From the triumph of “The Count of Monte Cristo” to the series “Erica” ​​on TF1, another look at Montpellier Julie de Bona

Can a single scene change the course of a career, or the way we see it?

We don’t yet have the answer for Julie de Bona, just this certainty: the sequence in question is so shocking, that it is at the heart of all the conversations of the nearly 9.5 million people who have seen The Counts of Monte Cristo in 2024. A precise passage from the adaptation of the Dumas classic, applauded in Cannes by the 2,300 spectators of the grand Lumière theater at the Palais des Festivals in Cannes during the official screening of the film in May.

A scene that changes everything

The scene? When her character, Victoria Danglars, learns, during a meal, from the count, that her child, whom she thought was stillborn, had survived. And without her being able to express the slightest word, with only her look to convey the whirlwind of emotions that hits her. A moment full of tension, where each guest reacts in their own way, but where the audience’s empathy is focused on her.

“It’s the most beautiful scene in the film. When the directors contacted me, they immediately spoke to me about a very small but significant role, and about this scene…” Julie de Bona confided to us a few days ago: “We shot it for three days, during which we had to maintain this intensity, everyone, Pierre (Niney, Editor’s note), Patrick Mille, Laurent Lafitte who is breaking down, me…”

“She has real power with her eyes!”

“The directors went for this scene where it was needed: in her eyes. Because she has real power with her eyes!” adds Marion Motte, Julie de Bona’s press secretary.

For the latter, “the Count” marks a highlight coupled with a turning point in a career which has known others. But for which nothing was given to the one, of Vietnamese origin on her mother’s side, Italian on her father’s side, who grew up as a child in Perpignan, then as a teenager in Montpellier, “where I arrived at 13-14 years old.” And where she alternated between science college, biochemistry, café-theatre “at Grand Mélo, at Crès”and conservatory.

And then the young woman that she is, crazy about theater but devoured by stage fright, decides to give up everything, studies (“I haven’t finished my Deug”), the joys of the café-theatre and its moments of grace (“When we went so far as to play in the middle of the Crès vineyards”), and the horrors of the conservatory.

Where she lived the experience which will perhaps remain, at the same time, the most traumatic and the most decisive of her career. She says, her voice still vibrating with emotion twenty years later: “For a performance of Time and the Room, a teacher gave me the role of the sleeping woman, that is to say a character who… sleeps throughout the entire play! I rebelled, I told him that I wanted to play something else!”

Humiliated in front of her conservatory class

And the response is scathing, hurtful, humiliating: “In front of the whole class, he told me that he had given me this place precisely because I never did anything, and that in any case, I would never be an actress. That woke me up. Because, yes , I was painfully shy when it came time to play in front of others. But that day, I screamed, I cried, it created a tsunami in me.”

So here she is who decides “to go on an adventure, with my passion for theater, and the desire to please, to prove that this teacher was wrong. Otherwise, I had nothing, I arrived in Paris without contact, it was no matter What” she laughs about it today.

“Michel Bouquet, the master of masters”

And while we expect, from there, to see her unwind the skein of a story of years of struggle eating mad cows, all smiles, she retorts: “And I immediately worked! Roles in the theater, filming. Still, always, with this feeling of illegitimacy which made me say that someone was going to end up realizing that I didn’t know how to act .”

An imposter syndrome that the absolute reference for theater actors will take care of chasing away. Forever. In a few words. “I met Michel Bouquet, the master of masters. In all the conservatories, you will never find someone who says bad things about him. I was paralyzed during rehearsals, but I went to see him to ask him about advice, to talk about my role I played Angélique, in The Imaginary Patient, where I oppose him One day, at the end of the play, he came to me, he took my hands. and he said to me: “That’s it, you are a great actress”. This sentence definitively resolved my wound from the conservatory, Michel Bouquet healed me.”

From then on, nothing can stop Julie de Bona. With all the more force because she doesn’t forbid anything, “great texts like popular comedy”.

“She makes artistic decisions with her heart, she focuses above all on the quality of the project” explains Marion Motte on this subject.

The turn of the “Charity Bazaar”

His career took another important turn in 2019 with The charity bazaara luxurious historical series co-produced by TF1 and Netflix, in which she plays one of the leading roles alongside Audrey Fleurot, and whose audiences (7.8 million spectators on average including the replay) propel her notoriety to another dimension.

With the same team, will follow The fightersthen other strong roles. Like that of Isabelle Demongeot in the TV movie Stolen servicewhich deals with sexual violence in sport through the story of the ex-tennis champion. “A great meeting, we became friends and I support her in her fight” slips Julie de Bona.

The triumph of the “Count of Monte Cristo”

Then The Counts of Monte Cristo explodes all the box office counters (apart from that ofA little something extrafrom Artus, another Montpellier resident, well). “You never think of such success, especially for a three-hour costume drama!” the actress is still surprised.

Which we will talk a lot about from the first days of 2025, with the series Ericaon TF1. She plays the title role in this adaptation of the series of detective novels by Camilla Läckberg, each new volume of which is an instant bestseller.

“We filmed for a little over three months in the Landes, I play his little sister” tells us the actress Maud Baecker. “And I saw her every day involved at 3,000% very intense, as she always is. Julie, she pulls everything to the top” adds his playing partner, admiringly.

It remains to sound out Julie de Bona about her projects. Are they part of the virtuous circle of success? “There are projects, yes. More proposals for cinema, too. But I’m not talking about it!” The stage fright is over, the superstition, not quite.