Pierre Niney reinvents himself as a great tragic figure in “The Count of Monte Cristo”, in theaters next Wednesday.
A new adaptation of Dumas’ classic for which he took all the risks, literally and figuratively.
The actor told Anne-Claire Coudray about his metamorphosis on Sunday evening on the set of TF1’s 8 p.m.
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Pierre Niney like you’ve never seen him before? If the 35-year-old actor already collects exciting roles, and a César for Yves Saint-Laurent, he enters a new dimension thanks to his performance in Le Comte de Monte Cristoa new adaptation of the famous novel by Alexandre Dumas by directors Alexandre de La Patellière and Mathieu Delaporte, who had already written the screenplay for the recent diptych devoted to Three Musketeers.
In 1815, while Napoleon was preparing to leave the Island of Elba, the young sailor Edmond Dantès was about to marry Mercedes, the love of his life, when he was accused of treason against Louis XVIII. The victim of a terrible plot, he is sent to prison when his fiancée believes him to be dead. Fourteen years later, he escapes and decides to take revenge by using a false identity: that of the fanciful Italian Count of Monte Cristo.
I rehearsed with the world freediving champion, Stéphane Mifusd who taught me two or three little secrets to avoid dying!
Pierre Niney
“I find it very therapeutic to be someone else“, Pierre Niney confided to Anne-Claire Coudray during 8 p.m. on TF1, this Sunday, June 23. “And this film is an incredible score for an actor. We have the opportunity to play out innocence, mental suffering, physical suffering, injustice and the madness of revenge. How far it poisons us and how far it devours us. Having lots of faces to tell this story is fascinating.”
To live up to the biggest budget in French cinema this year, the actor has imposed iron discipline on himself. Weight loss, bodybuilding, sword training, long makeup sessions… He even risked a lot during the escape scene where his character frees himself from a body bag several meters deep, in the middle of the ocean .
“I rehearsed with the world freediving champion, Stéphane Mifusd who taught me two or three little secrets to avoid dying!“, he said. “That worried the production quite a bit because it was really a question of me being shackled in a bag, that it would be extremely immersive for the spectators, extremely scary, extremely claustrophobic. And I won’t hide the fact that it’s not all fake panic!“.
Presented last May at the Cannes Film Festival, Le Comte de Monte Cristo impressed the Hollywood press, amazed by the investment of its star. “Giving oneself body and soul for roles like that, I find that it is the minimum of politeness for the spectators“, insists Pierre Niney. “It’s crazy lucky to have a role like that. I don’t know if I will have two“.
