s heroines and Ibsen’s feminists, Kirby has come to embody a range of substantive characters.
For all of her rigorous training, Kirby tells me in a follow-up conversation a week after the strike has ended that nothing could have properly prepared her for stepping into Empress Joséphine’s shoes. “It was just a weird thing to do,” Kirby says.“ She was a bit of a cipher. It was suggested to me that she was really mercurial and she changed according to what was needed of her. It was challenging to play a more ephemeral person. I’d never known or researched anyone more enigmatic and elusive than Joséphine.”
To emulate their tumultuous love story, Kirby and co-star Joaquin Phoenix, in the role of the temperamental French Emperor, made a pact to push each other as far as possible. In a recent interview with the British film publication Empire, Phoenix outlined their arrangement: “[Kirby] said, ’Look, whatever you feel, you can do.’ I said, ‘Same thing with you.’ She said, ‘You can slap me, you can grab me, you can pull me, you can kiss me, whatever it is.’ So we had this agreement that we were going to surprise each other and try to create moments that weren’t there because both of us wanted to avoid the cliché of the period drama. And by that, I mean moments that are well-orchestrated and designed.”
When asked about this Napoleonic treaty, Kirby demurs.“ I think actors create a container where you can play all the things that you need to,” she says. “You have to be together in everything that you do, to be able to explore the really difficult places. Their relationship was an unconventional and controversial relationship. It became known for that.”
So convincing is Kirby’s Joséphine performance that Scott, a “go big or go home” director if there ever was one, has committed to delivering a version of the film to Apple TV+ that clocks in at over four hours and delves further into Joséphine’s backstory. “We shot so much over such a huge era that there was so much extra footage,” says Kirby. “I leave it up to the master.”
After Kirby wrapped Pieces of a Woman as a character who had emotionally alienated herself from the world, Covid took hold and everyone was in lockdown. In her somewhat vulnerable post-filming state and partly inspired by her experiences prepping for Pieces, Kirby took action and formed a production company, Aluna Entertainment, with her sister Juliet and film executive Lauren Dark. Their mission is to highlight stories through a female lens. Their first project as executive producers is Thunder, a movie by first-time Swiss film director Carmen Jaquier, which has just entered the Oscars race for Best International Feature.
“It was challenging to play a more ephemeral person. I’d never known or researched anyone more enigmatic and elusive than Joséphine.”
When Napoleon filming ended in the summer of 2022, and the world was reemerging from its cocooned state, Kirby zipped off‚ to the Glastonbury Festival. “I don’t think I stopped dancing for four days,” she says. “That’s the best cure for anything in life.”
As this story goes to press, Kirby is starting to roll out her red-carpet looks for the Napoleon premieres. With the help of her stylist Karla Welch, we can expect to see her in sleek couture gowns from Alexander McQueen, Valentino, Saint Laurent, and the like. Adornments come courtesy of Cartier, for whom Kirby serves as an ambassador for the house’s La Panthère line of High Jewelry and fragrance. So dedicated is Kirby to her craft and this partnership that she even filmed advertisements in the jungles of Mauritius this past July and swam through very murky waters to pantomime a wild panther. Does she like being dunked in natural bodies of water? “No, no really, no,” she says with a laugh.
To balance out her professional and personal life, Kirby reserves her free time and energy for War Child, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping children living in conflict zones. She was initially drawn to the organization after spending time in Africa studying the effects of civil war. “I always felt a bit weird, because acting is a very singular journey,” she says. “There was something missing in life that was beyond just the work I was doing.”
After raising money and developing a relationship with the War Child organizers, Kirby started to travel with the organization. So far, she has volunteered at refugee camps in Syria, Iraq, and, most recently, Ukraine. “It changed my life because it’s one thing reading about [these areas] in the news and feeling emotional about it, but it’s another thing to physically be there. When you sit with the families and you hear their stories of what they’ve gone through, it makes you reevaluate the whole of your life.”
Kirby admits she has made some big life changes as of late. She recently left her home base of London to move in with her American boyfriend, Paul Rabil, a former professional lacrosse player and co-founder of the Premiere Lacrosse League. She has just put the finishing touches on their new place in New York City, and is still figuring out how to be at peace with the bumping noise from the club below.
For the holidays they’ll be traveling home to the UK. “I need to be away so much and I miss weddings and important events. Christmas is the one time of year that, no matter what, everyone takes off. So it’s always been my time to be present with my friends and family.” She might make a roast—her signature dish—but will certainly toast to a year of progress. Her holiday cocktail of choice? “Um, a good martini, I would say,” answers Kirby with a cheeky grin. “But that’s not limited to this time of year.”
HAIR Jenny Cho
MAKEUP Jo Baker FORWARD ARTISTS using BAKEUP
MANICURE Gina Edwards
CREATIVE CONSULTANT Mariana Suplicy
DIGITAL TECH Roy Beeson
PHOTO ASSISTANTS Nathan Martin, Ian Rutter, and Spyder Sloman
STYLIST ASSISTANT Kelsi Amberson
LOCATION The Mansion at Ideal Glass Studios
