How Maisie Williams lost a staggering 25 pounds for Catherine Dior role in ‘The New Look’
Maisie Williams went through quite the grueling transformation in order to play Christian Dior‘s sister Catherine in the forthcoming Apple TV+ series “The New Look.”
The 26-year-old “Game of Thrones” actress admitted that she lost 25 pounds to portray the fashion designer’s younger sibling.
In a new Harper’s Bazaar UK profile, she revealed that she was “eating very little, meditating all the time, burning candles and incense in my apartment” to step into the role.
She also explained that she lost a chunk of the weight by sweating out toxins.
Her doctors monitored her health closely and would routinely do blood tests to ensure she wasn’t getting sick.
“I had to be up at 4 a.m. to start sweating. The night before, at about 7 or 8 p.m., I was allowed to have something salty and dehydrating,” she said, adding that what she could consume included smoked salmon or a small glass of wine.
“Then I had a boiling-hot bath with lots of salts in it. And I sort of levitated to bed and slept for maybe three hours, and woke up and had a handful of nuts,” Williams added.
She continued: “I wouldn’t be able to sleep through the night at this point. I kept waking up and feeling like a marble inside a bottle, rattling around.”
When she could not get any more shut-eye, she listened to the audiobook on which the show is based, “Miss Dior: A Story of Courage and Couture.”
The “Mary Shelley” actress would often have dreams that were “almost like sleep paralysis” — nightmares that made her feel like she was Catherine herself.
Catherine was a French Resistance fighter during World War II and was arrested in 1944. She was deported to the Ravensbrück concentration camp in northern Germany and was liberated a year later.
Williams stated that her dreams had “horrible visions of men in uniform” and they made her feel like she was “being trapped and attacked.”
The ensemble cast of “The New Look” also includes Ben Mendelsohn as Christian Dior, Juliette Binoche as legendary designer Coco Chanel, John Malkovich as French couturier Lucien Lelong and Glenn Close as Harper’s Bazaar Editor-in-Chief Carmel Snow.
The fashion drama takes place in post-World War II France and follows Christian as he manufactures his new line that earned the moniker “the New Look.”
The collection was not officially named the New Look when it hit the runway in 1947.
However, the styles were so modern for 1940s Europe that Snow remarked, “It’s such a new look!”
“The New Look” will debut on Wednesday, Feb. 14 on Apple TV+.
