(Paris) Former French tennis champion Yannick Noah will make his TV acting debut in a fiction for France 2, Death on claywhere he plays a former tennis player, the channel announced Wednesday.
Posted at 12:21 p.m.
Filming of this detective TV film began on Monday in Paris and the Paris region. The release date is not yet known.
Having already become a singer, Yannick Noah, 64, landed his first important role in the cinema in It’s the world turned upside down! by Nicolas Vanier, released in October in France.
His character in Death on clay is visibly partly inspired by his real life: Vincent Beti, “a former player and now tournament director, as charismatic as he is troubled”, according to a press release from the channel.
He helps two police officers in the investigation into the death of a young tennis hopeful as the prestigious tournament he directs approaches.
The last French winner of the Roland-Garros tournament, in 1983, then captain of the French team that won the Davis Cup in 1991, Yannick Noah then turned to singing.
He achieved big popular successes in this second life, starting with the song Africa Sagaanthem of the 1991 Davis Cup and hit of that year.
Son of Cameroonian footballer Zacharie Noah and a Frenchwoman, Marie-Claire Noah, he is the father of six children. The eldest is ex-basketball player Joakim Noah, 39, and the youngest was born in October.
