Posted by: Riikka

3 Apr 2006

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Apparently Napoleon and Betsy has stirred up some controversy in the press because of the fact that the movie is about a relationship between a 14-year old girl and Napoleon Bonaparte, her senior of 32 years. Bonaparte was befriended by English teen Betsy Balcombe, to be played by Johansson, when he was exiled to the South Atlantic island St. Helena in 1815. Although he was supposedly a kindly uncle figure to Balcombe, who lived there with her merchant father and siblings, director Benjamin Ross is keen to give their story a saucier slant. Historian Peter Hicks fumes, “It was a platonic relationship. It would be ridiculous to suggest anything else.”

But Ross has hit back, saying, “The facts are very interpretable. I’d be delighted to get historians jumping and down.” ( source )

Andrew Lloyd Webber recently revealed that he had decided to pull out of negotiations to get Scarlett Johansson to play Maria in the new West End stage production of The Sound of Music, because although she had been keen, her “people” were against the plan. ( source )

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