| The Guardian - Culture: TV & Radio | | | | Charlotte Ritchie: 'Feel Good has been cathartic for a lot of people' | | by Michael Hogan May 30, 2021 | | The co-star of Mae Martin’s award-winning romcom on the new series, working with a pigeon on Ghosts and accidentally dressing like a Minion Actor Charlotte Ritchie, 31, grew up in south London and was still finishing her drama degree at Bristol University when she landed the role of Oregon in Channel 4 student comedy Fresh Meat. Subsequent TV roles include Alison in Ghosts and Nurse Barbara Gilbert in Call the Midwife. She co-stars as George in Feel Good, a semi-autobiographical romcom by comedian Mae Martin, who identifies as non-binary. The show won two Royal Television Society awards earlier this year and is nominated for a Bafta at next weekend’s ceremony. Feel Good is back for its second (and final) series. Why the move from Channel 4 to Netflix?
Channel 4 didn’t pick up the second series but I’m so relieved that Netflix did. I knew that Mae [Martin, creator and star] and Joe [Hampson, co-writer] had planned a two-series trajectory and had solid ideas of how it was going to end. It would’ve been a real shame to cut it short. I think it feels different to the first series. Our characters are more mature and everything has progressed. Continue reading... | | | | | 'I wasn't what you'd call sensible': a walk on the wild side with Call My Agent's Liliane Rovère | | by Jonathan Romney May 30, 2021 | | The actor’s remarkable life fed into the character of Arlette in the Netflix hit, from growing up Jewish in occupied France, via Left Bank jazz and a relationship with Chet Baker, to global fame in her 80s If you’re an actor in the rare position of becoming internationally famous in your 80s, then it’s rather fitting to achieve it with a role that ripely resembles you. In recent years the world has come to know the veteran French actor Liliane Rovère as Arlette Azémar, the seasoned “impresario” – as she prefers to be known – in the French TV series Dix Pour Cent, AKA Call My Agent!. The show has become a global hit on Netflix, and Arlette has struck a chord as everyone’s ideal disreputable aunt with a repertoire of outrageous stories that she just might tell if the burgundy is flowing. She is the sly, sharp-tongued doyenne of top Paris talent agency ASK, who knows where the bodies are buried, and just when to dig them up. It is easy to imagine that Arlette is Rovère. You can just see Arlette reading Nietzsche while listening to Charlie Parker and smoking a joint – and if you dip into Rovère’s 2019 memoir, La Folle Vie de Lili, you’ll see that she depicts herself doing just that on the first page. Likewise, it came as no surprise in season two to learn that Arlette had supposedly had a youthful romance with jazz legend Chet Baker – a plotline that also came directly from Rovère’s own “wild life”. Continue reading... | | | | | 'My parents still have no clue what I'm doing': Lupin star Omar Sy on Hollywood, fame and fighting racism | | by Tom Lamont May 30, 2021 | | After a decade in Hollywood, French actor Omar Sy returned home to star in Netflix’s much-loved hit, Lupin. He talks about playing the charming thief, growing up with Arsenal’s Nicolas Anelka and his battle with racism Actors, obliged to exhaustively market their wares, will pose for hours in front of posters of their latest film or TV show. They’ll hop between city premieres, sit on dreary festival panels, tell rehearsed comic stories on night-time talkshows, then get up early to be on breakfast radio. Before meeting Omar Sy, a 43-year-old Frenchman who stars in the massively popular Netflix drama Lupin, I’d never heard of an actor picking up a bucket and brush to spend a day gluing up their own billboard posters on the Paris metro. Sy, who is 6ft 2in, born in a working-class Parisian suburb to West African parents, explains the thinking behind this unusual marketing stunt that took place just before the first series of Lupin debuted earlier this year. “A lot of people know me in Paris,” begins Sy, who worked as a comedian in France through his 20s before becoming a film star there in his early 30s. “Because people in France have watched me in stuff for years, I’m used to meeting strangers who recognise me and who already have smiles on their faces.” In Lupin, lightly adapted from the classic heist books by Maurice Leblanc, Sy plays a French-Senegalese man called Assane Diop, an anonymous Parisian who is used to being ignored and overlooked in his home town, but who is willing to use that to his advantage while robbing the city’s jet-set blind. “The show is entertainment and we want to have fun with it,” he says, “but at the same time we’re talking about something very serious: that some people in France are simply not seen.” Continue reading... | | | | | | | |
No comments:
Post a Comment