Left by her husband, disavowed by management, separated from her son, Clotilde Armand is weakened. Is his future in Here it all begins threatened? Elsa Lunghini, her interpreter, answers.
The harder the characters seem, the more interesting it is to discover their weaknesses. Isn’t this precisely the case for Clotilde?
ELSA LUNGHINI: Here we are ! Clotilde has been “up and down” for a while, but there she no longer has any protection. Not to mention fatigue and wear. After taking all that has come crashing down in his life, pieces of his armor are falling off. And that’s great for her!
And for you too, right?
And for me too! I couldn’t bear to play a character who was only manipulative and angry. It suits me perfectly that Clotilde is faced with her weaknesses.
Was it the departure of his son, Jérémy, who dealt him the first fatal blow?
Surely. There was also the revelation of her lie about the fact that this child was not Guillaume’s. For the first time, Clotilde was discovered and, in fact, weakened. Jérémy was his driving force, his reason for getting up in the morning. She had put a lot of hope in the prospect of passing the torch to him, as her father had done with her. The day she realized that she had made a cruel mistake by throwing a load on her son’s shoulders that she shouldn’t have put on, her disappointment was immense.
Clotilde’s main adversary, isn’t she herself?
Absoutely. What she lived through with her father, this quest for recognition and this desire to always show herself up to it, forged a toughness and hardness that took her away from the woman she really is.
Will she ever recover from her childhood?
You can live with your childhood wounds, you can try to understand them, to transcend them, but I don’t think you can heal them. The scars remain.
Another hard blow, the departure of Guillaume for the arms of Laëtitia. Did Clotilde really believe that she could win him back?
Her desire to win him back was mostly motivated by vexation and narcissistic injury. After going through so many difficulties, she had bet so much on her couple! Seeing Guillaume leave in the arms of another, younger in this case, violently bruised his ego. His real wound is there. I wonder if Clotilde was ever capable of loving passionately. His marriage was first a marriage of convenience, to look good in the eyes of a certain society.
Can the return of her lover, Joachim, save her from the abyss?
At the time, Clotilde had not followed up on her relationship with Joachim to give her couple a chance and not draw a line under twenty years of marriage. Their idyll therefore has a taste of unfinished business and represents hope at a time when, precisely, it is not at its best.
If Joachim were to leave the Institute, could she stay there without him?
She could do so for two reasons: to solve her personal problems and not to leave Deva, her protege, in a particularly difficult situation.
Would she also have a good reason to leave?
She would also have a very good reason to leave. To clear your head, try to take a step back, rest and consider your relationship with Joachim in a better light.
Speaking of departure, how did you experience that of Clément Rémiens?
I understood it very well. Clément has given a lot of himself, he is very young and at the same time particularly mature. I find him brave to have let his desires and his curiosity do the talking rather than allowing himself to be locked into a form of routine. We had discussed it quite a bit, he’s someone I really like. He will do other things, maybe even behind the camera because it’s an area he’s passionate about. I’m not worried about him, he has plenty of resources and an intelligence that will always allow him to get by.
We just saw you in the TF1 series Léo Matteï. Did the role of Clotilde open the imaginations concerning you?
If my character in Leo Mattei was also that of a cold and demanding teacher at first sight, I receive other totally different proposals. The daily rhythm obliges me to have to refuse some of them, but I obviously want to explore other registers, as I have always done elsewhere. It’s a question of balance, professional and human.
And the gaze of the public, has it changed?
He is more present, of course. Before Here it all begins, I was less exposed to the media. This allowed some people to rediscover me and a younger generation to get to know me, notably by learning that I was a singer. All this is a very pleasant eternal restart.
Have you drawn a definitive line on the music?
Not at all, my desire to sing again is becoming more and more present. For now, I’m running out of time, but the day will come when it will take over. I really want to redo songs, from the stage. I haven’t given up on the music at all.
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