Tuning into Apple TV’s The New Look, one is surprised by the sheer narrative force presented by creator Todd A. Kessler. We are dropped into the end of the second world war as we meet icons of the fashion world, Christian Dior and Coco Chanel. One of the most captivating presences, though, is of someone we might be unfamiliar with. Christian Dior’s sister, Catherine, was captured by the Gestapo in 1944, and her brother never lost hope in finding her. Portrayed with supreme delicacy by Emmy nominee Maisie Williams, this performance introduces us to a person we have never met but we can never forget.
It’s shocking how much Catherine is by herself throughout this first season. We only see her performing as a freedom fighter for a short time before she is captured before we see her enduring torture in a work camp. Even if we do not see Catherine in every episode, she is on our minds. It’s a testament to how much weight Williams devoted to Catherine’s isolation.
“I always found it very powerful that Catherine never spoke about what happened to her, so we pieced a lot of her experiences together from what other women that with Catherine in the camps,” Williams says. “Going into this, it was really important for me to explore as much as I could these things that happened to her but go on a solitary journey to keep it in my mind. That’s part of my technique anyway, but it felt special to pull myself away from my life as much as possible in order to drink in her life. I had to try to do this incredible woman justice to inform new audiences about her. I really felt like it was welcome to go as far as I wanted, and that’s a dream for any actor.”
We always hear artists talk about research and consuming as much history as possible when playing a real person, but Williams had to create a lot on her own. I couldn’t help but think about how terrifying it must be to build a real person from the ground up, especially with the enormity of the series’ focus. Was Williams nervous?
“Yes, definitely,” she admits. “I feel like there is a lot of responsibility, especially with such delicate subject matter. We have so many different touch points of exposure to these times in history, but tapping into that from one woman’s experience told me far more about the second world war than I ever have been able to compute before. I think that’s the beauty of this show. We have so much context to these names and these historic moments, but we get to live it through such unique perspectives to give us a glimpse into these people’s lives. It took me researching this time in a very specific way to have such a great understanding of it.”
After Catherine returns, she doesn’t speak very much about what happened to her. Mr. Friedman is still looking for answers about what happened to his daughter, Tania, and even though Catherine claims they didn’t know one another, it’s clear that she’s holding back. He approaches her after her father’s funeral, and she tells Friedman the truth. it’s a shocking moment where Catherine talks frankly about the violence and horrors that she saw. Williams allows the words to fly out of her mouth, and we realize how many times she has wanted to tell the truth.
“I feel like that something that I clung to was this notion that after seeing the horrors of what people are capable of and witnessing these evil parts of the world…if you were to recount them and speak them back into existence and share those stories then you are, in some way, perpetuating the evil in the world,” Williams says. “She is really reluctant to do that. In terms of telling that story, with the way it was written it was clear to me how it should be delivered. It was all in the writing. It’s far beyond the work that I did. The impact of that moment in the show comes down to a lot of crafting, and it’s moments like that that does these people justice. The reaction to that episode has been quite moving from a lot of people, and I feel like it served its intended purpose in the world. That’s why we do it, you know?”
It’s interesting that we began our conversation about isolation as Catherine struggles to find some inner peace. In the second half of the series, we see Catherine connecting with the earth as she gardens saying, ‘It’s the only place I want to be right now.’ It’s tactile and practical. Touching the dirt allows Catherine to center herself after witnessing so much tragedy.
“I spoke with Todd about this a lot as we were in the earlier blocks of the show, Williams says. “How do you watch someone recover from something like this? One of the things that I read about her life very early on was that she returned to Callian and planted the roses and lived the rest of her life working extremely hard on the land. The idea of returning to the earth when everything else feels so broken is such a beautiful symbol. I always found that very powerful, and that really resonated with me. These moments of stillness where you can sit with these people are very special. It’s the beauty of television.”
The New Look is streaming now on Apple TV+.
