Since the pandemic, actors have never been so busy rummaging through their memory boxes. In this summer series, La Presse asks seasoned performers to comment on landmark roles in their careers. Today, actress Evelyne Brochu shares with us some of her best performances in theatre, film and television.
Her first significant role
Lechy in L'échange, by Paul Claudel, which I played when I left the Conservatoire, at the Auditions du Quat'Sous, under the direction of Patricia Nolin. It’s funny to name Lechy because it’s not a professional production. But I felt a click, a magic, a flame when I did it. It was a key to getting into the business. What’s more, several people in the business saw me play, including producer André Monette who called me later to audition for La promesse. I spent five years playing in this TV series on TVA, at the very beginning of my career. It’s great training to shoot about 15 scenes a day with experienced performers like Louise Turcot, Germain Houde, Sébastien Delorme… I absorbed all the craftsmanship of the profession. I learned the grammar of television. When I won a Gemini award for my role in La promesse, I thanked André Monette. André loves going to the theatre. He has given several little-known young actors, whom he used to see in the theatre, the chance to make television.
The role that the audience most often talks to her about
Delphine in @orphanblack. It’s a science fiction series, with very strong female characters. My character is a doctor and in love with one of the clones [played by Tatiana Maslany]. She wants to cure her sick girlfriend. Since it’s co-produced with several countries and the BBC, the series has been seen in about 170 countries. […] There are people who live in countries where homosexuality is criminal. The couple formed by these two heroines gave them the courage to assume their identity. Many young girls became attached to my character and have been following my career ever since.
A role that made her grow artistically and humanly
Rose in Café de Flore, by Jean-Marc Vallée. I was so happy during this shooting, I wished it would never end. The dance scene to Elisapie Isaac’s music, Jean-Marc slipped it into the film three days before shooting it. I had to learn the choreography in a hurry to show it to the 75 extras. His cinema is full of poetry and incursions into what is sacred in life, moments charged with emotion and sensuality. We always want to say yes to Jean-Marc Vallée. It’s not a job, to work with this director. It’s a deeply human experience. And this film has allowed me to have my manager in Los Angeles and my agent in Paris to open my career internationally.
A role in the theater she dreams of playing one day
Medea, Hedda Gabler and also play Lechy in a real production. Three roles of wounded, betrayed, angry women. There’s a lot of talk about sexual misconduct these days. Victims who say they froze in front of their attackers. They felt bad, but they froze. Why do these women feel powerless in these situations? Because, unlike men, we’ve been raised never to antagonize people, always to be nice, desirable. A bartender is washing glasses behind the counter and is told by her boss and customers: “Well, smile, gorgeous!” So playing a powerful role like Medea, a larger-than-life character who’s been expressing women’s rage for centuries, is very liberating.
The strangest role she’s played in her 15-year career
From a woman who thinks she has a honeycomb in her breast in the short film The Nest. In 2014, I received a call from David Cronenberg, who offered me the opportunity to star in this short film he made at home in his garage in Toronto, to be included in an exhibition about him. With an extremely small team: a make-up artist and her family. Cronenberg plays the surgeon who has to operate on my character. He filmed himself with a GoPro camera attached to his head. His son took the sound. It’s a strange offer and I hesitated before accepting. There is frontal nudity and the film will remain on the web. But I thought, what would Tilda Swinton or Kate Winslet do? I can’t refuse a film experience with a master of the seventh art. It only happens once in a lifetime.
The next role on her agenda
Paris Police 1900, a series for Canal+, due out in January 2021. I will also shoot season 2 in France next spring with my family [Evelyne Brochu has a 2-year-old son and is expecting twins next November]. It’s a very well-produced and written historical series, with very good actors, mostly known in the theatre, including members of the Comédie-Française. I play Marguerite Steinheil, President Félix Faure’s mistress, in 1899. He is famous because he died in office, at the presidential palace, almost in the arms of his mistress.
between playing the mc in an awful embarrassingly fake woke fake feminist mcu show or playing a gay mc in a 16+ season long lowkey homophobic canadian show that will never end and making bad soundcloud music on the side i feel like the maslany siblings made some monkey’s paw typa deal to become famous
Tatiana Maslany was literally insane for playing like 12 different people with the same face and then interacting with multiple versions of herself for five whole seasons
she really Did That™ and we are all incredibly grateful
No! No, but here’s the important thing! She did it so flawlessly, that you would actually forget these characters are the same actress.
I found myself feeling bad for the actor who plays Alison’s husband, because “he never gets to work with Maslany,” because in my head I kept equating her with Sarah, when literally he only worked with Maslany!
The special effects were so seemless, and her performances were so flawless that we have never seen this gimmick done this effectively, this naturally. And I don’t think we ever will again.
Shedeserved that emmy.
It’s impossible to describe how phenomenally good a job Maslany did with these characters. Like, it wasn’t just that she played every one of these characters so genuinely and distinctly that you forgot they were the same actress. It was also that the characters, being clones, would deceive people by playing each other.
Alison would be on the screen, and you’d be like, “that’s Alison”. Then Sarah would be on the screen, and you’d be like, “that’s Sarah”. Then someone who looked exactly like Sarah would be on the screen, and you’d be like, “Oh, Alison is pretending to be Sarah.” And some of the clones were better at pretending to be each other than other clones were. And you could always tell who you were looking at and who they were trying to imitate.
Tatiana Maslany is such a fucking powerhouse of an actress they could have just given her some green facepaint, shot her like Lucy lawless in Xena and maybe stuck her on a box every time she walked through a doorway and I would have bought it with my whole heart
Original Size: 210 x 297mm Program: Adobe Photoshop CC
I only recently installed my tablet properly and started attempting to art, so here’s my Helena attempt. There are some problems I’m hoping to fix but, as this is my send attempt drawing someone with a tablet on photoshop, I’d rather just get better as I go then to keep fixing things. As she’s one of my favs, I’m glad I’ve given her ago. I used a different brush than my first piece which I haven’t uploaded as I might add something to it. But I still haven’t found my style in terms of drawing so. I don’t know whether I should make a new blog just for my art but we’ll see.
