Riad Sattouf: “Vincent Lacoste will be my Antoine Doinel, but in comics” – Le Monde

In The Young Actor, Riad Sattouf looks back on his meeting with Vincent Lacoste, main actor of his first film, The Beautiful Kids (2009). A quasi-subsidiary relationship binds the creator of The Arab of the future (five volumes published by Allary since 2014) to one who has since become one of the most prominent French actors.

When did this idea of ​​telling the life of Vincent Lacoste in comics come about?

Riad Sattouf: Immediately after choosing it for The Beautiful Kids. The cinema was not a choice on his part, he had passed the casting to be like his friends. I really liked this debut. In the cinema, you meet a lot of people who have a lot of ambition, and who are unhappy because they have not managed to get the roles they were hoping for. I liked the idea that Vincent came out of nowhere and that he didn’t have the same desires as the others. As he evolved, I saw the reality change around him, because of his notoriety. There was something magical about it. I thought it would be great to make a book out of it.

Vincent Lacoste, you didn’t like the way you were portrayed in “Les Beaux Gosses”. Why go back to that time?

Vincent Lacoste: I was 14 when the movie was shot and initially didn’t understand what it was. I thought I was going to play a seductive young college student whose love stories are told! When I found myself at the costume trials, with some sort of old mud-speckled sweater and a cheesy haircut, I was sure this movie was going to ruin my life. There, the project is totally different. I no longer have the same relationship to shame as I did back then. On the contrary, it is a pleasure to immerse myself in this period. I thought, however, that Riad would never do this book: I’m not Leonardo DiCaprio either.

R. S .: I find it interesting to tell how chance can sometimes decide a life. This happened to me personally, as I relate in The Arab of the future, when my grandmother found that one of the characters I had drawn as a child looked like Pompidou: the admiration she had for me made me want to become a draftsman. This is also what I adore in the story of Vincent, who was not the best of those I had auditioned. It is now in great demand by directors. He is popular, but not ultra-mega-popular. There are people who do not recognize him in the street. This in-between is fascinating to explore.

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