“We did some tests, they seemed happy”: tennis player then singer, Yannick Noah (finally) makes his cinema debut

We knew Yannick Noah’s love for nature, already translated into songs. Today, he has chosen cinema to convey his message. In “It’s the World Upside Down”, the next film by Nicolas Vanier, the former top athlete plays a convinced environmentalist who lives in harmony with nature in a completely autonomous house. “I could see myself living here. It’s very funny, it’s very inspiring. We can very well live normally while being completely in tune with nature.“, estimates Noah in the TF1 report on the shooting of the film, to be found above.

This is his first appearance on the big screen, despite countless requests. He refused other projects, but this time, the script convinced him. It is the story of a major ecological crisis, a shortage of energy which forces the population to survive in other ways.

“We did some tests, they seemed happy”

“What would have been difficult for a leading role is to play a bad cop. To somehow embody your own character with this setting which helps you enormously, it turns out to be quite easy in any case“, explains director Nicolas Vanier. “Afterwards, I asked him to do some tests anyway”insists the beginner actor, “because even if I can sing to Citizen Trees, that doesn’t mean that I can act. We did some tests, they seemed happy“.

The other actors delighted in these tennis stories between takes. “He has tons of anecdotes about his life as a sportsman. Everything he has never been able to tell on a microphone because it is not relatable“, enthuses Michaël Youn. “There are all tennis players who are not nice and no one knows it“, laughs Barbara Schulz alongside him.

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Yannick Noah apparently enjoyed this first experience, and he does not rule out doing cinema again one day.