The scene takes place in 1993, in an isolated bunker in the heart of a Swiss forest. Francois Genoudknown as the banker of Hitler and the Nazis, who has never been worried either by the justice system or by his remorse, is joined by a young journalist from an Israeli daily (played by Élodie Navarre), who comes interview.
This psychological duel constitutes the heart of the piece The Unjustperformed since January 23 at the Théâtre de la Renaissance. Jacques Weber thus interprets this filthy, cynical, manipulative character, with nauseating ideas. In this hot news, did he hesitate before accepting this role? “Yes and no,” replied the actor and director, speaking to RTL.
Upon discovering François Genoud, the man who has played everything (in the theater, in the cinema or on television, including a dazzling Cyrano in the 1980s) said to himself: “I can’t play that. He is a cold, dry being with an absolutely Olympian calm.which has nothing to do with my nature.” Not to mention that “it is a confrontation with an Israeli and a Nazi ideology. Right now, it resonates even more.”
I have played filthy characters. The problem is that I was protected by time and History.
Jacques Weber
Jacques Weber confided that he was “scared”. And to continue: “I was ultimately afraid of the comments around, where we don’t have time to explain ourselves, sometimes a little too passionately or a little too withdrawn. On the other hand, playing a filthy character doesn’t bother me. It all depends on the director and the ethics surrounding the show.”
-Recalling having already played “filthy characters”. “The problem is that I was protected by time and history, as in Shakespeare. The past allows this relative distance“, he concluded.
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