BISSET BONING UP FOR TV JOSEPHINE

“Ever since I got the role, I’ve been reading up on the subject,” said Jacqueline Bisset. “And I have to tell you I can’t find a single reference to Napoleon saying, ‘Not tonight, Josephine.’ ”

In two weeks British-born Bisset starts filming David Wolper’s six-hour ABC-TV miniseries “Napoleon and Josephine” in France.

The role of the empress Josephine is one for any actress to covet, and covet it Bisset does. So much so that she can now discuss the French Revolution, Josephine’s marriage to Napoleon (played in the TV series by Armand Assante) and the emperor’s exile to Elba with some authority.

But nowhere can she find that famous line, for so long a guaranteed laugh for any comic.

“Maybe Napoleon said it; maybe he didn’t,” she said. “All I know is he seems to have been absolutely mad about Josephine.”

Perhaps the remark was made in reference to something more mundane than passion? Maybe she was anxious to discuss the household accounts and he wasn’t in the mood?

“Actually that could be true,” said Bisset with a laugh. “Money seems to have been a real bone of contention between them because she was so terribly extravagant. She spent a fortune on her clothes.”

The production company of “Napoleon and Josephine” isn’t stinting on the expense either. For the series, which is being directed by Richard Heffron, Bisset will be outfitted with more than 50 costumes, all of them weighty, all of them glamorous.

“I’ve never tackled anything of this size before,” she said. “ ‘Anna Karenina’ at three hours is the longest thing I’ve ever done. So when I got this fat script, I was appalled. I called (executive producer) David Wolper and said, ‘How do I handle this? . . .’ ‘Just relax,’ he said. ‘Six hours is nothing. Most of my series run to 12. Just think of it as a long movie.’ So that’s what I’m doing.”

For her role as the somewhat frivolous Josephine, Bisset will have to practice playing billiards.

“Josephine was mad about the game, it seems. She loved to play it. So we’ve got several scenes at the billiard table.”

Other things came to light during her research. Among them, the fact that Napoleon Bonaparte hated to waste a lot of time eating. Rather than linger over the potage du jour, he would gulp it down and then rush back to rewriting law and planning battles.

“From what I understand, the average time he spent eating lunch was about eight minutes,” said Bisset. “Dinner took rather longer. About 10 minutes.”

“Napoleon and Josephine” will keep her in Paris for nearly four months (battle scenes will be filmed in Morocco, but she is not involved in those). Then she hopes to make another movie. In the meantime, she has one awaiting release--”High Season,” which marks the feature film directing debut of Clare Peploe, wife of Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci.

Items have appeared in print recently stating that Bisset is set to play the old Gene Tierney role in a remake of the classic movie “Laura.” Bisset says she knows nothing about it.

“I’ve seen those stories myself,” she said. “But nobody’s offered me the part. I once met Gene Tierney’s husband in New York and he said I reminded him of his wife, but I’ve never been approached for ‘Laura.’

“Mind you, for three years I kept reading that I was going to star in ‘The Greek Tycoon’ (the fictionalized movie version of the Jackie Kennedy/Aristotle Onassis marriage). Nobody had asked me to do it, but there it was in print. Then one day someone did ask me and I made the film. So you never know.”

Going with her to France will be her longtime escort, Russian-born dancer Alexander Godunov, who, since defecting to the West, has traveled on a refugee document--one that required a visa for every country.

Last week he became an American citizen and the proud possessor of a new U.S. passport.

And the first thing he had to do--under the new French ruling--was to obtain a visa to visit France.

“He thinks that’s very funny,” said Bisset.