“I feel like I went to the washing machine”: Alexandre Astier and “The colossal shoot” by Kaamelott 2

Whether it runs in pajamas, apnea or in front of 78 actors, the interpreter of King Arthur comes out of a hundred days of very intense shots. He confided in Axolot (Patrick Baud).

“Six years after the interview for world hunters, I received Alexandre Astier On the stage of the Théâtre du Chêne Noir in Avignon, and we discussed for an hour and a half, explains Patrick Baud by sharing his long interview with the actor, screenwriter, director, director and composer. The result is now in your hands, I hope you like it! “

During this long exchange, they tackle various subjects: “We are talking about life, death and the rest”he likes the title of the video. Between two reflections on the education or development of artificial intelligence, the creator of Kaamelott obviously did not escape questions about The second part of his sagawhose first part ETS expected at the cinema on October 22.

Alexandre Astier: “I tell myself that Kaamelott was made for cinema”

Alexandre Astier had already entrusted in Firstfor our January 2025 issue, when he was still in the midst of Kaamelott Second part. Started during last summerhe will finally lasted a hundred days, the triple of the usual shots of French productions – which is logical for a suite in two parts. He entrusts to Axolot being washed down by this “Colossal shooting”. He says he has directed no less than “78 actors” In “Lots of studio, a lot of sets”. “There will be surprises”he promises about his casting.

“I feel like I have gone to the washing machine. But it’s okay!”, he also said about this shoot “monster”before telling a very special scene to design:

“”I had to get into a small machine that was to go underwater. I had invented in the scenario a kind of underwater proto of the ancient era. When I arrived in the country where we had to do all of this, I was told that the guys had not really managed to build the machine for which they had been sent to them.

You risk drowning! Do we still try? Are we not trying? In fact, I had to learn to plunge into apnea. I had to do it without a machine. In the huge hubbub that a shooting implies -you have to answer 2000 questions per day, these are crazy schedules, a crazy rhythm, and there it was a shooting all in English and complicated -, in the middle of all that, suddenly, the production said: ‘We have to fuck peace in Alexander, he must meditate!’

Because to dive, you have to meditate! I don’t know if there are some who dive among you? You have to meditate. You have to learn to hold. I came to increase the minutes without breathing, I got to something like more than four, but I had to give me peace! When you tell a shooting of 90 people, ‘Get peace, he breathes’it was incredible.“”

A Tom Cruise cascade For Alexandre Astier? If he does not want to spoil the rest of his story too much, he returns for a moment on Kaamelott 2 When a public member thanks him for the Book V From his series, during which Arthur is at the lowest psychologically. Explaining that this treatment of depression in a fiction helped her to treat herself, she opens up to new revelations of the king’s interpreter, who says that her character will again know very dark phases in this suite. He will even pass “All the first part of the film in pajamas.”

“In Babygrow, even!”, Astier has fun. “He’s not well, the guy, he insists. (…) How do we write Arthur? At one point, you have to tell yourself a little yourself. It’s very clear with Arthur because I play it, because he has my face, he has things that are always cousinades of things that have happened to me. Even if it’s not true, that I don’t know that. Besides, Arthur’s great panic is not having a child. It didn’t happen to me. But I remembered the drama I felt when I thought I couldn’t have it, at 20. It must be built around something like that. In any case, I deliver real sensations, real emotions, real dilems. The first thing is to wonder if it has a value. And in fact, to sign things, it all has one. Sign things sincerely. It is always interesting when someone went to the bottom of himself, that he was looking for in his trash cans and that he made something of it.

(…) I have no confidence in myself. I constantly doubt. I want to give up everything. All the time. Finally, I don’t give up, but it tires me in advance. (…) I live very clearly with the 50/50 possibility that all I do is shit, huh. All. It’s sincere. Very clearly, I always find it below what I would like it to be. Afterwards, you have to live with it. “

Attention, spoilers: These words stick to the commentary of First part by Alexandre Astier. Within the bonuses of the film, he specifically details his end, explaining in what state the public will find Arthur.

For him, Kaamelott’s first length ends with a new suicide attempt by his protagonist. It is a pivot for the rest, the king being saved at the last minute by two young people, Gareth d’Orcanie (Thomas Neyret) and Mehgan (Jeanne Astier), who manage to give him hope. Enough to get out of the castle during destruction.

“For me, this vision will continue Arthur all his life. This vision, this look, of Furadja (Salwa Al Hajri), this trauma of seeing her pierced right (…). He killed a woman behind his back because it is his only answer to all this violence and in my opinion, in the fact that he is depressed, and that he cannot overcome this depression, this event in his youth has a lot.

(Arthur) is therefore unable to take revenge a second time and he will probably no longer be able to kill someone. What Lancelot (Thomas Cousseau) Takes for weakness and incompetence, cowardise, but which in fact is more constructed than that. (Arthur) tried to commit suicide at the end of season 5, saved by Lancelot. He saw Caesar’s suicide when he was younger in season 6, he is haunted by the idea of ​​his own death and he tries to kill himself by staying lying on the table while the castle will fall on the face.

He is ashamed of his desire to die in front of young people who show will, courage, recklessness. (…) And in addition to that, he has to come out of it, otherwise they will die with him. So it was important for me that he was surprised by young people who have vital energy that he no longer has. ”

We will know more in October 2025, at the time of the release of Kaamelott – Second part: Part 1 in the cinema.

Excluded – Alexandre Astier on Kaamelott Second part: “It ends up feeling the Roussi …”