New series explores world before ‘Dangerous Liaisons’

The wigs in the new series, “Dangerous Liaisons,” are like footballs, “covered in hair and jewels,” says star Alice Englert.

“They’re incredible and heavy,” she says. But, like the costumes, they do help set a tone for the series, which is set in the 18th century. An origins story for the classic novel, the STARZ series shows what Camille (Englert) and the Vicomte de Valmont (Nicholas Denton) were like before their scheming began.

“It’s a very interesting transformation when you get into the costume of your character,” co-star Kosar Ali (who plays Victoire, Camille’s best friend) says. “Your posture changes, the way you speak, the way you hold yourself. You kind of step into that world and you become that naturally.”

Clothes during the era “were a kind of bondage,” Englert says. “It’s genuinely just so much harder to do anything that could help you literally escape or feel comfortable in that world.”

Denton, who’s in a number of bedroom scenes, says it’s inhibiting taking off three or four layers of clothing and then putting them back on. “My posture totally shifted as Valmont.”

An intimacy coordinator helped him and others work with the costumes, so scenes looked provocative while, at the same time, were safe.

Because events in the series predate those in the book and the 1988 film, creator Harriet Warner had the latitude to introduce new characters, sentiments and situations.

“It’s full of universal themes,” she says. “It’s sex, privilege, poverty, class, love and, above all, power. The story of a woman navigating a man’s world is hugely powerful today. A divided society – between rich and poor – has resonance now. It still packs a punch.”

Englert says the story has always been about love and war. “If it’s not love, it’s war. If it’s war, is it love?” she says. “Some of the most compelling feelings I’ve had about another person certainly haven’t been love. They might have been lust or obsession.”

To craft the prequel, Warner looked at the book and the film. “I was really struck by one letter in particular, Letter 81, that there’s this sense that (Camille) had created herself from nothing,” she says. “She’s a construct. Everything about her she has very consciously developed. I never saw that when I watched the movie. I didn’t pick it up the first time I read the book. That was the excitement for me – to find there’s a new story to tell.”

Warner created backstories for the characters and moved on from there.

Watching the film and reading the book, Englert says she felt there must have been something that affected the character’s actions – “back in the day when they were dreamers.”

Warner says she has taken key scenes from the novel and repackaged them for the prequel. “Our characters, over the course of multiple seasons, will get to that point that we meet them in the novel – of real moral compromise and corruptions. And we go with them on that journey.”

Gay relationships also are part of the world.

“I feel like Camille is queer like myself,” Englert says.

Adds Warner: “One of the really exciting things about the show is kind of blowing apart constraints and conforming to gender stereotypes. There’s fluidity to our world and characters.”

When Englert researched Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, the author of “Dangerous Liaisons,” she was surprised to learn he was a family man. “He was extremely devoted and in the army and had a middle-class existence,” she says. “I was relieved. We can be crazy in there and then we don’t have to be crazy out here necessarily. We can leave it onscreen.”

So, too, those costumes. Because they were heavy, often rigid and frequently difficult to maneuver, the actors were glad when each day’s scenes were done.

“I really appreciate modern clothing after this shoot,” Englert says.

“Dangerous Liaisons” airs on STARZ.