The 'Marie Antoinette' Trailer Welcomes Us All to Versailles

Marie Antoinette is one of those rare historical figures that everyone has an opinion about—regardless of how much of the actual history surrounding her life you actually happen to know. Depending on who you ask, she's either a frivolous airhead, a spendthrift clotheshorse obsessed with shoes, or an oppressive elitist who loved the fun of cosplaying as a peasant, when she wasn't actively looking down on or outright oppressing the poor.

To be fair, the real Marie Antoinette was likely none of those things. (She also probably never told her subjects to eat cake either.) This is why the prospect of the upcoming period drama Marie Antoinette is so enticing: the series will reportedly put a more modern, feminist spin on the story of her life, and it has the behind-the-scenes crew to be able to back up that promise.

The eight-part drama comes from Deborah Davis, the writer of the Oscar-winning film The Favourite, and the production company behind the wildly entertaining if not always entirely historically accurate series Versailles, which chronicled Louis the Sun King's decision to turn a family hunting lodge into his kingdom's most famous (and opulent) chateau. Rising Russian-born German actor Emilia Schüle stars as the titular queen, and if the first proper trailer for the series is anything to go by, her Marie Antoinette will certainly shake things up, even as she fights to maintain her own position.