F  L  A  U  N  T

 Peter Wier’s 1975 adaptation of Joan Lindsay’s _Picnic at Hanging Rock_ earned a place in our cultural canon with its seminal aesthetic—the Renoir-esque impressionism tinged with the hazy 1970s romanticism: long-flowing hair, lacy frocks, and a transcendental admiration for nature. Now, over forty years after the original film debuted, director Larysa Kondracki offers a new vision of the classic. The new six-episode mini-series, based on the same 1967 novel, is an elaborate departure from Weir’s film. With a greater focus on the turbulent narrative of the novel, the mini-series strays far from Weir’s sun-bleached reverie to become a lush, over-saturated fever dream. The storytelling is exaggerated by experimental camera shots, razor-sharp dialogue from screenwriter Beatrix Christian, and Sophia Coppola-esque neon pink titles paired with anachronistic rock music scoring an expertly rendered period piece.  For those who are unfamiliar, _Picnic at Hanging Rock_ follows the disappearance of three students and their governess while on a St. Valentine’s day expedition in the Australian outback. Set in the turn of the century, the girls are students of the colonial finishing school, Appleyard College— a Gothic mansion turned boarding school lead by their mysterious and tyrannical headmistress Hester Appleyard (Natalie Dormer). The story is told through a twisted mobius strip of a narrative—connecting and overlapping at the points before, after, and during the chaos caused by the girls' disappearance. As the story unfolds, we learn about each of the girls: the free-spirited, tomboyish Miranda (Lily Sullivan), the brilliant, mixed-race daughter of a white judge and Aboriginal mother, Marion (Madeline Madden), and the beautiful and obscenely wealthy heiress, Irma (Samara Weaving). The Australian wilderness is the uncredited cast member in this series, both as an active agent in the girl’s disappearance and as an overt (and sometimes on the nose) metaphor for the libidinal currents of nature corrupting the repressive conditions of the early 1900s.  On Wednesday afternoon, I arrived at the infamous Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills to speak with a few cast-members about the corseted mania of filming in the Australian outback. Enjoying the currated picnic spread of french pastries and rosé, I sat down on what can be best described as a ‘tuffet’ and spoke with Lily Sullivan (Miranda), Lola Bessis (Mademoiselle de Pointiers, the French governess), and Natalie Dormer (Hester Appleyard). * * *  **NATALIE DORMER** **Flaunt: In a mini-series there's an opportunity to develop character in a way you can't with a film. What dimension did you want to bring to Ms. Appleyard?**  **NATALIE DORMER:** The humanity of her. Larysa (the director) wrote this really lovely letter to me saying “I need an actor that won’t just make a two-dimensional villain. I want someone to show the vulnerability, the motivation behind the cruelty.” To me that seemed like a very interesting idea, to humanize a bully, and over the six hours, to reveal a profoundly broken, mistreated women. I think Hester is just an example of choosing the wrong path. Things happen to us in all our lives that could send you to the, for lack of a better phrase, dark side. When unjust or dramatic things happen to you in life, there is a fork in the road where you can choose to perpetuate it or break the cycle. And unfortunately, she chooses perpetuating. To me, she’s a tragic heroine or _anti_, if you want to make her an anti-heroine. I find her story profoundly sad. **Ms. Appleyard is quoted as saying “Bad timing will define your life?” How does this relate to your character?** ND: Yeah, that’s a good point. She has been dealt a rough hand. And she has suffered pain through no fault of her own, and her way of liberating herself is to run to the other side of the world and reinvent herself. But unfortunately, in doing so, she tries to run and repress her inner demons and it takes the trigger of the girls’ disappearance to bring them to the fore. And then lots of great roles that actors play. Whether it's Hamlet or Blanche DuBois, it is the psychological unraveling of sad protagonists as they face their inner demons and their inability to cope. It is a gift for an actor, and that’s why it’s always a great role in whatever guise it’s in. **There is such an intense bond that forms between young women at that age? How is that manifest in the series? As an authority figure, how did your character fit into that landscape?**  Oh, but I think that’s just something that women innately know and understand, right? I mean to me it’s The Crucible. It’s the hysteria that girls can like touch light within each other. The hormones are going, that age and when you approach puberty and then start to deal with the hormonal change and the physical change, I mean its ripe ground for that kind of hysteria which is what picnic shows, which is what Hester is trying to give boundaries to. You know, it's tough love. \[chuckles\] Listen to me defending a bully and a tyrant. But, I mean that is genuinely where I came from. She is trying to give structure to these girls, to give them something to hold onto. I mean, it’s completely misinformed, don’t get me wrong I’m not justifying it and it's the wrong decision, but she is trying to contain them to calm them. And it unfortunately, spectacularly backfires. **I love the term “anti-heroine.” What influences did you draw upon for a character with that complexity? What references inspired you?**  Well you know, we famously have a history in cinema and TV of male anti-heroes, whether its Tony Soprano or Clint Eastwood as the man with no name in “Spaghetti Westerns” or you know, Walter White in “Breaking Bad”. We are so used to men that we begrudgingly love having darker moral compasses than we would like them to have. Why should the same not be true about our female protagonists? * * *  **LILY SULLIVAN & LOLA BESSIS** **Flaunt \[to Lily\]: Miranda is such an iconic figure, she was such a magnetic force for all the other characters—what drew you to her character? What influences did you draw upon in your performance?**  **LILY SULLIVAN:** Once I could let go of the fact that she’s an “iconic character” and people have their own preconceived notions of her, she was such an incredible character to discover. In Peter Weir’s film, she is shot so beautifully through a film lens, but she doesn’t _say_ anything so there wasn’t really anything to grab on to. So how do you play _magnetic?_ How do you become magnetic to people? I found that through Joan Lindsay’s novel and then through B. Christian, the writer, I found this girl that just respects the hell out of her intuition. That’s all these girls had in the 1900s, in the middle of no where, in this house of cooped up adolescence with a headmistress that was a victim and now is a perpetrator of making these women fit into society.  For me, the more I focused on being comfortable with myself and knowing that following your tuition is always right—that’s where I found Miranda, and _that’s_ magnetic.  **\[to Lola\] Mademoiselle is such a benevolent and conflicted character, how did you aim to develop her character over the course of the series? What influenced your performance?**  **LOLA BESSIS:** I didn’t get time to prepare really because I got the job only a few days before they began shooting. But it was kind of a gift. I felt that I could relate to the character a lot because I know what it is to be a young woman, and what it means to try to be a _good_ woman, and a professional woman, and do what society expects from you. To build my character's background, I realized thatMademoiselle wants to be Miranda. There is that scene where I say, “oh I look at you and you’re like a Botticelli angel” and she’s in admiration just as most of the girls are. So that helped me a lot because she’s free, and we all want to be free.   **Female friendships are so intense at that age—What was the chemistry of the cast? What was it like working with this group of women?** **LILY:** It was very special, I think everyone just fast-tracked to friendship because of gratitude, which is a very sexy word! I think all of us are so different and I think this show has so many different personalities, and faces, and body types and there’s room for every single one of them, and women are told that there’s not room for us all. And we all got to have space, and all of those characters were necessary. **LOLA:** I had most of my scenes with Lily, Samara, and Maddie but also the girls who were all between the ages of 16 and 20, and we all had these scenes in the carriage. We actually shot in the drive for 6-7 days and with all the girls there it felt like high school. **LILY:** It was so playful on set and everyone’s creative ideas were heard. You win a bottle of wine if your idea made it into the show! It had this playful nature that I hope comes across with all the experimental, weird ways we tell the story of identity and liberation.  **How does the show communicate with audiences in 2018?**  **LILY:** For me, at the moment, the more and more we explore these characters , the more we realized that this story is relevant, which is scary. And realizing these women were silenced and seeing them find the confidence and the strength to stand up for themselves and speak up for themselves. We’re always going to be dealing with the themes of identity and sexuality and there just needs to be room for it. More than that, I just want girls to see the journey of women and how far _we have_ come.  **LOLA:** It’s true, luckily things have evolved a lot since 1900. I feel like everything was still the same, just bigger. We don’t wear corsets anymore. **LILY:** What are you talking about! The Kardashians are selling those waist trainers! You just do sit ups in your private room \[laughs\]. **LOLA:** It takes hours to get ready, to get dressed and put your makeup on ! **LILY:** Guys, I have make up on my legs and I regret it! This lady put it on and now it looks like I have oompa-loompa legs, I’m still a woman of that time! * * * Written by Andie Eisen  Photos courtesy of Amazon Studios