When we meet them this sunny Friday in February on the terrace of the Théâtre du Châtelet, a great complicity already binds Lou de Laâge and Sofiane Zermani. In full rehearsals, both are delighted to embody a few days later the great success that is Gatsby the magnificent. She will play the inaccessible Daisy, he the enigmatic Gatsby, in a very contemporary adaptation giving pride of place to music, under the direction of musician and composer Issam Krimi.
Alongside the actor Pascal Rénéric, who interprets the role of Nick, the narrator, they will therefore revive the work of F. Scott Fitzgerald, 100 years after its release in the Roaring Twenties in the United States. A text that has not lost in modernity, as well as the issues addressed such as the game of appearances or the difficulty of getting out of one’s social condition.
How did you end up in this project?
Sofiane Zermani: Following a fantastic idea from our friend Issam Krimi, who suggested to France Culture four years ago that I be the next Gatsby at the Avignon festival. I quickly found myself on stage playing this show, then the following year at the Maison de la Radio and today at the Châtelet.
Lou de Laage: For me it was more classic. It was my agent and our joint press officer who asked me if I was interested in meeting Sofiane and Alexandre to talk about this project and take over the role of Daisy.
Sofiane Zermani: It was I who asked. I adored her in several projects and in particular in a film with Mélanie Laurent a few months ago. I loved her performance and I really like what she does. I figured if she had a little hole in her schedule, I’d love to propose to her.
You play Gatsby and Daisy. Do you identify with your characters?
Lou de Laage: (In an exaggerated and ironic tone) Him? ! Not at all ! (laughs)
Sofiane Zermani: The very side self made of a Gatsby means a lot to me. The sense of sacrifice, the concentration on a goal, an objective. But also in the romantic side and the fact of doing everything for a woman. And beyond that, the idea of recreating a feeling that we have known… He tries to recreate a memory in reality Gatsby. And we will realize that by trying to reproduce this link with this woman, he will lose all the essence…
Lou de Laage: Fantasy is actually bigger than reality.
Sofiane Zermani: Yes that’s it. He idealizes this woman, this famous day when he will find her again and when everything will be as before. He will actually realize that the engine it generated in him was perhaps more important than the finish line.
Lou de Laage: I don’t find myself at all in the character of Daisy because that’s where you can see that it’s not the same era. She’s really a woman who will define her life a lot through a man, who only exists if someone is next to her and accompanies her. Today we still try to get out of all that as a woman. So no, I can’t say my life is like Daisy’s at all! On the other hand, the more I discover Sofiane, the more I discover Gatsby! And I tell myself that it’s really nice to be able to draw a sort of hyper-contemporary parallel with him. Like there, for example, we are going to play at the Châtelet and everyone is invited, all of Paris is invited! (laughs) I think that’s great!
There is something very bling bling in Gatsby, with this attraction for pomp. Do you find yourself in this?
Sofiane Zermani: In bling bling no, I am someone much simpler in life. But I have the impression that for Gatsby, all these parties, all these people, for me all these are tools. In reality I take him for a very focused guy. He creates all these parties so that this woman comes, or to invite the person who will allow him to find her. He creates extraordinary settings – which he surely loves because in the end we all like to party – but there is a goal behind them. I have the impression that this is not necessarily what animates him in reality. I see him getting a little bored at these parties.
In this story is the idea of a certain disillusion, crystallized in particular in this line: “And we fight like this, boats against the current, incessantly brought back to the past. “. Does this fight, sometimes in vain, speak to you?
Lou de Laage: I don’t like the idea of struggle in life, in general. For me there is not a story of fighting against something, the past is something that we have gone through, which still goes through us, which makes us who we are today. And fortunately we have flaws, we have taken a step back from things, we are not all-powerful. Otherwise I think we would become dangerous. It’s part of existence…
Sofiane Zermani: I feel a little more this side of the struggle. With Gatsby there is also the idea of getting out of his condition. Is it really a form of evolution? According to social codes yes, but we realize that in the end this is not what feeds a man. But for those who take it as an advancement, as an evolution, it’s part of the process. So I have a bit of this side of the daily fight…
Lou de Laage: Yes, but for me you can move forward in things without feeling like you…
Sofiane Zermani: I agree, it’s also a story of personality.
Lou de Laage: Yes that’s it. In truth, I don’t come from that world either.
Sofiane Zermani: No, but you have a more fluid way of understanding things. Me everything that happens in front of me I have the impression that it is a source of potential conflict! And that I will have to fight again and again… I feel it a little more.
Music has a very important place in this adaptation. What do you think she brings to the story?
Sofiane Zermani: It helps enormously to imagine the frame. Hearing the music that goes with the words of the beginning of the century, it creates an immersion directly. For us, it allows us to bounce back, it creates climates, temperatures, contexts. And then for me, for example, being a singer in my life – well, once in a while, every other Monday –, it creates a kind of flow.
Lou de Laage: I don’t know if you do this but you don’t listen to music when you read? I love it because sometimes you speed up because the music speeds up and you start reading it completely differently! Everything takes another form. And sometimes I find that music expands your imagination.
Sofiane, the public first got to know you through the music. To what extent do music and acting feed into your work?
Sofiane Zermani: It is synthesized with the theater. I find myself on stage like when I sing my songs and play like when I’m behind a camera. It’s kind of the perfect combo. Then does one feed the other? Not particularly. Yesterday I was telling Lou that I was starting to enjoy the part preparing for the roles a little more than playing them: stepping into a guy’s skin, going into his world, meeting the people who live this life… That’s what I I was able to have experience this year on certain shoots, and that feeds me. And if Fianso, who we know through music, were to rub off on the characters that Sofiane Zermani was to play, that would be very weird.
In fact I wondered if what you had discovered in your musical career could help you on stage, and vice versa?
Sofiane Zermani: Yes and no. We were already directing ourselves, in the clips, we weren’t already bad at directing at the base. And then I don’t worry too much, I don’t really analyze it! You ask questions that I have never asked myself!
Lou de Laage: Those are journalist questions! (laughs)
Sofiane Zermani: I haven’t revised before! (laughs) In truth no, the musical artist does not necessarily rub off on the other, and vice versa.
You have more and more projects linked to cinema and theatre. Does Fianso still exist, do you still have time for music?
Sofiane Zermani: We released an album last year which went gold and we are very happy about it. We had a great summer tour of festivals. I go there a bit at will, that’s when it scratches me!
Lou de Laage: And then we can be a little multiple too, it’s like feelings. In the same day you can get angry, laugh with your best friend, thank someone… In life you can actually do a thousand things. We set our own limits.
Sofiane Zermani: It’s a story of sincerity. And then this way we have of putting people in boxes! A century or two ago, we didn’t piss off a painter because he wanted to sculpt, or a sculptor because he wanted to write! I don’t compare myself at all to those great artists who come to mind, but the boxes bore me.
But do you have the time? Because it requires all these projects.
Lou de Laage: Yes, but the more we do, the more we do. The less we do, the lazier we become.
Sofiane Zermani: Time yes… The time I have left is devoted to my family. And those are the most important roles of my life!
Lou what is your relationship to music? And are there other disciplines that you would like to discover?
Lou de Laage: I’m a little more single-minded than Sofiane. I did a lot of dancing, classical music also had an impact there. Afterwards it is necessarily linked because in the theater we are sometimes led to sing, to do readings with musicians. What’s nice is that the arts intertwine. The theater and the cinema make me meet all the trades of the world. I do a wonderful job.