Pierre Niney: “Revenge is poison”

Since then, Niney has had a series of leading roles, whether in Frantz by François Ozon in 2016, The promise of dawn by Éric Barbier, after Romain Gary in 2017, OSS 117: Red alert in black Africa by Nicolas Bedos in 2021 or The Book of Solutions by Michel Gondry, last year. While he recently made his debut behind the camera with his partner Igor Gotesman to create the Netflix series Fiasco.

“Fiasco” on Netflix: the difficult beginnings of Pierre Niney behind the camera

This Wednesday, the 35-year-old actor is headlining the Count of Monte Cristo** by Alexandre de La Patellière and Matthieu Delaporte (duo known in particular for First name in 2012). Alongside an impressive cast (Anaïs Demoustier, Anamaria Vartolomei, Laurent Lafitte, Pierfrancesco Favino, etc.), the actor plays Edmond Dantès, returning to France in the role of the Count of Monte Cristo after several years of prison and exile for satisfy his thirst for revenge.

Last May, Pierre Niney presented Le Comte de Monte Cristo out of competition at the Cannes Film Festival. We met an actor all smiles the day after the official screening of this great spectacle lasting almost three hours, greeted by an 11-minute standing ovation. “It’s a good thing I trained in apnea, because yesterday I held my breath several times…”jokes Niney.

Four minutes in apnea

To play Edmond Dantès, the actor did a lot of physical training: horse riding, fencing, but also free diving. And this for an impressive underwater escape scene filmed in a single take. “I love diving into a film through physical challenges. It helps me mentally for a role. I wouldn’t have wanted anyone else to do it for me. For me, it’s a gift to learn new things through my work. I meet people I would never have met. It helped me a lot to get into the skin of Edmond Dantès.”

To prepare this scene, Pierre Niney worked with Stéphane Mifsud, French freediving world champion, with a record of 11 minutes 35 seconds in static apnea. “For me, it wasn’t static apnea. I had to make large movements underwater; this consumes the oxygen much more quickly. He gave me some tips and, in one day, I passed from 1min40 to 3min40 It was really impressive! With just three or four things and a short preparation, anyone can improve their apnea. It was important, because we wanted this escape scene. as claustrophobic as possible. Therefore, we needed to shoot it in a single shot, with this bag sinking deep into the sea and me struggling in it. We wanted something stressful for the audience and therefore for me. I still told myself that it was actually a little dangerous… But I loved the thrill!”confides the actor.

Physical transformation

In the film, Niney plays the young Edmond Dantès, the older Monte Cristo, but also all the characters that the latter invents for himself to take revenge on those who had him convicted. A real pleasure for the actor. “It was a little scary at first, because I had to find the voices, the bodies, the way to walk, to eat, to speak. And I had to do an English accent for Lord Halifax. But honestly, It was so much fun! How many films will I get to play five or six characters in one?”

Monte-Cristo is indeed a real actor, who plays at pretending to be others. Something the actor obviously feels close to. “I think it’s quite healthy to be someone else; it’s therapeutic. I’m sometimes asked how I don’t go crazy playing so many different characters, constantly switching between comedy and drama. I say: How do you not change your skin every now and then? It’s so frustrating to be just one person. I would hate that…”

Love of the classics

Pierre Niney did not feel any particular pressure when it came to playing Edmond Dantès, one of the greatest characters in French literature. “I am used to the theater, where very large characters are often played. I played Hippolyte in Phaedra by Racine and many others. I don’t really think about what people expect. Of course, some will be disappointed, but others will be excited. While many young people will discover this story for the first time. I just tell myself that we are proposing a new adaptation. It’s not the book. It’s a film, an art object of a different nature, which works with a different energy and dramaturgy…”pleads the actor.

In this new adaptation, what seemed new to Pierre Niney was “the tragic aspect of the story that, in my opinion, hasn’t really been told in the other adaptations”. “Here, we really dive into the darkness, to explore the best, but also the worst of human nature. I like this tragic side. We said to ourselves that we could go towards the darkness, to which people are accustomed today, with the new Batman or the series… On the other hand, there was also the desire for Edmond Dantès’ physical transformation to be credible, for it to seem realistic that people wouldn’t recognize him when he comes back to take revenge. In the other adaptations, we played with a fake nose or a wig… It was accepted by the public at the time. Here, we did everything we could on the character’s transformation.”

“The Count of Monte Cristo” (2002): Revenge is a dish best served reheated

The Count of Monte Cristo is produced by Dimitri Rassam, already behind the two much more disappointing parts of Three Musketeers : D’Artagnan (2023) et Milady (2024). Niney is delighted to see French cinema reappropriating the great texts of French literature, rather than leaving them to Hollywood. “I’m going to be a bit chauvinistic… As a Frenchman, when you see an adaptation in English by the Americans, you pout a bit: it’s so cliché, not French… In Europe, in France, we are not superheroes. We are broken, devastated heroes, tormented heroes. Monte-Cristo wants to be a superhero, but is he God or the devil? Nobody knows… It’s very French, because we also have panache, like in Cyrano de Bergerac. We like characters who are very tormented, but speak loudly”the actor thinks.

A timeless story

Trained at the Comédie-Française, Pierre Niney is an ardent defender of classical theater and literature. “The classics have a lot to teach us. Here, we talk about timeless themes, like jealousy, envy, betrayal, love and revenge, of course. It is so well described by Alexandre Dumas that it will remain forever. The classics teach us that some things will never change. Fortunately and unfortunately… I learned my work on stage. It is incredible for an actor to start with the theater. I have a very strong relationship with the authors, with the texts. Acting is always a bit like talking to ghosts. There is something of eternity in this infinite conversation. I like this mystical idea of ​​our work…”poetizes the actor.

“The Three Musketeers”: Dumas is the one being assassinated

For Niney, Le Comte de Monte Cristo is clearly one of those universal and timeless texts, to which it is good to keep coming back. “We’ve all experienced this feeling of injustice. It can start at school: you’re accused of something you didn’t do. It can happen at work, in love. We all know what this feeling of injustice and the need for revenge provokes. It’s human to want revenge. But, as the saying goes, holding a grudge is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die… That’s exactly what happens in Monte Cristo. Revenge is a powerful driving force for many stories, in Tarantino and Clint Eastwood films, in so many novels… People love revenge. But here, it’s not just revenge, like in a western for example. It’s also about showing how revenge can poison you. And to see at what point you are a vigilante in the name of a just cause and when you become a monster. I think that’s very universal…”concludes the actor.