(Paris) Polyglot with an international career, actor Daniel Brühl puts his acting with restraint at the service of Becoming Karl Lagerfelda series dedicated to the “Kaiser” of fashion that he wanted to embody in French, “as it should be”.
Launched on Disney+ on June 7, this French production, co-directed by Jérôme Salle, is adapted from the biography Kaiser Karl written by journalist Raphaëlle Bacqué.
We follow the rise of the ponytail couturier, in the 70s, before his arrival at Chanel, between Paris, Rome and Monaco.
Asked to play the title role, the German-Spanish actor revealed in Good bye, Lenin! (2003) did not procrastinate.
“He’s such a fascinating character,” he explains to AFP by videoconference from London, where he is filming a “very different” series for HBO, The Franchisedirected by Sam Mendes.
“He fascinated the whole world”, without us really knowing the man “behind the facade he had created”, continues in English this native of Barcelona who grew up in Cologne with his German father and his mother Spanish.
“I had the honor of meeting him once because he took a few photos of me” for a magazine, adds the 45-year-old actor, marked by this “brief meeting” and his “nervousness” at the time. facing the “intelligent gaze” of the designer behind the lens.
Discovering the series project, “I said to myself ‘Wow, they’re going to do it in French, as it should, because it was more French than German'”, he says, recalling the love of Karl Lagerfeld for France, the vagueness surrounding his childhood in Hamburg, “door to the world” when he wanted “the world”, and his complicated relationship with his original homeland, where he remains “adored”.
“I think I would have said no if it had been filmed in German or English,” assures Daniel Brühl, familiar with the language of Molière thanks to the two French women married by his uncles from across the Rhine, “Françoise de Paris and Françoise de Toulouse.
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The risk of falling into the “caricature” of “such a famous icon” was great, but the challenge too tempting for those who like to step out of their “comfort zone”.
Especially since this regular in historical roles – the Austrian driver Niki Lauda in Rusha Nazi propaganda hero in Inglourious Basterds – considers the sector’s propensity to offer the Germans characters confined “to a single chapter” of their history a “bit annoying”.
Documenting himself on Karl Lagerfeld, the actor also immersed himself “in his intellectual domain” by “rereading Proust”, German poetry, or by watching “the films he loved so much” like Children of Paradise.
“I started speaking to myself in French with this German accent, moving around looking for the right gestures,” relates the man who trained in the countryside in front of “sheep and donkeys,” a good audience.
The breakthrough came when he tried on his character’s heels and thought of “flamenco and bullfighters”, “clinging to the image” of a matador before each take.
Another major support is his playing partner, Théodore Pellerin, who plays Jacques de Bascher, Lagerfeld’s great love. “I fell in love with him in five minutes,” proclaims Daniel Brühl.
Is the interpreter of Captain America’s enemy playing the role of his life? It is in any case “one of those in which I have invested the most time, energy, passion and love […] I was burnt out at the end,” admits the actor who, after each day of filming, let the pressure go in the shower at the same time as dyeing his hair.
Like his hero Next Doorthe film he directed in 2021, “we actors, most of us, are horrible, very sensitive and narcissistic people”, justifies the one who will discover “his” Karl for the first time in April during the Canneseries festival.