After spending more than two decades as an agent for movie stars, Frenchman Dominique Besnehard understood that his life could be a good novel. He eventually became a series, Call my agent! (Dix pour cent). The project, rejected by Canal+, ended years later on the public channel France 2, with real actors playing themselves, as if they were clients of the fictitious Parisian agency ASK in which the series is set.
Juliette Binoche, Jean Reno, Sigourney Weaver, Jean Dujardin, Monica Bellucci, and Isabelle Huppert, among many others, appeared in it. Since its global premiere on on-demand content platforms such as Netflix, fiction has become the great worldwide success of French television in recent times. And now it can be seen in Spain for free and in full.
But not only the actors gave veracity to the plots. The protagonists, long-suffering, ambitious and tragicomic advisers to celebrities, were inspired by Besnehard himself, who later became a producer after having been an adviser to the socialist candidate for the Eliseo Segolene Royal, and by some colleagues in his former profession. One of them is Laurent Gregoire, co-founder of the prestigious agency Adequat, that of Marion Cotillard and Omar Sy, Netflix’s Lupine. The Frenchman took advantage of his involvement with the project to cast a couple of his clients in the cast and expanded his participation in advising them during the recording process. Thibault de Montalembert, who plays his transcript, Mathias, is one of them and the other, also inspired by her personality, is Camille Cottin, whose international career has skyrocketed after appearing in this gala comedy, appearing in the British-American series Killing Eve and in the Ridley Scott film The House of Gucci. “I’m not as kind as those who appear in the series,” Gregoire (Senlis, France, 56 years old) confessed to this newspaper with complete sincerity in mid-November, during his participation in the Thessaloniki film festival, in which offers a masterclass.
The Frenchman understands that the viewer approached Call my Agent! for the famous faces and he stayed because of the challenges and dilemmas that his agents, the true protagonists of the story, faced every week. “Actors spend their lives making decisions and trying new things and our job is to accompany them and often guide them along the way”, he tells of a profession for which there is no academic training. It can only be learned by exercising it. So many things an agent has to know to protect his clients that they often become secret agents, he jokes.
The artist representative identifies with his alter ego in fiction. Mathias is the most ambitious and the most complex of the protagonists of this comedy. He is a character with hidden weaknesses, more sensitive than he appears. He feels that his profession forces him to show solvency before some clients who trust his advice, although often those crossroads that his actors live also generate doubts.
The veteran agent – he has been practicing the profession for more than 35 years – compares the interpreters to caged lions and he identifies with the tamer who has to channel all that unbridled energy so that it is expressed in the best possible way. “Although my work is also creative, I am not the artist of the couple. The actor or actress are there to sound. It is your responsibility to do so. And I’m the more practical half, the one who has to worry about contracts and money. I am here to help make those dreams come true, but always keeping your feet on the ground, knowing what is possible and what is not within your careers. It’s like a friendship with some financial overtones, ”he comments on the plots that can be seen in Call my Agent!
To exemplify how relevant the work of an agent can be, Gregoire recalls during his masterclass how he helped change Marion Cotillard’s career — “I’ve spent so much time with her that ours is like a relationship, but without the sex.” , He says-. For the producers of La vie en rose (2007), a biography of the singer Edith Piaf, there was only one option to interpret her. That was her represented by Audrey Tautou, the French star of the moment thanks to Amelie. He remembers that when those responsible for the film presented the project to the actress, she replied: “Who is going to be interested in seeing a film about Edith Piaf?” In a matter of seconds, she lost the paper she had won. Gregoire then offered another of his clients, an unknown Cotillard. Applying the creative part of her work, I knew I was perfect for that role better than the producers themselves. But they were looking for a face that would attract viewers to the movie box office. He insisted until they understood that it was the best option. And she became one of the few performers in history to win an Oscar for a role not written in English. Tautou tried unsuccessfully to repeat that move shortly after with the Coco Chanel biopic. Her star has been fading ever since, leaving her throne to Cotillard. Tautou tried unsuccessfully to repeat that move shortly after with the Coco Chanel biopic. His star has been fading ever since, leaving his throne to Cotillard. Tautou tried unsuccessfully to repeat that move shortly after with the Coco Chanel biopic. His star has been fading ever since, leaving his throne to Cotillard.
Gregoire defends that, for agencies like his to exist, a robust audiovisual industry is necessary. And the French has been. At least until now. “My country has been very efficient in protecting its culture. While in mature markets such as Spain or Italy, 20 or 30 local films are shot a year, in France there are almost 300. But all that was before the pandemic. There was a lot of aid to production, but the situation is changing dramatically for the worse. People have stopped going to the theaters after the coronavirus and have changed it to the platforms ”, he comments. Of course, he admits, it has been the platforms that have made French productions like Call my agent! and Lupine (and with them his representatives) succeed throughout the world.
