Trivia / Napoléon (2002)

• Ability over Appearance: The burly Gérard Depardieu as Fouché, who was quite skinny in real life.
• All-Star Cast: Christian Clavier as Napoleon, Gérard Depardieu as Fouché, Isabella Rossellini as Joséphine de Beauharnais, John Malkovich as Talleyrand, Toby Stephens as Czar Alexander I and Julian Sands as Metternich.
• Inspiration for the Work: In order to find inspiration to play Napoleon, Christian Clavier turned to Pierre Mondy, who portrayed him in Abel Gance's Austerlitz. Mondy simply told him "Put the hat on, think of your taxes. There you'll have the stare".
• Irony as She Is Cast: Czar Alexander I makes several anti-English remarks to ingratiate himself with Napoleon. He's played by Brit Toby Stephens, who makes no effort to hide his natural accent.
• Fake Nationality: A staple. Joséphine, Talleyrand, Alexander, Metternich, and Pius VII are all played by people of nationalities other than their historical counterparts (an Italian, an American, and three Brits respectively). Marshal Jean Lannes and Napoleon's aide Armand de Caulaincourt are both played by German actors, Sebastian Koch and Heino Ferch respectively.
• Follow the Leader: One of several prestige French TV miniseries that came in the wake of 1998's The Count of Monte Cristo (written by the same guy even, Didier Decoin, and with Gérard Depardieu in the cast as well).
• Playing Against Type: Christian Clavier as Napoléon Bonaparte. The entirety of Clavier's theatrical filmography is made of comedies and continuing up to this day, yet on television he started taking serious and dramatic roles in the early 2000s such as this one and Monsieur Thénardier in the 2000 miniseries adaptation of Les Misérables.
• Similarly Named Works:
  • Probably dozens, but on this wiki at least there's the 1927 Abel Gance film with Albert Dieudonné, the 1955 Sacha Guitry film duology with Daniel Gélin and Raymond Pellegrin, and the 2023 Ridley Scott film with Joaquin Phoenix in addition to the miniseries. The acute accent on the "e" of "Napoléon" is for the French (or heavily French) productions.
  • For a non-Bonaparte related example, there's 1995's Napoleon.

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