She chooses the morning coffee over the late afternoon glass of wine. We guess from her neat dress that, when it comes to talking about work, she prefers this schedule, that of the break between home and the office, the coffee machine whistling and the croissants on the counter. The photo session over, Alix Poisson wedges her reed silhouette on a bench at Pure Café, this bistro at 11e Parisian arrondissement where she calls the waiter by his first name, takes off his chic hat and answers questions with an amiable reserve that quickly gives way to a rapid and passionate flow.
The 44-year-old actress, with ice-blue eyes, notably became known to the general public as Isa Martinet, the mother of Parents manuala short and humorous format in 732 episodes broadcast between 2013 and 2020, on France 2, then on France 3. In a completely different register, she was also Laure, the policeman of the beautiful and dark choral series by Fabrice Gobert, Ghosts (broadcast on Canal+ between 2012 and 2015). She is now the face of both seasons of Influence games (Arte), the series-dossier by Jean-Xavier de Lestrade, which dismantles the lies of the agri-food industry on pesticides and denounces the passivity of the political powers, asleep by the lobbies, in the face of the health danger they represent. The director, who excels in the art of balancing documentary and fiction to portray social phenomena and news items, works regularly with the actress after having chosen her, more than ten years ago, to play Véronique Courjault in its astonishing docu-fiction Murderous Journey of an Ordinary Mother.
“The story is greatlaughs Alix Poisson. I had been doing theater for six or seven years, but when I was doing tryouts, everyone said to me, “It’s complicated.” In this profession, there is a question of adequacy between what you release and the character. And that, you don’t master it at all, it sticks or it doesn’t. » At that time, the young actress was still looking for herself. “I looked older, I had a very deep voice because I smoked, when I went to castings, it didn’t work. »
One day, she meets a casting director who tells her about Jean-Xavier de Lestrade’s project on the Courjault affair, named after this mother sentenced for having killed three of her newborns. Fascinated by the character, Alix Poisson insists on taking trials and, to prepare for them, reads everything she finds on the case. “This story is a bit like Saint Omer [le film d’Alice Diop inspiré du procès d’une jeune mère pour le meurtre de sa fille]. Yes, this woman must be punished, but I cannot condemn her. » The actress, who is not yet “not very Actors Studio”, swells her hair in black, puts on size 42 clothes and does not sleep at night to dig her features. When she meets Jean-Xavier de Lestrade, she senses that they speak the same language. “How you are looked at determines everything. »
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