Ben Mendelsohn on portraying Christian Dior in ‘The New Look’: ‘There is always another truth that lives behind it’
Ben Mendelsohn admits he’s anything but a clothes horse. “My relationship with fashion was do I wear an AC/DC T-shirt or a Led Zeppelin T-shirt?”, he explained during a recent Washington Post Zoom interview. “I come from Melbourne, so not particularly deep.” The Emmy Award-winner (“Bloodline”), best known for such films as 2012’s “The Dark Knight Rises,” 2010’s “Animal Kingdom” and 2016’s “Rogue One,” portrays preeminent fashion designer Christian Dior in Apple TV+’s new ten-part series ‘The New Look.”
The series, which was shot on location in Paris, explores the divergent career paths of Dior, who became a superstar with his first collection in 1947, and the established designer Coco Chanel (Juliette Binoche) during and post-World War II. “He’s a real hero in France,” Mendelsohn said of Dior, who died in 1957 at the age of 52. “In no small part, because he helped usher in significantly the economic recovery [of France].”
Mendelsohn first heard of “The New Look” over five years ago when Todd A. Kessler, the creator of “Bloodline,” was making pizza at his house. Kessler had recently read the autobiography of Dior and was intrigued with the relationship between Dior’s real self and the self he had to adopt in order to be “in the world and sell his dresses. He really hated himself for it. I said to [Kessler], ‘well, when do we start?”’
The series opens in 1955 when a world-weary Dior is talking to adoring fashion students at the Sorbonne while Chanel is holding a press conference to discuss her first collection since the Nazis invaded France and dismissing the work of Dior. In a Q&A session, the students want to know his feelings about Chanel’s return. And one goes so far as to ask if it’s true that he made clothes for the wives and girlfriends of Nazis during the occupation, while Chanel refused. “That is the truth,” says Dior. “But there is always another truth that lives behind it.”
Dior’s life and career are vastly different in 1943 when the country was in its fourth year of Nazi occupation. Dior was working for the important haute designer Lucien Lelong (John Malkovich) and living with his sister Catherine (Maisie Williams), a resistance fighter who ultimately is arrested and sent to a labor camp. “That was devastating,” said Mendelsohn. “Their relationship is very close. They’re kind of a pain in the butt to each other as any kind of siblings are that are very close, but the absence of that sibling is just devastating for him. He needs to get her back.”
The actor believes Dior and Chanel are “very much loved by those of us who made this. But they are differentiated. We’re not Aesop; we’re not trying to paint a moral fable, but it is a very interesting look at these two titans of fashion. I’ve never loved anyone to play and to be with than I have Christian. And the longer I stayed, the more in love with him I got.” And he would love to continue playing the fashion designer. “I’d be delighted and contractually obligated. “
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