After “Alice Nevers”, Marine Delterme “starts from scratch” in Hollywood with the help of Robert Downey Jr

She left Paris at the same time as she said goodbye to the woman who changed her life. Two years ago, Marine Delterme closed the chapter Alice Nevers after two decades of investigations carried out on TF1. The French actress flew to Los Angeles where her husband Florian Zeller’s career took off after his film The Father won two Oscars.

Shortly after they moved to California, she applied for a series in which her favorite actor played. Robert Downey Jr plays four characters in The Sympathizer, adaptation of the novel by Viet Thanh Nguyen, released in 2015 and awarded the Pulitzer Prize. The story of a French-Vietnamese communist spy forced to return to service at the end of the Vietnam War while exiled in the United States. While in Paris, Marine Delterme picked up her phone to tell us behind the scenes of this collaboration.

Robert Downey Jr and David Duchovny, it’s fire and earth

Marine Delterme

Your first appearance in The Sympathizer is done at a party with Robert Downey Jr and David Duchovny. There’s no better way to get started in Hollywood…

Yes, it was wonderful. They are great actors, absolutely elegant and generous with their partners. It was really doubly pleasant to collaborate with them, they are very different.

That’s to say ?

Robert Downey Jr is completely strange and organic. He’s truly a dancer in motion with crazy energy. He kept a bit of Chaplin in him. He is enigmatic, unpredictable. It’s a kind of panther. He is extraordinary anyway, we all know a little about his story. Between our filming and the premiere in Los Angeles last month, he won an Oscar (for Oppenheimer, editor’s note). David Duchovny is a very intellectual actor. He comes from Harvard, his father was a great writer. He writes books himself. He told me that he had been received by Bernard Pivot in Paris. He is very calm. It is fire and earth.

How would you describe the series? The Sympathizer ?

It’s the story of a young man who was never in his place and who found himself all his life at odds with being a double, or even triple, agent. He doesn’t know who he is. Through this character played by Hoa Xuande, we tell the complexity of the Vietnam War. We finally see it on the Vietnamese side. The episode in which I appear is the one which most tells the story of this war of memory. The spy finds himself in Los Angeles in the mid-1970s on the set of the film of an Oscar-winning director who will make his Apocalypse Now. He will try by all means to ensure that what this filmmaker says is fair and true. As it is a satire, it goes into comedy.

Monique Thibault, your character, is the decorator of this film which shares the life of the director played by Robert Downey Jr…

It’s a very nice role opposite Robert Downey Jr. He’s almost childish, she’s the only one who stands up to him. She is his muse. She is very strong and has a lot of humor. We have scenes of conflict but also scenes of intimacy. We form a real couple with sensuality and humor. It was quite surprising to find myself with him who is, for me, the powerful actor of American cinema.

How did the collaboration with him go?

I hadn’t seen much of it in romance. He is an actor apart, even in Marvel he has stamped his style. I said to myself: “How am I going to connect with him if he’s like in his movies?” And in fact, it’s wonderfully accessible. We hit it off straight away, with really strong chemistry.

In the series, Robert Downey Jr says you call him, in French in the text, “my little darling”. In life, wouldn’t he rather be your new guardian angel?

Yes, she is my guardian angel. One day, they called me for an extra scene that wasn’t planned. It’s very rare. He saw me arriving at makeup from my sculpture studio, with my suit full of plaster. I told him jokingly: “If I had an agent, he would have protected me”. He was surprised that I didn’t have one. He told me he was going to introduce me to his team, he did so and I signed with them. He gave me a passport to Hollywood. It’s a huge gift, it’s almost impossible to work with agents of that level for a French actress.

I have a feature film project and also a series in the United States

Marine Delterme

Guillaume Gallienne, who also appeared in an HBO series, The Regimetold us “I’m coming as a beginner but I have 30 years in the business”. Have you experienced the same thing?

Exactly. We spoke about it with Guillaume recently. We start again from zero. The first day, I was in my little chair. I did not know anyone. David Duchovny came and introduced himself because he didn’t know who I was. Robert Downey Jr asked me if I liked to improvise. I happen to love it, I did it for 20 years on Alice Nevers. I am grateful to have had so much work behind me to be able to really enjoy this collaboration with him without being afraid.

The character of Guillaume Gallienne was not French in the script either. Production changed your character’s nationality from Italian to Monica after receiving your audition video. What did you do in this famous type to push them so much?

I saw a lot of steps with my husband who is a director (Florian Zeller, editor’s note) when he was looking for his main actor for The Son. A lot of actors were doing the same scene, it was humming. I knew something had to happen. I recorded my video with an excellent English actor who told me: “Tell yourself that you don’t have this role and let’s have fun!” So I changed the whole text and improvised!

For The Sympathizer, you worked with the Korean Park Chan-Wook and the Brazilian Fernando Meirelles. Which other filmmakers do you dream of collaborating with?

There are so many ! Jonathan Glazer, who directed The Area of ​​interestbut also Christopher Nolan, Yorgos Lanthimos (Poor creatures) and Ruben Ostlund (double awarded the Palme d’Or, editor’s note).

Since the end of the Hollywood strikehave you had other opportunities across the Atlantic?

Yes I have a feature film project there and also a series. I’m waiting to see the dates. Things settled down recently because things are starting to pick up again very slowly. I’m going back to France in July with my family so I’m going to do like my husband, going back and forth. We will live between two continents. But it’s very good, I miss France a lot.

What would the young Marine, who at 18 was working as a model in the United States, think of the one who at 54 is taking on this new challenge in Hollywood?

I had already set myself a challenge by going to New York at 18 years old. I had already accomplished my American dream of working with the greatest American photographers. I had left it a little in the back of my mind but I thought about it and told myself that it was still a wonderful time. To relive that energy at over 50 is quite magical. You must not give up on your dreams. It was demanding to go to the ends of the earth, to leave my friends, my family and my eldest son. When I was younger, my parents never traveled. At 17, I had never left France. Modeling was an opening to the world for me. Thanks to his adventure with The Father, my husband opened this door again for me. I couldn’t have done it alone. Living bigger than yourself is a beautiful gift he gave me.

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Could Alice Nevers have unmasked the spy in the series? The Sympathizer ?

I am sure (laughs) !

Series Research section was entitled to new intrigues in the form of units. It is a format that one could imagine for Alice Nevers ?

It’s a format that we can think about with Jean-Michel Tinivelli, production and TF1. If we did that, and it’s not excluded, we would really have to reinvent ourselves. This is also why the series lasted so long. We already did it once after ten years by moving to 52-minute episodes and changing the casting. If someone offered me something, it would have to surprise the spectators and bounce back in today’s tone because the world has changed. If we find it, why not. Otherwise, there’s no point in disappointing the public.

Alice Nevers investigates in Hollywood, that would be cool, right?

Yes it’s not bad ! I did not think about it (laughs).

>> The Sympathizer – in US+24 on Prime Video via the Warner Pass