Nicolas Duvauchelle is one of these actors physically engaged in their interpretation. For his first role, he was 18 years old in the drama The little thief by Érick Zonca, in 1999. Xavier Giannoli spotted him and followed him by offering him the role of Paul in Impatient Bodies which earned him a César nomination in the Best New Actor category. Since then, he has built his career between auteur cinema and roles, often very physical, in both dramas and thrillers.
Nicolas Duvauchelle stars in Akaki Popkhadze’s film, Burns the blood, Wednesday January 22. It’s the story of a Georgian family whose father, a pillar of the local community, is murdered in Nice. The victim had two sons and a wife. One of them wants to become an Orthodox priest, the other wants revenge.
franceinfo: In Burn the bloodyou are Gabriel, the one who wants to do battle with his father’s assassins. What did you like about this scenario?
Nicolas Duvauchelle: What I really liked about it was the tension between forgiveness and the desire for revenge. And also to discover this whole Georgian community and the Orthodox religion and to immerse yourself in this role, in this character who is torn between forgiveness and revenge. The Christian question of forgiveness also touched me a lot.
Does it take time to forgive?
It depends. In taking revenge, blood calls for blood and that is never good. Afterwards, it leads to other revenges and so on, it never stops. Forgiveness is necessary.
On March 31, 2023, actress Sara Forestier filed a complaint against you. Complaint which led to an investigation launched by the Paris prosecutor’s office, where she accuses you of having slapped her in the middle of filming the film Good man by Marion Vernoux in 2017. Much has been written in Médiapartet the Parisian notably. What do you answer?
I’m glad you asked me that question. As soon as we received the complaint, I asked to be heard by the prosecutor and I have never heard anything since. We both had an altercation, but it was just verbal. I must have ten witnesses including a stage manager, a manager, the makeup artist, a lot of people and especially Marion Vernoux, who wrote a letter on this, which can be consulted by everyone, but which no one wants to publish.
“There can be tensions in the cinema, but I have never slapped any actress and I have filmed with around fifty actresses.”
Nicolas Duvauchelleat franceinfo
You can ask each of them what my behavior was during filming and you will see that I am good even with the technicians. Anyone can tell you that so I’m not worried about that at all. I feel more sorry for her to see her in this psychological state, because I heard, watched, what she said in the National Assembly, she spoke of rape before. I’m sorry for what happened to Sara Forestier, but I don’t have to pay for what she suffered before.
At the same time, don’t you have this bad boy side that sticks to you?
No, after all, I have a temperament where you shouldn’t piss me off.
-“When we exceed the limits, yes, I can scream, it happens to me, but the image that people want to put on me is far from the person that I really am.”
Nicolas Duvauchelleat franceinfo
Your parents work for France Telecom. Your father was a fan of Stanley Kubrick, your mother collected Antenne 2 posters. Were they the ones who made you love cinema?
Oh yes, my mother is a big movie buff. Yes, there was that. I saw some very nice films with my father, who is more of a fan of Georges Lautner films with Lino Ventura, all that. But it is true that there was something of the order of transmission. My mother passed on a bit of this love of quality cinema to me.
Your story is a bit like a fairy tale, that is to say there is this moment where things change, it happens in a ring. Has boxing allowed you to refocus?
Yes and then to channel myself, to remove all these bad vibes that I had. Boxing was an outlet that reframed me, it was truly something incredible.
Initially, you refused to be picked up from the ring for castings. What were you afraid of?
Maybe I didn’t believe it, there is something like that. At first, it intimidated me a little bit to do this in front of a camera and when I got there, no, not at all. When I learned the text, it was very easy. I was given a few tests. Érick Zonca came, we met and he made me do other film tests and it went very well. He told me: “I give you the leading role“. At first, I didn’t believe it at all, and then, once I was on set, I really played the leading role. Yes, there was something a little fairy tale about it, ‘is true.
What is highlighted by the director, in Burn the bloodthis is the strength of women. He explains that the only emblematic figure he had was his mother when he was a child. Who are the women who have shaped your life?
My mother and also my big sister to whom I am very close and who is there for me all the time. We get along very well. And my wife who is with me every day, we’ve been together for six years, it’s something powerful. We got married six months ago. I had other people who pushed me such as Claire Denis who I worked with several times, who is someone very special to me.
What do you keep from your ancestors, from those who came before you?
A lot of humility because in fact, there are a lot of people who get a little big-headed very quickly in this profession. Let’s play! What I mean is that it’s good, but it’s not a primary job either. We act in films, in productions, but we don’t produce anything. My father-in-law is a cabinetmaker, I would have liked to know how to do something with my hands like him, they are quite fascinating jobs for me.
