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Hey everyone and welcome to Francois Arnaud Online, your source for the actor who plays Cesare Borgia on the new original Showtime series The Borgias. We aim to bring you all the latest images, news and more on the actor so stay tuned and keep coming back! Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions, comments or suggestions.

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The Borgias
Francois is Cesare Borgia
Airs Sundays 10/9c on Showtime
Information | Photos | Official

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1.04 - Lucrezia's Wedding
Airdate: April 17, 2011
Summary: Lucrezia's financially and politically motivated wedding to Milanese nobleman Giovanni Sforza is a disaster thanks to Juan's inappropriately bawdy play in his sister's honor, Cesare's brazen flirting with a married baroness, and the arrival of the Borgia children's illegitimate mother; Della Rovere seeks the aid of the illustrious Medici family and their counselor, Machiavelli.

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Title: Francois Arnaud Online
Webmaster: Michelle
Launched: April 4, 2011
Host: Fan Sites Network
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© 2011 Francois Arnaud Online is in no way affiliated with Francois or his managing staff. This is simply a fansite dedicated to the talented actor. All images, media and other content are copywritten to their respective owners. No infringement intended. If you feel any content found on this website infringes your copyright, please e-mail the staff.

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2012 Winter TCA – Day 9

Hey all! I know updates have been slow on the site as of late but I’m going to remedy that by adding photos of Francois from the 2012 Winter TCA to the gallery. check them out below!

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Posted by Michelle on January 18, 2012 under Appearances • Comments: 0

Second Season of “The Borgias” Premieres On Showtime

 ”The Borgias” returns to the Showtime lineup on Sunday, April 8, 2012, according to a January 12, 2012, press release from Showtime.  The Borgias stars Jeremy Irons in his Golden Globe nominated role.

“The Borgias” joins the Sunday night lineup on Showtime, following “Nurse Jackie” and “The Big C.” Showtime’s triple play of hits

Season two of THE BORGIAS finds Rodrigo Borgia / Pope Alexander  (Jeremy Irons) seeking to consolidate his power and enlisting his family to take an oath of revenge on the great noble houses that dared to stand against him, causing his Papacy to face political turmoil once again.

But Alexander’s real problems lie with his children, all of whom are growing up and defying his authority.  Lucrezia (Holliday Grainger) forges an unlikely alliance between Vanozza and Giulia, and together they plot to battle Vatican corruption.  The sibling rivalry between Cesare Borgia  (Francois Arnaud) and Juan Borgia  (David Oakes) will soon turn to hatred as their father’s unwavering favoritism toward Juan triggers Cesare to engage his dark side.

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Posted by Michelle on January 18, 2012 under The Borgias • Comments: 0

The Borgias Updates

Hey everyone! I know I havent updated this site in a long time and I’m sorry for that. Time got away from me and I wasn’t able to update but now here I am and have brought with me some Borgias caps for you. I still have a couple more episodes to add screencaptures of and will do that this week hopefully!

1.07 – Death on a Pale Horse

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1.08 – The Art of War

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Posted by Michelle on September 01, 2011 under Gallery, The Borgias • Comments: 0

Francois Arnaud Clears Up A Horse’s Tale

For the record, Francois Arnaud did not fall off his horse while filming “The Borgias” for Showtime.

“I never fell off my horse!” he told me this week, disputing a recent interview claiming the opposite. “I never fell once. … I don’t know what I said to make them print that. … Maybe I said it to make myself interesting. I have no idea.”

Arnaud definitely doesn’t have to work at being interesting. Jeremy Irons may be the undisputed star of the series, playing embattled Pope Alexander VI, but the 25-year-old from Montreal has caused quite a stir as the Pope’s sinister, sexy son, Cesare Borgia.
“The Borgias,” based on the real-life story of the 15th-century cardinal Rodrigo Borgia, who basically bought and bullied his way to becoming pope, closes out its deliciously devilish first season at 9 p.m. Sunday. (It’s already been renewed for a second.)

According to Arnaud, the finale doesn’t steer away from the Machiavellian maneuverings or murders. Arnaud says something unexpected happens, too.

“It’s a bit of a family reunion, I’d say. It’s like the Borgias’ Christmas. It’s very sweet,” he said, laughing. “That’s what it is, yeah, that’s why it’s surprising actually, because you don’t expect the Borgias to be sweet.

“[There’s] a bit of torture and a lot of sweetness.”

Viewers can expect that Cesare and his henchman, Micheletto (Sean Harris), will be doling out the violence. When “The Borgias” premiered, it seemed Cesare was the “good” brother while Juan (David Oakes) was more troubled and dangerous. But Cesare became more menacing—and maybe just a bit evil—to keep his father in power and dispatch his own enemies.

Arnaud still sees the good in his character, even if he doesn’t seem fully convinced how good he is.

“I didn’t want to portray him like a Disney villain,” he said. “I wanted him to be like an everyday young boy looking for his father’s approval and love, but still with that power and that hunger for power. He changes, he evolves into this monster slowly, I guess, but we’re all monsters a little. [Laughs.]

“He stays loyal to his family, to his beliefs all along. I don’t think he is all bad—at all actually.”
Viewers will see both the sweet and scary sides of Cesare’s personality in Sunday’s finale—and also the riding scene in which his horse, a Spanish Beauty called Carmen, gave him fits, but no fall.

“I just saw a blooper and it was raining a lot on that day [of filming] and … it’s me and Sean Harris on our horses and mine was misbehaving so bad,” Arnaud said. “He just goes everywhere; he didn’t respect me a lot. But I never fell.”

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Posted by Michelle on May 22, 2011 under Interviews • Comments: 0

Francois Arnaud On His “Natural Darkness” And Getting Yelled At By Jeremy Irons

How do you make an audience sympathize with history’s most morally bankrupt family? Showtime’s The Borgias, created by director Neil Jordan, makes its characters deeply conflicted — and very sexy. Jeremy Irons, as the corrupt Pope Rodrigo Borgia, fits the bill, and so does the smoldering French-Canadian actor Francois Arnaud, who plays the Pope’s son Cesare. In The Borgias, Arnaud has the Al Pacino role in this proto-Godfather saga: a moral man who gives in to the slow seduction of power and politics, all in the name of family loyalty. With the season finale coming up on Sunday (the cast starts shooting season two in July), Vulture spoke to Arnaud about the depths of Cesare’s darkness, his strangely appealing flirtations with his onscreen sister, and his fake audition with Jeremy Irons.

All of your previous credits appear to be French. Is this your first English-language role?
No — it’s my first big mainstream American project. I was in a crappy TV movie a couple years ago, and I’ve done some English-language theater.

It’s your first big American role, you have a British accent, and you’re playing a Spaniard living in Italy.
At first, Neil Jordan didn’t want British accents. He had an idea of a neutral accent, which is probably Irish for him because he is Irish. That would have been a little odd. So we just tried to blend as much as we could.

When you were auditioning for the show, did you know that Cesare was the part you wanted?
Yeah, I did actually. There’s something really dangerous about the guy, but I don’t know, I felt him from the inside. I said, “That could be me.” Like, if I was in that position, I could do these things. Which is probably very scary.

Well, Neil Jordan said in an interview that you have a “natural darkness” to you.
I hope he’s wrong! No, I think everyone has that, actually. I think you just have to be honest about it and be willing to explore that.

This hasn’t happened in the series yet, but looking at his history, we know that Cesare was accused of killing his brother Juan and became quite bloodthirsty.
I read a couple of books and they all contradict each other. The script becomes your truth. You can’t play history — you have to play the heart of the story. I trust Neil; He’s read everything there is to read about the Borgias. I don’t think of Cesare, definitely not at first, as a cold-blooded murderer. There are stories of him just looking out his window and just shooting people randomly on the street, and unless we go there, I don’t really see him that way. I think he’s got a logical reason for every crime that he commits. And same thing about the incest with Lucrezia; I think we chose to play pure love. And they’re so infatuated with each other and they’re very physical in that relationship, but it’s kind of childish in a way. I think they’re just in love with each other, without any form of judgment.

I noticed a lot of fans are rooting for Lucrezia and Cesare to get together, which is a testament to how appealing you two are together.
You see, people are creepy! It’s not just me! [Laughs.] I think Holliday [Grainger, who plays Lucrezia] and I had a really strong chemistry from the start, and I just really enjoy working with her. She’s amazing and she has those great big eyes that you just want to stare into.

She looks like she came right out of a painting from that period. And there’s a painting of Cesare that looks kind of like you, too.
Yeah, I don’t really look like that. I have short hair and they darken my skin a bit to make me look, I don’t know, more manly, mature, Spanish. But they did a good job.

I watched the video of your audition with Jeremy Irons —
That’s a fake audition, you know that, right?

Are you serious?
[Laughs.] Oh my God, they’re going to kill me! It’s just that the Showtime people came and they wanted to film my audition, and the casting director was going, “They know, they know, it’s your moment now, you have to get that part! Go!” So we just did it, and then after I was done, I pretty much knew that I was going to get it. And they were like, “Okay, so can we film it once more?” And Jeremy was wearing a cowboy hat instead of his Cardinal biretta, so that made for kind of a funny moment.

So it was at the audition, but you already knew you’d gotten the part.
Yeah, it was fifteen minutes after. They slicked my hair back, and I remember I had flown from Montreal to London, and I had just arrived in London and hadn’t slept at all, and I went straight to the audition room. And there was a makeup girl who was supposed to give me some dark circles; they wanted me to look moody. And then she just looked at me and was like, “I’m just not going to do anything.”

Obviously, you have a rapport with Jeremy Irons. Was there a defining moment of working with him?
When we shot our first big scene together, the first two takes I was nervous; it wasn’t going very well. The third take, it just went really well, but I hid myself behind him and the camera couldn’t get me. I finished and I was like, “Oh shit, I’m sorry, you won’t be able to use that.” And Jeremy kinda yelled at me and was like, “Don’t you ever be sorry when you do something good!” And that went on for three minutes: “That’s all that matters!” What I liked is that he wanted me to be his equal. And I really thank him for that.

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Posted by Michelle on May 22, 2011 under Interviews • Comments: 0

1.06 – “The French King” Screencaptures

Hey everyone! Thanks to Mia Famiglia I’ve added screencaptures of this week’s episode of The Borgias “The French King” to the gallery. Check them out!

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Posted by Michelle on May 03, 2011 under The Borgias • Comments: 0

1.04 – “Lucrezia’s Wedding” Screencaptures

Hey everyone! I just added screencaptures of this week’s episode of The Borgias to the gallery. Check them out!

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Posted by Michelle on April 20, 2011 under Gallery, The Borgias • Comments: 0

AccessHollywood.com: Francois Takes on “The BorgiasS”

Posted by Michelle on April 15, 2011 under Interviews • Comments: 0

Legend of The Fall

H e’s infinitely more famous than he was a month ago. But he’s also rather sore. As far as trade-offs go, not so terrible, right?

Montreal dreamboat Francois Arnaud, figuring heavily these days in the new Machiavellian costume-fest that is The Borgias, paid dearly for his entry into the big time. Prior to Showtime’s new boobs-and-blood show, he’d never been on a horse. Since the time of his casting, he cannot say the same.

“It was a pretty gruelling shoot,” explains the Canadian fresh face getting his hands dirty these days at the son, Cesare, of Pope Alexander VI, essayed here by Jeremy Irons. “When I wasn’t filming,” he went on to the L.A. Times recently, “I usually was doing stuff like horse training. Thanks to editing, it looks pretty good, but the bloopers are all basically me falling off a horse.”

Ah, but the reviews are in– and that ass-landing was well worth it. “Sinfully good bad boy,” is just one of the monikers being tossed Arnaud’s way. Serving as “his father’s right hand in skulduggery, but as a manifestation of his id,” as Salon summed it up, the 25-year-old is chewing scenery (in a good way) as he gallops through the series set around the real-life bad-ass 15th-century pope, Rodrigo Borgia.

Political pawns! Backstabbing galore! Seven deadly sins (and perhaps one or two extra)! The show, which is three episodes in (shown here on Bravo! on Sundays), seems to have all that going for it. And from what I’ve seen thus far, it succeeds in making Gossip Girl look like Little House on the Prairie. It being the brainchild of writer-director Neil Jordan, I also couldn’t help but hearken back to another blood-bath of his, 1994′s Interview with the Vampire. More than anything else he’s done, The Borgias shares not just its barbarism, but also some of its sumptuousness and its shadowy camp.

SCENE! HEARD!

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Posted by Michelle on April 12, 2011 under Interviews • Comments: 0

1.03 “The Moor” Screencaptures

Hey everyone! I just added a bunch of screencaptures from this week’s episode of The Borgias. Check them out below!

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Posted by Michelle on April 12, 2011 under Gallery, The Borgias • Comments: 0

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