Back in Paris at the turn of the year, HeyUGuys were fortunate enough to sit in on a roundtable with French icon Isabelle Huppert, promoting her latest film La Syndicaliste, where the actress discusses her latest film, politics, her career – and her love for Bryan Cranston.
Below is an edited transcription of the conversation, of which we were the only UK outlet. We have included questions from varying publications, though have highlighted at the start of a question when it was one we asked ourselves.
This woman is fearless. Do you feel similar to her?
She doesn’t fear people, but I don’t think she is fearless. I think if she knew what was going to happen to her she would be afraid, but she was never afraid of people above her, that’s for sure. She can be intimidated sometimes, because she’s a woman and she knows exactly what she represents, but she isn’t really afraid of men for example, but she doesn’t anticipate what is going to happen to her. If she knew, she’d be a little more afraid.
Did you follow the real story?
No, nobody remembers it, actually. I mean from the people I talk to about the film, everybody seems to have forgotten the story, which happened in around 2012, 2013. I don’t even remember the book, because I think the book was published shortly before the pandemic. But Jean-Paul Salomé noticed the book and after reading the book, decided to do the film.
Is it an extra pressure to play a real life person, a contemporary person who is alive and will see the film?
No, because firstly she never really interfered, she wasn’t willing to meet me or talk to me. We based the physical appearance exactly on her, because she is so cinematic, so we didn’t have to look for something else, she had the blonde hair, the costume and way she dressed, the jewels, the glasses, they were very important because you don’t give direct access to the look, it plays with the truth and with the lies also and this is obviously what the movie revolves around, both truth and lying.
HUG: Maureen almost seems quite detached, is that a challenge to play a character with such a stillness, when everything around her is far from still. Usually with characters like this in films there’s a sense of melodrama, but this is quite subdued.
Well yes because it was the most interesting way. It’s probably what makes the suspicions bigger because she has a way of being subdued, as you say, she never really behaves like a “good” victim so she probably raises suspicion by that type of behaviour.
Would you say this woman is more political than other characters you play?
She is political without knowing that she is political, which is the case most of the time. Just because she decides to go for this fight to save employment of the people she works for, but she does not measure at the beginning how political it is of course, because at some point it becomes really political, but at the beginning it is more social. Though of course social is political as well, but not political in the strict sense of the word.
HUG: Some of the days Maureen has to contend with are incredibly stressful and she comes home and plays poker to unwind. Do you have an equivalent, after a very busy day?
Watching television, and the worst thing on television. It’s like playing poker for me. I’ll watch anything, it just washes my brain.
Do you feel more vulnerable making a movie in another country and in a second language, than you do making a film in France?
No, not vulnerable. You are sometimes a slightly different person, but not vulnerable. Movie making is more like a shelter than anything else, it protects you, so I don’t feel vulnerable because I know what I have to do.
Maureen is a real fighter – is there anything you’d fight for, like this, in your real life?
I don’t know.
Cinema?
But I don’t feel like a fighter myself. I just follow my way, I wouldn’t call it a fight. I will leave the fight to people who really are entitled to. We have so many fighters in the world, I wouldn’t consider myself one.
HUG: In real life Maureen is Irish, and in real life there is a sense of her being an outsider, do you think the fact you played her as French person changes anything about the film?
It’s a good question because we left on the side that she is Irish, you’re absolutely right. But maybe unconsciously I took this on account that she is a foreigner, she comes from somewhere else even though she is married here and has a family here, but she’s a displaced person, so maybe I included that in my building of the character, she is almost like a displaced person.
HUG: Have you spoken to her about the film since it has been made?
No, I spoke to her a couple of times when she came on set, but only very briefly. She was very nice and very sweet.
In Elle you played a character accused of staging a rape, and here you play a character who is accused of faking an assault. Did Elle have anything to do with you being interested in this role?
No, I didn’t even think about it, but obviously I did notice there were some similarities, even in the way they react. In Elle she didn’t go to the police she wanted to do it all by herself, and then I thought, maybe even when the film was over, that it was funny there were some connections between them, but during it I did not even think about it.
With your reputation do you ever think your colleagues maybe have a little fear of you when you first meet them on set, the younger ones?
Well I hope I know how to break the ice, immediately. In films maybe eventually people will finally confess they were, but I think doing a movie makes these kinda of barriers, where everyone is kind of equal.
HUG: I watched an interview with Bryan Cranston once, to say an actor’s job is to study people, and it got to a point where he got so famous that people started acted differently around him, so he became unable to study them because they weren’t being their natural self?
I love Bryan Cranston! But no, not to this point. But then I am not as good as Bryan Cranston. I saw him in Network in New York, and he was so amazing on stage. He is such a good actor.
With all these roles in your life, is there anything left you think you’d still love to try that you haven’t already?
No. Not really.
Another project with Haneke, one day?
He’s resting somewhere. I would love to see him again.
You keep in touch?
We do.
La Syndicaliste is out in cinemas now
