Camille Cottin on the Return of Call My Agent!

For those who clung to the smash-hit comedy Call My Agent! like a life raft during lockdown, hearing the news of the Netflix show’s return to screens in movie form may have resembled running into a long-lost friend: exciting, but followed by the nagging thought that things might not be the same any more.

Camille Cottin had all the same doubts signing up to the film, which reunites us with the team from the now-defunct ASK agency five years after the business (and series) folded. “I think we felt exactly like you did,” says Cottin, a breakout star of the show for her pitch-perfect turn as Andréa, a partner in the agency whose icy cool dovetailed neatly with her wardrobe. “It was like, ‘Are we gonna have the same chemistry? Are we gonna be able to be those characters again with the same youth and energy?’ Because you want to be loyal to what the show was, but at the same time it was in our lives for about four or five years, and we had all moved on.”

The good news is we needn’t have worried. Co-written by series creator Fanny Herero, returning to the fold having left the show after its third season, the film second-guesses our feelings with a cheeky opening scene in which Hervé (Nicolas Maury), ASK agent turned jobbing actor, addresses the camera as an old friend he’s bumped into on the street. “You look good!” he tells us cheerfully, and the feeling is mutual: joyous, silly and sharp, the film finds all the right grace notes for its lovable cast of characters, whom we left on a rare sour note after the agency’s demise. “The fact that Andréa failed to keep the business together was something a bit dark,” says Cottin of the series’ finale, “so the chance to bring those characters back together in the love of cinema was something quite joyful. And it was worth taking the risk.”

Cottin was 36 when she took on the role of Andréa, having made her name with the sketch show comedy Connasse. The series quickly proved a hit with viewers in France, but it was not until the pandemic that the wider world latched on to its charm, which combined romantic affection for the industry with occasionally biting satire. (An episode where Juliette Binoche contends with a handsy producer at Cannes was written just before the MeToo scandal broke.) The growing chatter around the show culminated in a win at the International Emmys for best comedy series in 2021. Does Cottin often think about what her career owes to the Covid-19 pandemic? “Oh yeah,” she says. “It’s funny, because during lockdown I was scared I would never work again. And I had no idea people were bingeing the show. Maybe it’s because it takes place in the office and is talking about cinema and this backstage [world], but also about what it means to be a family at work. I think it’s something people were really happy to experience through the show.”

The film picks up the story with Andréa, now working as a film director, deep in pre-production on her feature debut. Her private life’s in turmoil, with former partner Colette (Ophélia Kolb) threatening to move their child out of the city to Nantes. Andréa needs the film to work out for the looming custody battle, so when her lead drops out at the last minute, she’s forced to turn to former colleague Noémie (Laure Calamy), flush with success from producing a hit reality show, in order to save it. Fans will know this is a painful business for Andréa, whose horror at her old colleague’s guileless optimism makes them the best of frenemies. For the rest of us, though, it’s great news, setting up a screwball double-act between two of the show’s star performers that sweeps the film along in its wake.

Cottin says her scenes with Calamy were like a “duet”, with Noémie the excitable clown to Andréa’s sad Pierrot: “With Andréa, everything is internal, whereas Noémie has no filter – she’s overenthusiastic, everything is very intense … Andréa is snobbish. It’s as if Noémie represents everything she wanted to escape from during her childhood. When you meet her parents [in the series] they are simple people, and they don’t really understand [her] homosexuality, they don’t have culture … Noemie is very tolerant, obviously, and she’s good friends with Hervé [who is gay], so in many ways she’s not like the people Andréa escaped from. But it’s as if she reminds Andréa of a certain kind of person that she doesn’t want to have anything to do with.”

Naturally, the pair’s marriage of convenience gets off to a rocky start, when Noémie derails a meeting with George Clooney (yes, the real one) by blundering into a critique of one of his movies. “Laure was amazing in that scene,” says Cottin. “She was shaking, because she hadn’t acted so much in English before. And when you’re acting in English in front of George Clooney there’s a reason to be nervous! But she did fantastically.”

Finally hiring Vincent Macaigne for the role, Andréa hits another bump in the road when she learns that the actor has beef with his co-star, Laetitia Costa, who is also his ex. Part of the film’s fun is seeing how the story works overtime to steer its ensemble back into the picture, with the conniving Mathias (Thibault de Montalembert) brought low when he loses Costa as a client to his daughter, Camille (Fanny Sidney), and his girlfriend Noémie to a classic bit of scheming that backfires in spectacular fashion. Meanwhile the affable Gabriel (Grégory Montel), Andréa’s former bestie who defected to a rival agency, tries to patch things up with his friend as Macaigne’s agent and Hervé snags a bit-part role in the movie that he hams up magnificently. Finally, ASK Agency’s retired grande dame Arlette (Liliane Rovère) comes late to the party with a surprise of her own up her sleeve.

When disaster strikes on set and the film looks set to go under, it’s Andréa’s friends from ASK she must turn to – an irony that’s not lost on Cottin, who knows very well how the character’s iron will can shade into selfishness. Ultimately, though, it’s Andréa’s ability to impose herself on the world that made her such a joy for Cottin to return to. “Andréa as a character doubts very little. When I’m in her shoes it’s like, ‘Ah! no more doubts’; I’m so sure of myself. She’s not trying to seduce anyone.”

Call My Agent! The Movie is out on Netflix from 10 September.