Too explicit? We're not worried

MORE than six million tourists each year flock to Versailles to marvel at King Louis XIV's opulent palace, which he transformed from a hunting lodge in the mid-17th Century.

If the Sun King had thought, "if you build it, they will come", the creators of BBC Two's lavish new period drama, Versailles, are no doubt hoping it's a case of "if you make it, they will watch". The show's already a hit in France, where it became the first French series to get the green light for a second before the first one had even aired.

"It occurred to me that what Louis XIV did was put Versailles on the map and suddenly, bit by bit, the world started taking notice and getting excited and coming to visit – and that's exactly what's happening to the show," says its British co-writer and producer David Wolstencroft. "It's weird. We built Versailles, and now people are starting to see it."

Set in 1667, with a 28-year-old Louis on the cusp of greatness, the series charts the king's ruthless determination to quell his enemies and make the whole nation bow to his absolute power – with his palace as the ultimate status symbol. The first episode sees rivalry simmer between Louis and his brother Philippe d'Orleans, played by Brit actors George Blagden and Alexander Vlahos.

"When I met David and Simon [Mirren; the show's co-creator], they said this show should be called The Brothers Of Versailles, because every beat of every episode, they're for or against each other," says Vlahos, 27, best known for playing Mordred in Merlin. "They have this undying love for each other, but it's questioned by their respect for each other.

"Philippe was brought up wearing women's dresses and to be no threat to the crown – he gets all of the fun with none of the responsibility or consequences. But what happens when you go, 'Why aren't you a threat to the crown?' Doubt starts trickling in from Louis, from Philippe, and it's fireworks..."

Louis XIV became king aged four and reigned for more than 72 years. Blagden, 26, who's previously appeared in Les Miserables and Vikings, reveals the scale of what he was taking on only sank in during a visit to the toilets in Paris' Charles de Gaulle Airport. "The wallpaper was little heads of Louis XIV, and I thought, 'Okay, this is way more than a person or a figure in history that I'm playing, this is a brand in France.' That was the stomach-dropping moment of, 'What have I let myself in for?', but it was very exciting."

He says he was "blown away by how bold the writers had been". To cut to the chase, there was a lot of sex in the Sun King's court – and Wolstencroft, who also created Spooks, and Mirren (Dame Helen is his aunt) have left little to the imagination.

When we first glimpse Philippe, who Vlahos describes as "a 17th Century David Bowie", he is in a rather compromising position with his male lover, Chevalier (Evan Williams).

"I couldn't ask for a better introduction for a character – Philippe would want people to see what he does behind closed doors," says Vlahos. "And what he does is perform a sexual act on his boyfriend. When you read that as an actor, you think, 'Okay, that's pushing the boat out as a challenge'. I've never done anything like that, but then they gave me Evan Williams, who is a dream co-star. I'd never met him before, that was one of our first days, and it kind of breaks down the barriers immediately," he adds, laughing. "There's nothing more we could do to each other!"

Louis, meanwhile, has several lovers on the go, besides his wife Marie-Therese of Spain, including the deeply religious Louise de La Valliere, played by fellow British actress Sarah Winter.

Blagden says he was cautious about the sex content at first – and then realised "we couldn't have done the show without it".

"Even in our limited [British] education, I had heard that Louis XIV and his court was an environment in which sexual politics was rife, and characters moved up and down the ladder through sexuality. There was absolutely no way of doing a show about this time in history, about these people, in that confined building, without including that element – it wouldn't be authentic," he explains. The decision was to go for it and show the world as it was, and not deal with the people who are offended or any attack we might get for being too explicit. We thought, 'Let's try and show this world accurately', and it's paid off."

In an era of raw TV drama like Game Of Thrones, was it easier to make a more accurate representation of Louis XIV and his court?

"I adore Game Of Thrones," says Wolstencroft, who'd studied the Sun King at Cambridge, "but this is its own thing and we never thought about the context of what we were doing. The things you think are fiction are probably historically true, and the things you think are historically true could just be us bolstering it. The freedom to approach it was there for sure, and maybe Game Of Thrones contributed to that."

Blagden adds: "Maybe the reservations of the British public have been slightly smashed by this new age of television, maybe now they're ready for this. Hopefully they are, but when we were filming it, and when you watch it, it doesn't come across as being gratuitous or explicit – there's a lot more that's involved with the dynamics of that court."

Wolstencroft also believes the Bourbon view of sexuality was much more relaxed than ours today: "No one bats an eyelid, so there's an omnisexuality."

"Funnily enough, Louis has sex with eight beautiful women – for duty, for religion, for power, for lust, for passion," Vlahos notes. And far from being powerless, Louis' women could subtly influence him, adds Winter.

"It wasn't really a man's world, because there are so many women behind the scenes, pulling strings, whispering in ears and affecting their personalities. Every woman Louis has a relationship with alters his personality, which will then influence the decisions he makes."

• Versailles, BBC2, Wednesday, 9.30pm