It was in a vast Parisian apartment with white walls, high ceilings and Haussmann moldings that Souheila Yacoub spent this sunny winter day posing for our photos.
The space, the bare parquet floors and dazzling rays of light as natural lighting offered the former Conservatory student a dream scene of expression.
Departing from her precious clothes, she puts on a sailor top and wide jeans, comfortable boots.
His deep voice resonates between the walls.
“She is generous and rigorous,” the photographer tells us.
And simple.
The prerogative of adults.”
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Also read Zendaya, Timothée Chalamet, Florence Pugh... the cast of
Dune 2
reunited on the red carpet in Mexico
The very idea we have of this 31-year-old actress, whose freshness and passion have invaded our screens since
Climax,
by Gaspar Noé, in 2018. A repeated revelation.
This was followed by
Les Sauvages
(Canal+), by Rebecca Zlotowski, and
No Man's Land
(Arte), with Félix Moati;
the presidential communications advisor and the Kurdish YPJ fighter she plays, a thousand miles apart, set the tone: high standards and a keen flair for films and series that matter.
En corps
, by Cédric Klapisch (more than a million admissions in France) made her popular as a former volcanic dancer converted into a chef with her cinema companion, Pio Marmaï.
People are now looking for her for roles as strong, energetic women.
The highly revered Denis Villeneuve paid tribute to her power and combativeness by rewriting a male warrior character for her in
Dune
: Part II,
an event film with Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya.
To her first name, which means “conciliatory” in Arabic, she prefers “Sou”, “simpler.”
His trajectory intrigues as much as it commands respect.
Born in Geneva to a Flemish Belgian mother and a Tunisian father, she spent her youth skimming the rhythmic gymnastics mats, the European and world championships, before Switzerland was excluded from the London Olympic Games.
The athlete then returned to his mother at the age of 20 to digest this heartbreaking setback.
Her sister enters her into the Miss French-speaking Switzerland 2012 competition to cheer her up: she leaves with the crown.
This victory led her to consider other horizons and led her towards an artistic reconversion.
She successively won a scholarship for the Cours Florent, in Paris, then the entrance exam for the National Conservatory – 1,500 candidates, around thirty elected officials.
Souheila Yacoub: Dune objective
In images, in pictures
See the slideshow09 photos
See the slideshow09 photos
Director Wajdi Mouawad spotted her and made her the incandescent revelation of his
All the Birds
at the Théâtre de la Colline, in Paris, in 2017. “It’s hard to start with the most beautiful role of your life,” she smiles.
From her years as a high-level athlete, the young woman retained a sense of performance and a taste for work, especially in a team.
Souheila Yacoub remains a fan of the big gap, literally and figuratively, between French comedy
(Making of),
season 2 of a dramatic series
(No Man's Land,
on Arte), Noémie's second feature film Merlant as director,
Women on the Balcony
, and the sci-fi blockbuster,
Dune
: Part Two.
Unclassifiable and free.
Madame Figaro.
– A Belgian mother, a Tunisian father, a Mediterranean physique… How do you experience this multiculturalism
?
Is this an asset in cinema?
Souheila Yacoub.
–
This is one of the subjects that obsesses me at the moment.
My name, Souheila Yacoub, is exotic.
That's why I prefer "Sou": I'm seen more as a young woman, not as a stereotype.
I am convinced that I will not go through the same castings as an Alice or a Juliette.
Of course, I'm also Arab, and I've played Kurdish and Algerian characters... It's a strong point.
But I grew up in Switzerland, my mother tongue is Flemish.
I speak German fluently and not a single word of Arabic… I thought I was just a young woman until I arrived in Paris.
At Cours Florent, they told me: “You have to play Bernard-Marie Koltès, the role of Samina.”
I wanted to be the Eva Perón of Copi.
With my agent we are careful with our choices.
From my beginnings, directors did not immediately assign me an identified origin and I thank them for that.
From my beginnings, directors did not immediately assign me an identified origin and I thank them for that.
Souheila Yacoub
We are still moving towards more inclusiveness in France and abroad, aren't we?
Of course.
Look at
The Little Mermaid
played by a black actress or the mixed cast of
The Bridgerton Chronicles
.
I dream of a period film where people wouldn't think I look "too modern."
We are actors, we must open all this up!
Being able to shoot a biopic of Joan of Arc or Simone de Beauvoir when you look like me.
Or, as in
Between the Waves
, with Déborah Lukumuena, my most political film in this sense, playing heroines for what they experience: their career, their friendship, illness, without their origins ever being a subject .
Speaking of distribution, how did you end up on Denis Villeneuve's planet
Dune
?
The most incredible?
Without casting!
Denis Villeneuve offered me the role live.
Which didn't stop me from immediately feeling a serious feeling of illegitimacy... He had seen me in
No Man's Land.
We spoke by Zoom and he asked me if I would agree to play Shishakli, a Fremen guerrilla leader (
a male character in the book and the first Dune, by
David Lynch
, Editor's note
) and the best friend of Chani (Zendaya) .
Very elegant, he even apologized for not giving me a leading role, but to film with him, I would have agreed to have only one line!
When you arrive on a set of this size, it's a bit like Disneyland: you can feel alone there because of the duration of the shoot.
So, everyone invited their loved ones.
My best friend, the YouTuber Mouffy, came, my mom, my lover joined me at times.
And I had to learn Chakobsa from a coach, the language of the Fremen, the nomadic people from whom my character comes.
When it was time to say my text, my coach corrected me: it's
kalaha
and not
koulouhoum.
We laughed about it with Javier Bardem and Zendaya.
Really ?
Who was going to point out our faults in an imaginary language invented by Frank Herbert, the author of the saga?
As a teenager, did you have any cinema role models?
Not really.
After gymnastics, I arrived in Paris wanting to express something, without having the slightest idea of the world in which I was going to evolve.
I had no cinematographic references, I didn't even know Audrey Hepburn!
At that time, I watched a lot of making-of videos and other blooper videos to get rid of my dark thoughts.
I wanted to laugh and make people laugh.
I had the impression of achieving this objective with Cédric Kahn, who allowed me to have a jubilant experience on the set of
Making of.
My models today?
Adèle Exarchopoulos and Marion Cotillard inspire me, and many young talents of my generation, too numerous to mention them all.
My models today?
Adèle Exarchopoulos and Marion Cotillard
Souheila Yacoub
How do you choose your projects?
It’s true that I haven’t yet gotten the role that makes everyone say “Ah, there you go!”.
It happened very slowly.
With my agent, we are very united on the idea of a coherent long term.
However, I like to shake up archetypes.
In
En corps,
I didn't just want to play the cook's friend, but also to make people laugh.
We improvised a lot with Pio Marmaï, and rewrote with Cédric Klapisch.
I left room for a certain feminine triviality, for anger, for imperfections, also for our illogical side, for our complexes.
I don't want to play glossy women, but characters in all their facets.
You posted a photo on Instagram from your years as a gymnast with this caption
: “The time when I was a prisoner of my body.”
What did you mean?
These years were formative, but very painful.
You could think that I was free because I was performing well in sport.
But I was like a robot, imprisoned in a kind of cult, without any right to express myself.
With 8 hours of training per day, I did more than 55 hours of sport per week, following to the letter everything that was asked of me.
(She snaps her fingers to mime an order to be carried out.)
Infantilized, physically and psychologically mistreated.
Playing has been therapy, an outlet.
Is it from this past that you draw the crazy energy displayed on screen?
In casting, I am often criticized for giving too much.
People temper me: “Be more interior, that’s too much.”
Often, they are not wrong.
But I don't like it, because for me, acting is a way to break down the walls, to make my voice heard.
In my eyes,
less is not more, more is more!
I like to go further.
But I am also learning to express an interiority which can prove to be just as strong.
Playing was therapy, an outlet
Souheila Yacoub
Faced with the reality of the profession, have you sometimes been tempted to abandon everything, like the director in
Making of,
played by Denis Podalydès?
Not to this extent, but I grew up with the idea that you should say nothing and accept everything.
Thinking that others are invariably right and I am wrong.
It was like that with the gymnastics coaches, then, as a young actress, facing people who had more experience.
Maybe that made me an easy target?
I left two film shoots very disturbed.
Too much nastiness, things that I would no longer accept.
I love this job, it's a hard drug, but I've learned to put it in its place, to put things into perspective, to say no.
To protect myself.
At the same time, you are now a
Dior ambassador.
What does this house mean to you?
Seen from my little corner of Switzerland, Dior was an unattainable icon.
I could never have imagined that one day Maria Grazia Chiuri, the artistic director of Dior's women's collections, would be able to include me in her family.
I feel it all the more as a real recognition that fashion was not one of my concerns.
I was a gymnast at 4 years old.
I wore sequinned leotards, rhinestones, heavy makeup, hairspray… and jogging pants the rest of the time.
Today, every day, at home, I'm more of a Viking.
(She laughs.)
Elegance, I reserve for representation.
And if I can modestly bring my little punk side to a Dior lace dress like at the Venice Film Festival last year, then I'm happy about it.
Does clothing help create a character?
Yes.
Some actors will approach their character through the head, the psychology.
For me, it is through the body and the costume that I enter into this process.
In Noémie Merlant's next film,
Women on the Balcony,
I am an eccentric with rhinestones on my teeth.
Dune
makes me a very Earth creature, with the Fremen armor suit anchoring me to my character.
When I saw some of the outfits I wore in this fashion series for
Madame Figaro,
I feared the disagreement: delicacy versus my rough side.
(She laughs.)
And, at the same time, I like to adapt.
I always wonder how to tame an outfit.
It's a bit like a role.
We get to know each other and then we become one.
Dune
: second part
, by Denis Villeneuve, with Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Léa Seydoux, Souheila Yacoub… Released February 28.