- The Guardian
8 Friday 30 August 2019
Double-edged
sword
I
t may be the hottest day on
record in Paris, but no one
appears to have told
Emmanuelle Seigner.
Striding through the lobby
of the Royal Hotel on the
Champs Elysées in black jeans, a
David Bowie T-shirt and leather boots- a gift from her husband, the fi lm
director Roman Polanski – she is the
personifi cation of French cool. Heads
turn, newspapers twitch, bell hops
sweat a little more profusely. Is the
star of Frantic and The Diving Bell and
the Butterfl y aware of the eff ect she
still has on people?
“People see me that way because,
when I was very young, I played those
type of roles,” says the 53-year-old,
with a shrug. “But it’s not the way I
am. I feel more like a tomboy.”
Seigner may not see herself as
her musical ambitions might still
be fulfi lled. She got on a plane to
meet Lionel Limiñana and his wife,
Marie, who plays drums, at their
studio in Cabestany in the south of
France. They recorded a song for the
band’s album Shadow People, with
Newcombe producing. “The result
was so good that he suggested we
should all form a band together.”
If Seigner supplies l’Épée with
Hollywood star wattage, Newcombe
provides the rock’n’roll credentials.
As the Brian Jonestown Massacre’s
charismatic leader during the 90s,
he operated as, eff ectively, a one-
man Rolling Stones. His status as
rock’s most mercurial madman
was captured in Ondi Timoner’s
classic 2004 rockumentary, Dig!.
Newcombe has yet to watch it.
“There are more interesting
versions of the fi lm, but a lot of the
industry people didn’t sign off on it,”
he says. “When people say there’s a
crime element to the entertainment
industry, they’re not kidding. When
[the record companies] were trying
to sign us, it was essentially Swiss
hookers coming to see us with bags
of cocaine. And I never even liked
sniff s, particularly.”
Now clean for a decade and
living contentedly in Berlin, he
enthuses about European culture
and music’s ability to expand the
mind – he reveals that he recently
gave his techno-loving six-year-old,
Wolfgang, a copy of Radiohead’s
Amnesiac. “We are living in very
culturally insular times, so it
feels really good to be swimming
against the tide,” he says of l’Épée’s
collaborative, bilingual approach.
Perched next to each other on a
sofa in the hotel lounge, Newcombe
and Seigner have the look of a
hopelessly mismatched couple on
First Date s. While Newcombe – with
his straggly hair, shades and beads- still has a frazzled air , the teetotal
Seigner takes pride in abstinence.
“It wasn’t diffi cult for me to avoid
[drink and drugs] because I was
never attracted to it,” she explains.
“ It doesn’t mean I’m conservative.
I’d rather go running.”
What unites them is a refusal to
compromise. Having waged a one-
man war on the music industry ,
Newcombe now produces records at
his Cobra studio and runs the label
A Recordings , which has put out
more than 180 releases.
Seigner, meanwhile, turned down
the chance of international stardom
at 19, having starred opposite
Harrison Ford in Frantic. “The head
of Warner Bros really liked me and
wanted me to go to Hollywood and
sign a contract to do three movies,”
she says. “ I knew they were going to
use me as the sexy French girl. That’s
not interesting to me. So I left and
I lived in Ibiza for fi ve years. I was
always a rebel. I was never licking
anybody’s ass to make movies.”
L’Épée’s fi rst single, Dreams, tells
the story of a woman who responds
to being harassed by a man by eating
him alive. Is this Seigner’s comment
on the #MeToo movement?
“It’s a complicated subject,” she
says. That’s quite an understatement,
given that, in 1978, her husband was
convicted of raping a 13-year-old girl
in the US. Just this week, the Venice
fi lm festival was criticised for
including Polanksi’s latest movie.
Even the president of the festival’s
international jury said she would not
be congratulating him.
“I’m a feminist,” Seigner says,
“and I think it is very important that
women have power and are paid
as much as men and have the same
chances and choices. I have always
fought for that. But, at the same
time, I don’t like it when we slide
into puritanism. That’s a bit silly,
I think, and not good for women.
Of course, there has been a lot of
abuse – too much – and maybe it
has to go all this way to be right.
I don’t know.”
Seigner explains that she had
her own experiences of sexual
impropriety, having been cast by
Jean-Luc Godard in Détective at 18.
“I remember, on the fi rst day, he
said: ‘Take off your T-shirt.’ So I said :
‘Yeah, OK.’ On the second day, he
said: ‘You go naked.’ I said: ‘No, I’m
not going to go naked,’ and I left.
Then after I came back, a week later,
he said: ‘You won your panties.’”
What was her response to that?
“It’s life, you know. Men were always
like that.”
Did she often fi nd herself having
to stand up for herself? “I was always
a warrior. I never took any shit from
anyone, even when I was 14. Unless
somebody had a knife on my neck,
which never happened, thank God, I
never had problems. But I guess not
everybody is the same. I can’t talk
about other people.”
Having been married to Polanski
for 30 years – the couple have two
children together, Morgane and Elvis- she is frustrated by the release
of Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon
a Time in Hollywood , based on
events surrounding the death of her
husband’s fi rst wife, Sharon Tate,
in 1969.
“I’m not very happy about this
movie because it is very disturbing
for my children,” she says with a
sigh. “But what can I do? Nothing.”
Last year, Seigner’s loyalty to her
husband saw her reject an invitation
to the Academy of Motion Picture
Arts and Sciences – the awards body
behind the Oscars – following its
decision to expel Polanski.
“For my career, it would have
been much easier for me to accept
it,” she says. “But I couldn’t look at
myself in the mirror [if I had].”
L’Épée’s debut album, Diabolique, is
released on 6 September
She’s a French fi lm
legend. He’s roc k ’s
mercurial madman.
Together, they are
l’Épée. Emmanuelle
Seigner and Anton
Newcombe talk to
Paul Moody about
drugs, #MeToo and
Roman Polanski
PHOTOGRAPH: MAGALI DELPORTE/THE GUARDIANa femme fatale, but Diabolique,
the debut album by her new band,
l’Épée (the Sword), certainly does.
A heady combination of 60s psych,
yé-yé, lounge and drone rock, over
which she purrs lyrics such as “I’m
the Queen of Furs/The Earthquake
Lady”, it’s as seductive as Serge
Gainsbourg and as druggily alluring
as the Velvet Underground. It also
comes with the obsessive eye for
detail you would expect from her
collaborators on the project —
Anton Newcombe from the Brian
Jonestown Massacre and French
garage rock duo the Limiñanas.
“I come from a theatre
background, but I grew up loving
Lou Reed, the Stooges and the
Rolling Stones,” she says. “I always
wanted to be in a band like this, but
I started modelling at 14 and my life
took a diff erent path.”
Throughout her fi lm career,
Seigner has released commercially
successful pop albums – with
French outfi t Ultra Orange in 2007
and her own solo records ( Dingue
in 2010 and Distant Lover in 2014).
But it was only in 2016, when she
heard the Limiñanas’ track Down
Underground while watching an
episode of Gossip Girl with her
daughter Morgane , that she realisedThe studio
wanted me as the
sexy French girl.
It didn’t interest
me – I was
always a rebel
Emmanuelle
Seigner and
Anton Newcombe
are l’Épée
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