Marie Colomb played Loana in the playground. It was in 2001, when the “Loft Story” phenomenon landed on M6. She didn’t remember it – she was only 6 years old at the time – but a friend from the time recently reminded her of this memory. Twenty-three later, having become an actress, it is on screen, in the series “Cult” put online Friday on Prime Video, that she plays Loana again, this time for a much larger audience.
Its composition is as striking as it is disturbing. With an intonation of voice, a look lost in the void or a furtive movement of the lips, she revives the attitudes and physique of the candidate from the M6 reality show which rested in our collective memory. “I prepared the role so much with her in mind… In the street, I tried to walk like her,” confides to 20 Minutes Marie Colomb, thus illustrating the seriousness of her preparation.
“You must not fail”
“I watched the whole “Loft”, lots of interviews. The book in which she recounts her childhood [Elle m’appelait Miette] helped me. I tried to build bridges between her and me to put my heart into it, she continues. For the “imitation” part, I got help from a coach to know where to place the voice, how to speak… I tried to reproduce his way of moving by watching videos. »
Before filming, Marie Colomb did not meet Loana, who is credited as a consultant on the series. At the beginning of October, when 20 Minutes interviewed her, she still had not had a discussion with the one she played. For the 29-year-old actress, playing an existing person was “a big challenge”. She feared not being “up to the task”. “It’s a particular pressure, it goes beyond our ego as an actor to just want to play well. Our job is fiction, but for the people we represent and those around them, it’s their life. You don’t have to mess up. »
“I’m sure, it’s Loana”
In the eyes of the creators of WorshipMarie Colomb was obvious for the role. “We always said to ourselves that the representation of Loana had to be very faithful,” says Matthieu Rumani. When the series was being written, his sidekick Nicolas Slomka watched The Magnetics by Vincent Maël Cardona released in 2021. Marie Colomb plays one of the main roles. Nicolas Slomka had a flash. “He stopped the footage, sent us a photo and said: ‘I’m sure, it’s Loana’,” says Matthieu Rumani.
A year later, Marie Colomb presented herself to the casting. She had just filmed the series Follow directed by Louis Farge, the director chosen for Worship. “There, the planets align. He tells us that she is exceptional, an immense actress, that he gets along well with her,” recalls Nicolas Slomka. His passage through the tests confirms their hunch.
Through this role, Marie Colomb wants to “show Loana more accurately, in her complexity as a human being”, far from the “narrow” idea that the general public may have of her. This is not the first time that the actress feels burdened with a form of responsibility. In 2019, she was brilliant in the title role of Laëtitiathe mini-series by Jean-Xavier de Lestrade retracing the murder of Laëtitia Perrais in 2011. “It’s important for me to play interesting female characters. It gives additional meaning to my job. I tell myself that I am fighting for something that seems important to me, that I am doing it for good reasons. On condition that the project takes the right view and is not sensationalism. »
Castings, “a hassle” with “a good side”
She specifies, however, that obtaining these roles is “often a matter of luck” because she always has to go through the casting process. “It’s a hassle, because it’s a very strange situation, but the good side is that they allow me to try out roles in which people wouldn’t imagine me at first,” says she said.
In each role, she shows a different side from the previous one. The Loana of Worship has little to do with Léna, the intern in the communications department of the Paris prefecture embarked on the hunt for a serial killer in Followor with Marie, the daughter of the couple formed by Marina Foïs and Denis Ménochet in The Beasts… For this film by Rodrigo Sorogoyen, she also received a nomination for the Goya – the Spanish equivalent of the Césars – for best supporting actress.
“These roles gradually gave me credibility. In the profession, we say less and less “Who is she?”, I think. But I’m not offered a role without casting either,” she explains. Also she would like her performance in Worship will be a turning point: “I tell myself that it’s a series that can be seen, I hope that people will think of me for other things”.
“I arrived in Paris with a backpack and a thousand euros in my pocket”
She dreams of a role “like Erin Brockovich” or others “for which you have to learn things. That of a high-level sportswoman, for example.” Comedy, a register in which she has never tried, would please her “enormously”: “I admire comedy actors because you have to have a particular rhythm and it’s not easy. “.
For the future, she tries not to put too much pressure on herself. She recalls that, for the moment, she has climbed the levels “little step by little step, but nice steps all the same”. The one who went on stage for the first time at the age of 6 and “fell in love with it”, gave herself the means to make her dream come true. Originally from the countryside – she grew up “an hour south of Bordeaux” – she chose theater in high school but, at 18, didn’t really know where to go.
“I filmed in a first music video. The director told me: ‘Marie, do cinema, go to Paris’,” she explains. For a year, she did a series of odd jobs, including one in a Flunch, to save money. And then, ten years ago, she launched an attack on the capital. “It’s the total cliché: I arrived with a backpack and a thousand euros in my pocket,” she smiles. Nevertheless, clichés are sometimes the starting point of the most beautiful stories.
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