comely

So I don’t know if I’ve ever lost out. I remember when I played Marian in The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins’ description of Marian is that she’s “ comely but not that comely ” and she had a moustache. I met Diana Quick who had played her in a BBC adaptation, and I think there had also been a discussion about the moustache: do we or don’t we? My concession was that I didn’t wear any makeup, because I don’t think they wanted to go with the moustache.

2023-04-13 The Guardian

This infuriates all the pompous stuffed chemises thereabouts – especially the king’s grownup daughters with the late queen, who are to be the ugly sisters to Jeanne’s Cinderella. But a problem arrives when the Dauphin (Diego Le Fur), later to be Louis XVI, makes his choice of bride: the comely Autrichienne Marie Antoinette (Pauline Pollman), who declines to acknowledge Jeanne at court, perhaps nettled by Jeanne’s wearing white to upstage her at Versailles. With the decline of the king’s health, Jeanne’s powerbase dwindles and calamity looms.

2023-05-16 The Guardian