The alignment of the planets is not a figment of the imagination, a fad for readers in need of horoscopes, or just an evanescent romantic idea that gives us the vague impression of being connected to a whole that is beyond us. … No, the alignment of the planets, this feeling, strange and reassuring, that things sometimes happen almost in spite of us, that exists. In any case, Micha Lescot believes it. He was a privileged witness.
To be there in the right place, exactly at the crossroads of several roads, taken a long time ago without really knowing at the time where they could lead and if they were destined one day to cross, this is what the 48-year-old actor, this sunny October morning, on the terrace of a café at 19e arrondissement of Paris, where he likes to meet.
Quite a mysterious figure
Micha Lescot is on promotion for Almond trees, the magnificent autobiographical film by Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, which tells the exalted and feverish life of the second class of the Nanterre theater school, created by Patrice Chéreau and Pierre Romans in the early 1980s, and from which came, among others, Vincent Perez, Marianne Denicourt, Eva Ionesco, Agnès Jaoui… and of course Valeria Bruni Tedeschi. Micha Lescot embodies Pierre Romans, the director of the school, the accomplice of Patrice Chéreau, a rather mysterious and rather unknown figure who worked in the shadow of the brilliant and sometimes tyrannical director.
“When Valeria first told me about her idea, I wholeheartedly encouraged her, without even thinking about acting in her film, says Micha Lescot. Everything interested me in this story. All. I was totally on edge. » When the actor left the National Conservatory of Dramatic Art in Paris, in 1993, the famous promotion of Amandiers had already been scattered on theater and cinema sets for seven years.
Pierre Romans died three years ago, the same year 1990, Patrice Chéreau left the management of the theater of Nanterre. The director then acts as an unsurpassable master of contemporary French theatre. “For a young actor like me, Chéreau was the benchmark, the absolute fantasy. » Twice, Micha Lescot almost played under his direction, but other commitments forced him to give up.
impostor syndrome
In 2020, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi made him audition for the role of Pierre Romans. Micha Lescot is then rehearsing the role of Charles in west quay, the play by Bernard-Marie Koltès, which Patrice Chéreau had precisely staged with the students of this promotion in 1986. Another alignment of planets: during the period of confinement, he agreed, for the first time in his life, to lead a workshop young actors, at the National Theater of Brittany, in Rennes (TNB). “I liked it very much”is surprised the one who says he has always had an impostor syndrome, when he has never stopped working under the direction of the greatest directors, and has almost always received praise from critics.
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