“Excuse me for disturbing you, are you Leïla Bekhti”?
Answer: “Ah almost, I’m Géraldine Nakache!”
The scene is almost too beautiful.
December 2023, we are at Comptoir de Turenne, facing Géraldine Nakache, who invited us to her Parisian HQ.
The man who calls out to him is a café customer who walks away, embarrassed by his mistake.
But the actress director with mischievous black eyes laughs.
“It’s gold in a bar for your paper, isn’t it?”, she says.
Let's not be afraid of words: this girl is awesome.
Funny, friendly, intelligent, sincere, she is there to talk about herself, which does not prevent her from being interested in us, from asking questions, from listening to the answers.
And to insist on paying for our coffees – “yes, if you came here” –, to speak informally to us straight away, without anything seeming forced.
But Géraldine Nakache is not just the good friend, the dream big or little sister depending on the age, the girl with the machine gun flow who sends a hundred jokes a minute.
To discover
Leadership, balance, career, money... A business coaching program for women
Also read Géraldine Nakache: “I don't tell my mother everything, I don't open all the floodgates in the press”
This image, which has stuck with her since she made
All That Glitters
(2010), with her “cinema sister”, Leïla Bekhti, is necessarily reductive.
She is, above all, a great lover of cinema, and today, at 43, “one of the best actresses of her generation”, as underlines Vincent Dedienne, her partner in the film
I am not a hero
, released in November.
An actress with a tragicomic register, increasingly in demand.
This year alone, she will be starring in two films –
Paternal
, an intimate drama by Ronan Tronchot, and
Tigres & Hyènes
, a supercharged thriller by Jérémie Guez – and three series –
Children are kings
on Disney +, taken from novel by Delphine de Vigan, the funny
Fiasco,
by Igor Gotesman, on Netflix, and finally
Hippocrates,
of which she is filming season 3. Without forgetting the film and the series that she is writing at the same time, when she is not filming .
2024, the Nakache year?
Géraldine Nakache: the prodigious friend
In images, in pictures
See the slideshow05 photos
See the slideshow05 photos
Madame Figaro. –
We have the impression that the actress has taken precedence over the director…
Géraldine Nakache
.
-
Is it related to my age?
The fact that after my forties, I am given more roles?
Today, I'm probably sending a signal, I'm inviting directors to come to me, as if I no longer have to apologize for being there.
You have long been identified with comedy, but recently, you are moving towards more serious roles. Cop in
Children Are Kings
, lawyer in the thriller
Tigers & Hyenas
, director of a hospital in crisis in
Hippocrates
… Has the directors' view of you changed
?
In the film
Paternal
, I also play a woman in full burnout, who returns eleven years later to announce to a priest, played by Grégory Gadebois, that he is the father of her child.
I believe that it was Thomas Lilti who opened the way to other types of characters by offering me, six years ago, the role of a powerful woman, the boss of a hospital.
This role was undoubtedly a detonator as much for me as for the directors, moreover.
They said to themselves that I could play something other than the
girl next door
, the good friend, the funny brunette.
Your brother, the director Olivier Nakache, said of you
: “she has what I call dual nationality, comfortable with drama and comfortable with humor.”
Do you agree with him
?
In any case, I work a lot to play a character, whatever the register.
In
Fiasco
and in
Children Are Kings
, I play figures who are polar opposites, but what matters to me above all is the adventure, the project, the story and the collective that makes the film.
I also think that behind the comical girl, some have managed to perceive another fiber.
When I worked on the Comedy channel, I myself rubbed shoulders with a number of burlesque talents, Valérie Benguigui, Jamel Debbouze, Alain Chabat, François Damiens… They all have one thing in common, which I also attribute to Leïla Bekhti: behind their devastating humor, there are broken notes behind them.
I often wonder if humor is not the best shield to avoid revealing an abysmal truth to the world.
Some people may have asked this question about me, saying to themselves: if she speaks so quickly, it’s because she has something to hide, and we’re going to find it…
Can you tell us about Louise, who you play in the poignant
Paternal
, and how this role of a single mother in mental overload speaks to you
?
I understand this woman, and I know some around me who look like her.
The “enough is enough” side, being able to disappear to rebuild oneself are feelings that speak to me to the extent that I am the mother of a 7 year old little girl, but I consider myself privileged.
On the other hand, taking time for myself has always made me feel guilty, like many women...
You often say with humor that making cinema was so that your parents' names would be written elsewhere than on their mailbox...
Not just with humor... it's true.
They are the driving force, and making their name shine was written in us.
My brother and I owe them that.
They are heroes, good people who allowed us to become directors or actors, professions considered “precarious”.
My father was a computer scientist and my mother sold armored doors and keys, that's also a nice image for a psychologist, isn't it?
(Laughs.)
From the beginning, my parents gave me the right place.
I built barriers myself.
I first had to go to the other side of the ring road (
she grew up in Puteaux, in Hauts-de-Seine, Editor's note
), then I had to wear nice shoes... to get there.
It is a social determinism that I established alone.
I think this cult of sincere friendship is generational
Geraldine Nakache
Was the admiration you have for your brother also decisive in your career
?
My desire for cinema was born at home with this slightly geeky older brother, who recorded films on VHS cassettes, stored them with collector's precision, in short, he brought the seventh art back to television.
My parents took us to the movies a lot, but he was really the movie buff.
We could watch hundreds of times
An Elephant That Deceives a Lot
, Italian comedies, the films of Bacri and Jaoui,
Back to the Future
... At 20, Olivier started making his first short films, in secret, he drew storyboards and I entered his room, fascinated.
I also forced her, like a “dirty” little sister, to watch my shows on Mylène Farmer.
And he, patiently, observed me singing and dancing, with kindness.
Then, at 15, I discovered the films of Jacques Demy, and I announced to my parents that I wanted to make films.
At the time, only the Saint-Sulpice high school in Paris offered this subject.
A non-contract establishment, which is expensive, I work on the side to help pay for it.
At the baccalaureate, I got an 18 thanks to the cinema option.
It went like that.
More than ten years after its release, your first film,
All That Shines
, co-directed with Hervé Mimran, remains cult.
How do you analyze it
?
I think cutting the cord and crossing the Beltway is ultimately a universal topic.
But basically, it's still my story.
One day, a young girl said to me: “Your film moved me all the more because, like me, you dance on your father’s feet.”
And then, presto, we feel that the film no longer belongs to you… Is this when it becomes cult?
And then there are those who say to me: “Are you Leïla Bekhti?”
Leila became my sister for life, and people felt it as soon as the film came out.
Our friendship left such a strong impression on film that people still talk to me about it today, as if I had made a documentary on Leïla and Géraldine, even though it is fiction.
And that’s why Leïla deserved her César for young hopefuls…
After my forties, I am given more roles
Geraldine Nakache
This sorority as you describe it since
All That Glitters
was rather new in the cinema world at the time...
On the one hand, it is in my DNA, and on the other hand, I think that this cult sincere friendship is generational.
Whether it is Leïla, Adèle (Exarchopoulos), Marina (Foïs) or Virginie (Efira), with whom I worked, we have the same way of approaching this profession.
We didn't go through schools, we don't have a classic route and we also know how high we can climb to the top and come back down just as quickly.
And then, there are many of us today who write screenplays, direct films... There is no resentment or jealousy between us, because we can also exist in the cinema other than in front of the light.
We also see you a lot in the front row of fashion shows, what attracts you to this environment
?
I have always loved fashion, even when, stupidly, I thought you had to buy expensive, designer clothes to be in it.
But there was no H&M at the time of
All That Glitters
, we couldn't have any illusions... And then, one day, I did a first fitting with Azzedine Alaïa, for the climb up the stairs at Cannes, and I discovered a parallel world, with incredible know-how, little prodigy hands like on a movie set.
Over the years, I have also met crazy talents like Nicolas Ghesquière, Julien Dossena, the Coperni and Jonathan Anderson, to whom I have a passion.
Celebrities at the Louis Vuitton fall-winter 2024-2025 show by Pharrell Williams
In images, in pictures
See the slideshow26 photos
See the slideshow26 photos
In the collection
She speaks of her
, on Canal +, which invites a woman of today to pay tribute to a woman who marked her life, you chose the lawyer and feminist activist Gisèle Halimi.
For what
?
My instinct guided me towards her.
I wanted to document his story.
Understanding why she had changed my life without really being aware of it.
I was not born at the time of the Bobigny trial (
where Gisèle Halimi defended five women who had had an abortion, Editor's note
).
We, who were born in the 1980s, can say thank you.
And then Gisèle Halimi also looks like my mother, my aunt.
We share the same culture, that of Sephardic Jews, from Tunisia for her, from Algeria for my family.
This story is within us.
I actually went to Algeria for the first time with my brother last May.
We took our parents who had not set foot there for sixty years.
And I was finally able to discover this ghost part of myself, to really smell the smells of Constantine and Oran that our parents evoked when we were children, and that I can, in turn, tell my daughter today.
I went to Algeria for the first time with my brother last May.
(...) And I was finally able to discover this ghost part in me
Geraldine Nakache
What is your state of mind on the situation in Israel
?
Are you able to express what you feel
?
I am very tested, as I have said.
Last October, I even canceled my presence in the provinces for the previews of
I am not a hero
. I was stunned, in mourning, we had lost loved ones.
I asked the audience for forgiveness but I couldn't express myself.
There have been unspeakable recoveries, devastating racist, Islamophobic and anti-Semitic acts.
But I gradually regained hope, the fact of coming together, all together, here, can help us…
Can cinema also bring people together and open doors
?
Yes, moreover, it is thanks to my brother, in particular, that I went back to meet the public.
He told me, “Continue with the film, go talk to people, do your job.”
And then I understood, seeing these men and women coming out of the rooms and telling us “thank you”, “that feels good right now”, how important it was.
This is cinema, bubbles which open with nuance onto other worlds, spectators who speak from their hearts — and in a space-time other than that of TikTok!
And me too, it did me good to see these cinema lovers again, and above all to stop being afraid.
Because being afraid is useless.
Paternal,
by Ronan Tronchot, with Grégory Gadebois, Géraldine Nakache, Lyes Salem.
Released March 27.