Insatiable storyteller, cartoonist-filmmaker Riad Sattouf has just “stalled” a new comic book series, The young actor, between his two biggest successes,
Arabic of the future (5 volumes and over 2.5 million copies sold) and
Esther’s notebooks (6 volumes and 950,000 copies sold). After his own childhood and that of a young Parisian, the author focuses on the career of actor Vincent Lacoste, seen in about thirty films since he began his career in 2009 … by starring in the first film of Sattouf, The beautiful kids (2009)! The double recipient of the Fauve d’or – the most prestigious award at the Angoulême comic book festival – told 20 minutes the genesis of this Young actor…
SURPRISE NEW PROJECT! It is with great joy and emotion that Vincent and I announce the release on November 4 of our comic strip: “THE YOUNG ACTOR 1, adventures of Vincent Lacoste in the cinema”! pic.twitter.com/mpzvGVslvl
– Riad Sattouf (@RiadSattouf) September 6, 2021
How did you come up with the idea for this new series?
When I met him and picked him to star in my first movie, The beautiful kids, Vincent Lacoste was an anonymous 14-year-old teenager who never thought for a single second of filming. The film was a big success, but after the complete failure of my second film, Jacky in the kingdom of girls, Vincent nevertheless continued his adventure with the cinema… while mine was abruptly interrupted (laughs).
So I returned to my first love, comics. But Vincent and I remained very good friends, we continued to see each other very regularly. As he told me his filming stories, I saw him gradually enter a new dimension: when he told me that he was shooting his third film with Depardieu, for example, I I understood that something was happening and that he was turning into a real actor (laughs). It was from this moment that I started to think about telling about his (young) career.
Extract from the album “The young actor” volume 1 © Riad Sattouf / Les Livres du Futur 2021
And him, how did he welcome the project of a comic book telling it?
Of course, he first wondered – and rightly so – if he was not a little too young and his career too recent to become a comic book! But the idea was not to do his biography but rather to tell his story, atypical, without language: we had to be able to read this book without knowing anything about comics, my films, or even to Vincent’s filmography. How does a teenager who has never looked for him become a famous actor? He was up for it right away. I nevertheless told him that I intended to do an observation story, a dive into a particular destiny … with a humorous tone, of course!
Did he participate in the production of this first volume?
Rather at his birth: I took advantage of the confinement to take a little distance with The Arab of the future and Esther’s notebooks and I wrote nearly 400 pages of this new series which I immediately had Vincent read. He made remarks to me, told me anecdotes that I had forgotten, I asked him questions, etc. So the design is the result of a duo, even if I took care of the realization alone.
Extract from the album “The young actor” volume 1 © Riad Sattouf / Les Livres du Futur 2021
And how did he react when he found out about the result?
He was super happy and he really appreciated that neither he nor I were “spared” in this first volume, even if he is obviously the central character of the story, that I appear there and that I have shown myself without mercy, neither towards him nor mine (laughs).
Extract from the album “The young actor” volume 1 © Riad Sattouf / Les Livres du Futur 2021
As The Arab of the Future and Esther, The young actor is a comic book biography. Have you definitely given up on fiction?
No no. And then I don’t have the feeling of doing a comic book biography: I have the impression of doingheroic fantasy : I tell about universes that are a little foreign to me, I take my readers to worlds that they do not necessarily know! And each project is determined a little on its own, strangely: for example, when I met the little girl who inspired me The Notebooks of Esther, she was the same age as the hero – me child – of volume 2 of Arabic of the future (which I had just finished); and at the end of Arabic of the future 5, the latest, my character is the same age as Vincent was when I met him! So there is a sort of unconscious logical sequence between my projects and the form they take.
Extract from the album “The young actor” volume 1 © Riad Sattouf / Les Livres du Futur 2021
The story evokes the long professional relationship between François Truffaut and Jean-Pierre Léaud in the prologue. Do you plan to have the same with Vincent?
It is absolutely that, and it is a little the note of intention of this series: I would very much like to “follow” Vincent at all the ages of his life and his career, precisely like Truffaut to filmed Léaud on time long. I already know for sure that there will be two or three volumes of the Young actor, but I would love to continue with something like The great actor then The old actor, for example, when we are two “has been” with dyed hair (laughs).
Extract from the album “The young actor” volume 1 © Riad Sattouf / Les Livres du Futur 2021
In the book, we find you very fatherly with young Vincent. Do you feel responsible for him?
In a way, yes, because the 14 year old teenager that he was when we went to pick him up had absolutely no desire to become an actor and I dragged him into the universe a little in spite of himself. the cinema ! Suddenly, I was afraid that his life would be destroyed, that I would one day be called telling me that he had been arrested in possession of narcotics or whatever, as we sometimes read by young American comedians ( laughs).
So if I stayed very close to him at the start, it was a bit to watch him, because he was quite a rascal! I reassure you, he grew up and became an adult, so we don’t have that kind of relationship anymore, eh… though! Finally, we keep these stories for the future! (laughs)
The young actor 1 “Adventures of Vincent Lacoste in the cinema”, by Riad Sattouf – Editions Books of the future – 21.50 euros