“So metal”: Headless Marie Antoinette steals the show at Paris Olympics opening ceremony

Olympic opening ceremony director, Thomas Jolly, wanted to “challenge” French cliché in the opening and he sure did

Published July 26, 2024 6:53PM (EDT)

Headless figures depicting the 18th century Queen Marie Antoinette perform along the Seine river embankment outside the Conciergerie, where the queen was held captive during the French Revolution, during the Paris 2024 Olympics opening ceremony on July 26, 2024. (NATALIA KOLESNIKOVA/AFP via Getty Images)

In an interview with British Vogue ramping up to the Paris Olympics opening ceremony on Friday, artistic director Thomas Jolly spoke of the Olympic ceremonies as being “a celebration of being alive,” but he managed to pull off a delightfully morbid — and extremely metal — production that paid bloody tribute to a historically famous dead lady, Marie Antoinette. A headless Marie Antoinette, to be more specific.

Aiming to “play with” but also “challenge” French cliché in the opening, he nailed the landing there, shocking some and delighting many others with what Vulture aptly describes in their coverage as “a full musical, metal–opera–Cameron Mackintosh mash-up tribute to … the guillotine,” featuring “decapitated faces painted clown-white [singing] the French revolutionary song “Ça ira” alongside the heavy-metal band Gojira” — the first metal band to ever play at the Olympic Games — during the “Liberté” portion of the ceremony. 

The headless figures depicting the 18th century Queen Marie Antoinette performing along the Seine river embankment outside the Conciergerie, where the queen was held captive during the French Revolution, inspired CNN’s Jake Tapper to do a funny little tweet in the key of Charli XCX, writing, “Headless Marie Antoinette is brat” in a widely shared post to social media.

Tough for even Celine Dion to beat in her ceremony performance, I’d say. 

Watch here:

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