8 Thursday April 28 2022 | the timesarts
T
he long-awaited
English version of the
acclaimed French
comedy series Dix
pour cent (or Call My
Agent! to you and me)
arrives this week and
I, for one, can’t wait.
Remade for the British market as
Ten Percent, with eight new scripts
by the Bafta-winning John Morton
(he of Twenty Twelve and W1A) and
featuring celebrity cameos from
David Harewood, Dominic West
and Helena Bonham Carter,
it’s nonetheless likely to be
a tough gig; the original,
chronicling life in a chic
Parisian talent agency, is a
global phenomenon. It’s not
only wickedly funny but,
as most actors will attest,
frighteningly accurate.
As with its forerunner, Ten
Percent follows the staff of a
rapacious showbiz firm — here
played by, among others, Jack
Davenport and Lydia Leonard — as
they spend their days and nights doingand cold running secretaries and
expense accounts that would dwarf
the annual budget of most regional
theatres, down to one-man bands run
from somebody’s spare room in
Surbiton. The biggest ones (as in Call
My Agent!) are the great white sharks
of the business of show, hoovering up
all the hottest stars and the tastiest
scripts. Only when they’ve gorged on
the choicest cuts for their own client
list can the remaining carcass be
picked over by the minnows further
down the food chain.
Indeed, some agents are so exclusive
that even their clients rarely get to
speak to them in person — although
when they do, you can be sure
it’ll be life-changing. One leading
light is known as Halley’s Comet
because “while you only see her
once every 75 years, when you do it’ll
be spectacular”.I can’t wait for
Ten Percent...
Wait, why wasn’t
I asked to be in it?
As the UK remake of the French series Call My Agent!
hits our screens, actor Michael Simkins explains why
agents are the great white sharks of showbusiness
Helena Bonham Carter
is one of the stars
making a cameo in
Ten Percentdeals, poaching clients from rival
agencies (and each other), seducing
hopeful wannabes with promises
of stardom, and smoothing the
grotesquely inflated egos of the stars
under their charge. And that’s even
before they’ve attended to their
chaotic personal lives.
But the programme shines a stark
spotlight on the strange danse
macabre that exists between luvvies
and those who promote our careers.
Actors may like to advertise agents
as grasping parasites who rake
off 10 per cent in commission
of every penny we earn, but
the symbiotic relationship
is encapsulated by the
apocryphal story of two
elderly agents in a
restaurant, one of whom
spies John Gielgud at an
adjoining table. “See that
old bloke over there?” he
remarks to his colleague. “He’s
the bastard who takes 90 per cent
of my income.”
When I was starting out in the late
1970s, actors could just about get bywithout needing representation, but
nowadays, in the sterile, impersonal
age of self-tapes, automated casting
breakdowns and auditions on Zoom,
agents are pretty much the sole
portal through which all worthwhile
employment flows. They know where
the jobs are, they’re on first-name
terms with the movers and shakers,
and the more powerful and venal their
approach, the more likely they are to
be able to bust down the door for you
in your pursuit of fame, fortune and
Sam Mendes’s mobile number. The old
actors’ saying that changing your
agent is like changing deckchairs on
the Titanic may offer some glib
comfort to explain away failure, but
believe me, once you’re with an outfit
with genuine heft it’s funny how
quickly your prospects can change.
Agencies range from huge
international corporations with hot