“It’s incredible! I feel at home, and then, I’m a bit chauvinistic too: we have a beautiful region, I’m happy that it’s on TV”smiles Adrien Rob, sitting on the low wall of the old Nontron courthouse, currently transformed into a gendarmerie for the filming of the TV film “Murders in Périgord Vert” for France 3. The 36-year-old actor plays one of the main rolesthat of Sasha Besson, chief warrant officer at the Nontron gendarmerie, responsible for investigating mysterious murders in the entourage of the heir to the throne of Araucania.
Adrien Rob, 36 years old, “beaten” to have this role. Firstly becausehe recognized himself in it : “My mother was born in Mazieras [à Saint-Saud-Lacoussière]my grandparents are from Abjat-sur-Bandiat. When I walk the streets of Nontron, I see my grandfather saying that he went to the ‘commissions’ to buy his hunting cartridges in town.says the actor. “In addition, I play a gendarme: my two grandfathers were gendarmes. One of them in Périgord. I said to myself: I cannot miss this role.”
Basketball player, model, then actor
You have probably already seen Adrien Rob, on TV, in “Tomorrow belongs to us” on TF1or in Here ispictured alongside his partner, Ukrainian top model Nina Pavlynyuk. The Périgourdin route is worthy of a film. It starts like basketball hopeful, at 15. The age when he left Atur and his parents for the training center of Bayonne, attached to the Pau-Orthez club, then Bordeaux.
Ensuite ? He goes to China to do modeling. This is where he met his wife, before they returned to settle in Paris in 2013. They still live there today.
“Why not come back here”
“When I played basketball, I passed a small theater every day in the Saint-Michel district of Bordeaux”, says Adrien Rob. “There was something that attracted me, but I didn’t dare talk about it. I was a little ashamed, I was the only one interested in basketball, but I read plays at home by myself. When I arrived in Paris, my wife signed me up for a free theater course, I said to myself: this is what I want to do.”
Filming should last a month, in Nontron and in several of the beautiful villages of Périgord Vert, such as Saint-Jean-de-Côle. Afterwards ? Adrien Rob will return to Paris, “obligatory passage” to succeed in the profession. But this filming in Périgord made him homesick : “I would like to come back, why not have a house or an apartment here.”
