A star turn in the blackly comic French television show Call My Agent! propelled the Parisian actress Camille Cottin to international fame. Now, as she explains to Lydia Slater, she’s taking on that most British of dramatic projects: an Agatha Christie story
MY INTERVIEW WITH CAMILLE COTTIN BEGINS AS A COMEDY OF ERRORS. I am waiting in vain at the Hôtel Lutetia, while she is being chauffeured over the river to the Ritz. Paris traffic is more or less at a standstill, thanks to a surreal combination of civil unrest and couture fashion shows, and, furthermore, I have a Eurostar to catch… It’s a scenario worthy of Call My Agent!, the comedy-drama series in which Cottin starred so memorably as the cut-throat talent agent Andréa Martel.
When Cottin eventually rushes into the Lutetia, half an hour late, she’s profuse with apologies, proving – to my relief – that she’s a very different creature from her icily assertive alter ego, albeit equally chic, clad head-to-toe in Dior (she’s a long-standing friend of the brand).
Along with Normal People and Bridgerton, Call My Agent! (or Dix Pour Cent, as it is known in France, after the commission agents take) was one of those sleeper hits that became a global success during the pandemic. ‘The funny thing is that the show was really hard to make, because people thought nobody would be interested. It took seven years to get it produced,’ she says.
Despite cameo appearances from luminaries such as Juliette Binoche, Isabelle Huppert and Sigourney Weaver, Andréa was the unquestioned star of the show. ‘She has very masculine appetites,’ says Cottin, who based her interpretation on Don Juan. ‘She’s not thinking about being looked at; she’s the one looking. She inspired me, I think. She says what she wants to, and she accepts responsibility for who she is. I was more afraid of being spontaneous before I played her.’
The actress was first alerted to her new celebrity status at the Subtitle European Film Festival in Kilkenny, where she was besieged by casting directors asking for selfies. ‘I came back to France and said, “Guys, I think people know our show!”’ Numerous spin-offs have followed, including a British version, Ten Percent, featuring cameos from, among others, Helena Bonham Carter, Emma Corrin and David Oyelowo, and now a film is in the pipeline with the original French cast. ‘I hope I’ll be in it!’ Cottin says, unnecessarily.
The question is, rather, whether she will find time to fit it in, since the intervening years have seen her cast in several big-budget international productions. She starred opposite Matt Damon in Stillwater, played Lady Gaga’s love rival in House of Gucci, had a recurring role in Killing Eve as the assassin recruiter Hélène, and will appear as Helen Mirren’s right-hand woman in next month’s Go
