“I could have welcomed you to my home. But shame, too much mess, too much stuff on the floor, dishes lying around, I would have had to do two hours of cleaning ”, she said after an hour of interview, in the room of a hotel in the Place des Vosges, in Paris, where the meeting was finally fixed. Before, Karole Rocher applied to answer questions without going too far, correcting her own mistakes, especially on childhood wounds. “Anyway, who cares, that’s not the point. End of the story. “
Difficult to keep your own nature at bay. His is direct and instinctive. Her trust granted, she digresses, lets go of what she has on her heart, as it happens. She fuck the assholes, ain’t got no time to waste with the people who “Tell it to each other”, who lie, betray or hurt. She brushes them aside with the back of her hand, but she knows well, deep down, that they make her sad. The world of cinema ? She doesn’t necessarily feel comfortable there. “I don’t have the codes or the tools. It is as if I were asked to go and work at the headquarters of a bank in La Défense. I would say to myself: “But how am I going to do with these people?” “
However, in the cinema, it has its place, a legitimacy that it has acquired, in its own way, without concessions (“I have never played for a director who I felt could hurt me”), through emotional encounters to which she remains faithful. So it is with director Sylvie Verheyde. She has acted in all of her films: A brother (1997), Princesses (2000), Stella (2008), Confessions of a child of the century (2011), Sex doll (2016) and the last, Madame Claude, available on Netflix. Karole Rocher, 46, plays the title role with a disturbing majesty, the result of a long journey.
Intuition like a radar
“I discovered Madame Claude in a documentary of“ Un jour, un destin ” [Serge Khalfon, 2011]. I was impressed by her personality, intrigued by this somewhat old, tough and very lonely woman. I spoke to Sylvie Verheyde, who I learned then had been thinking about it for years as well. With Thomas ngijol [humoriste, acteur, réalisateur et compagnon depuis dix ans de l’actrice], we funded the development of a first version co-written by Sylvie and my brother, Patrick Rocher. “
To prepare for the role, Karole Rocher reads and sees everything related to Madame Claude. Then stops dead. “Without wanting to appear pretentious, I felt that I had captured her, she remembers. But then, I had two solutions. Either I tried to imitate her in these grand bourgeois airs that she invented for herself, or I approached her as Fernande Grudet, a girl coming out of nothing who becomes a feminine gangster. A poor woman who takes her social revenge but misses out on love, herself and her own daughter. That was what interested me, what I felt close to. Sylvie had the same approach. We have chosen to deliver our interpretation of Madame Claude. “
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