Stefan Crepon: “Cédric Khan, The Office of Legends, François Ozon and me”

As an aspiring director, he burst onto the screen with his first major film role in Making of. Back with him on his journey already rich in beautiful encounters.

A little background to start. The first time we saw you in the cinema was in 2018 In Prayer already under the direction of Cédric Kahn…

Stefan Crepon: It was even my first casting! I was 19, I was taking theater classes and I wanted to do this job but in a more concrete, more professional way. But all the agents I went to see slammed the door in my face. So I ended up signing up on a paid casting site. A one-year subscription to see what it was like. And a week later, I see an offer “looking for young men between 18 and 25 years old potentially with foreign origins”. Half of my family is Moldovan, I respond to the ad and I am summoned. And I understand that it is Cédric who will lead the project, when I arrive at the meeting. I already knew his films. I had seen Roberto Succo, A better life, Red lights…which really had an impact on me. So I’m going to be hired for a small role but that’s where it all begins for me. Because it was precisely on this shoot that I had an agent thanks to Damien Chapelle who took me under his wing and introduced his. And it’s thanks to this agent that I landed The Office of Legends

This desire to become an actor was born from the films you saw when you were younger?

No, it really came through the game itself. I started taking theater lessons when I was twelve, thanks to a French teacher at college. I was a very turbulent student and, one day, he summoned my parents to give me a boost while telling them that when I read a text or when I speak, I do it well. He therefore encouraged them to make me do theater to channel me… But I had no desire to do that, I saw theater as a boring and boring thing. But on Wednesday afternoon, when everyone was going to play football or tennis, I was given no choice. And that was the ultimate discovery. Because everything that I was told not to do and to calm down, on stage, I was pushed to do with free power! I have never felt so free and alive. And all this will be further enhanced one or two years later, at 14, when my mother takes me to see two plays at the Comédie-Française, Pedro and the Commander And Cyrano de Bergerac directed by Denis Podalydès. That’s when I understood that acting could be a profession. This was the second revelation for me. I wanted to earn my living like them. And I went to the Conservatory for that purpose.

You mentioned it earlier, when you leave the Conservatory, you will join the band of Legends Office for the fourth season of the series. What was it like for you to go up in this way?

It was my first big role and my first responsibility. I got it through trials and my agent called me to say: “I don’t want to put pressure on you, but if there’s one casting you shouldn’t miss this year, it’s this one!” » (laughs) It must have been the third audition I had in my life and he understood that I needed to be stimulated. So I got the role but I arrived on set very impressed because as we were in season 4, everyone knew each other. In this very close-knit family, I was a bit of a bird fallen from the clouds, in total panic. The only other new kid was Mathieu Amalric! But when I met him, just before filming, he immediately reassured me by assuring me that he was also stressed and that the day I was no longer stressed, I would only do shit. This is advice that I have kept! (laughs) More generally, the whole team felt that I was in panic and they supported me wonderfully. And then I met Eric (Rochant) one of the most brilliant minds I know. I think he has four brains inside his head. Whether we’re talking about geology in Iran, the situation in the Central African Republic or cybersecurity in Russia, he knows everything by heart and always had tons of documentation to give me.

In the process, you will find yourself directed by François Ozon in Peter von Kant. What appealed to you most about your collaboration?

Like Cédric Kahn, he is someone who loves actors and knows how to film them. But filming under his direction is very special because it puts you in a state of perdition, almost absolute vertigo, without you ever really losing your footing. We shot Peter von Kant during the curfew period. So this was our playground for 18 days. What is very pleasant about François is that he frames everything himself. There is therefore an efficiency in filming, a speed that I have not seen anywhere else. Which creates this swirling and dizzying side that I was talking about. But, at the same time, he is specific about what he wants so you can completely let go. In the end, what struck me the most was that he spoke to you during the takes. I don’t know how he does it with editing and mixing! (laughs) His sound engineers must be tearing their hair out!

Making of marks both your reunion with Cédric Kahn and your first major film role. This time, he offered it to you directly?

Yes. Which is very courageous of him in relation to all the questions of financing that the film discusses. And when I read his script, I was really touched because I have the impression that it’s the first film where Cédric gives such an autobiographical dimension to his characters. That we find him both in the director overwhelmed by the events on the set of his film played by Denis Podalydès and in my character as an extra that he will take under his wing by entrusting him with the filming of the making of this adventure …which at the age he was when he was Pialat’s assistant. This is the first time that Cédric really bares himself like that in a film and I was proud to have to represent him, with this special bond that we both have. And what a chance to be able to work with him again. Because Cédric is a very good listener, not at all stuck on his text. And as I was shooting for the second time with him, I had absolute confidence in him. Which was very enjoyable since I could get completely lost.

Cédric Kahn here takes the angle of class struggle to tell the story of a shooting. Did that speak to you right away?

Yes because it tells precisely what filming is by reminding us that in the name of art we sometimes make social concessions that we should not make.

MAKING OF: A TASTY POLITICAL COMEDY (REVIEW)

You confided to Denis Podalydès to what extent his Cyrano de Bergerac was decisive for you?

Not right away but after a month, a month and a half, I think. What a joy to play with him! It’s a Rolls Royce. He is impressive because we have the feeling that he never makes an effort, that everything is obvious. It’s fluid, so simple. With this ability to always give a little unexpected dimension to each scene.

Did you watch films to prepare for your role?

I had seen again The American night for personal pleasure. But the one that helped me the most was It’s shooting in Manhattan for his account of the trivial aspect of a shoot, the struggles, the hands in the grease.

And where will we find you in the coming months?

In At the topteurthe adaptation of the novel by Laurent Petitmangin, What you need at nightby Delphine and Muriel Coulin (17 girls). A family chronicle around a Lorraine railway worker father and his two sons after the death of their mother. Benjamin Voisin plays my brother and Vincent Lindon, my father.

Making of. By Cedric Kahn. With Denis Podalydès, Jonathan Cohen, Stefan Crepon… Duration: 1h54. Released January 10, 204