Sailing across the Atlantic to France in October 1776, Benjamin Franklin had 38 days to contemplate his near-impossible mission: to convince the absolute French monarchy of Louis XVI to finance a nascent American republic.
His republic had just declared independence from another monarchy, the British one, and had done so with “no gunpowder, no engineers, no ships, no ammunition, no money, and no army fit to fight a war,” said Stacy Schiff, the author his 2005 book A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France and the Birth of America.
Communication with the rebellious colonies was erratic and his power in France weak, but Franklin had one important card up his sleeve: French hatred of the British, fueled by repeated wars. Franklin, oozing charm in his 70s, employing creative ambiguity, leaving wisdom with humor, aware of the French fascination with this strange new creature called “the American,” had the guile—as well as the iron patriotism—to exploit this diplomatic opportunity.
That’s the backdrop to a new eight-part Apple TV+ series, “Franklin,” that began airing this month. Based on Schiff’s book and filmed in France, it stars Michael Douglas, in his first period film, as the most secular of America’s founders.
The series premiered as another war-torn young republic, Ukraine, struggles for weapons and capital to defend its freedom, and as the American democracy whose fragility Franklin always feared faces the January 2021 invasion of Capitol Hill by a mob intent on subverting elections. This timing gives the drama a powerful added resonance.
To prepare for the role, Douglas said he “looked long and hard at the $100 bill,” but the actor chose not to strive for an exact likeness of stomach, chin and hairline. Instead, Douglass, known for his roles in “Fatal Attraction” and “Wall Street” and now 79, develops a seamless delivery filled with the wisdom of a lifetime and a flickering gaze at once detached and penetrating to uncharacteristically dissolve into the philosopher -political. of the founding of America.
Suffering from excruciating gout, old enough to be the grandfather of James Madison or Alexander Hamilton, comfortable in a small fur hat from Canada, Douglass’s Franklin captures the birth of an enduring American impatience with dignity and solemnity. Wigs and the royal court do not entice him, even if he has a taste, and a talent, for the French good mot. He is both a flirt and a bully.
“I’m drawn to flawed characters, and Franklin is definitely flawed,” said Tim Van Patten, the show’s director, whose credits include “The Sopranos.” “He’s arrogant, self-centered, stubborn, libertarian — and he had his own son locked away. He also had the genius to carry out an amazing mission.”
Part of the show’s appeal is the complexity of its characters, the good and the not-so-good that coexist within them, and Franklin himself is no exception. For nine years, he spun his web from a mansion in Pasy, west of Paris, spreading the war through a printing press he co-founded and, in time, relieving the French Treasury of more than a tenth of his wealth. American Revolutionary Cause.
His uneasy relationship with his grandson Temple Franklin (Noah Jupp) is a major subplot in the show. Franklin’s strong ambitions for Temple are a reflection of his disastrous relationship with his loyal son William Franklin—Temple’s father and the last of the Royalist Governors of New Jersey—before he was imprisoned and eventually fled to London.
Temple, a sensitive soul aflame with rebellious and amorous passions, quickly learns French and is soon drawn into the aristocratic circle of the Marquis de Lafayette (played by Théodore Pellerin), whose service in the Continental Army remains part of the powerful, if few sometimes tempestuous, bond between France and the United States. Unlike his grandfather, Temple loves the court of Louis XVI and is impulsive to a fault.
“Let’s burn England!” he cries as he prepares to embark on a fool’s errand with the Lafayette Circle.
“I’ll tell your father I left you at the bottom of the Irish Sea,” Franklin says.
“Then you’ll have to talk to him,” Temple replies, later telling his grandfather that his peacemaking talents only fail when it comes to “your own flesh and blood.”
Douglas seems at home portraying such complex moral dilemmas. He said he would look at pictures of his father, Kirk Douglas, and things seemed simple: “There were good guys and bad guys.” He laughed. “That’s when it all got a bit grey. I’m fascinated by these gray areas, because we all make mistakes, good people do bad things, bad people do good things.”
The eight-month stint in France was “the best production I’ve ever been involved with,” Douglas said. Likewise, working on the show proved educational for the actor: “I didn’t realize the extent to which, if it weren’t for France, we wouldn’t have a free America. It would be a colony, for sure. We were going down fast.”
American awareness of this, even today, Schiff said, is limited because “we like to think that this is just Washington’s victory, and we prefer not to think about the dependency factor in our independence.”
Douglas said he also thought a lot about parallels with today, “how fragile democracy” and freedom are, from the United States to Ukraine, and the way “our political system is so twisted.”
Historical ignorance is not only American. Ludivine Sagnier, who plays Anne-Louise Brillon de Jouy, a talented musician and composer who sees Franklin as her spiritual muse, said she had learned at her French school that Louis XVI was a passive monarch who was executed after Revolution of 1789 without doing so. well worth it.
“The extreme absurdity, as I learned doing the series, is that this representative of the absolute divine monarchy is responsible for the establishment of a new democracy,” he said. “I don’t think the French are very familiar with that part of their history.”
Franklin’s battles are not only with the French. In the show, his fights with John Adams (Eddie Marchand), who also came to Paris on a diplomatic mission, are intense. “I can’t stand Franklin,” Adams says. “Breakfast is at 10:13!” Franklin counters by explaining that in France “the principle is to achieve much while appearing to do little.” The friction between these two founders subsides only when Adams demands what drives Franklin. “I’m here for America, sir,” he replies. “I never cared about anything else!”
As “Franklin” shows, the story of this period could have been very different. Franklin arrived in France as New York fell to the British army. almost all the news was bad until word reached France nearly a year later of the American victory at the Battle of Saratoga. Then the tide began to turn.
On February 6, 1778, representatives of France and the United States, including Franklin, signed two treaties that led to increased French aid flowing across the Atlantic.
The French contribution to the Continental Army’s game-changing victory at Yorktown in 1781 was enormous. In 1783, the Treaty of Paris was signed, confirming Britain’s acceptance of the United States as “free, sovereign, and independent.”
If only one of Franklin’s relationships secured this result, it was with the French foreign minister, the Comte de Vergne, who played Thibault de Montabert’s turn with dull wit and long-suffering resignation. Vergennes has seen it all, and when Franklin settles with the British in a double final diplomatic pirouette, he is irritated but not unreasonably so.
As the final episode draws to a close, Vergennes asks, “What is this American idea?”
“That a free people may govern themselves by common sense and faith in the greater good,” says Franklin.
“What if they lack common sense?”
“Then I guess they should get what they deserve.”