![]() ![]() “We’re not as cool as the French, so it’s a bit more bumbling,” is how Leonard sums it up. Wisely, they enlisted John Morton – the writer behind sitcoms Twenty Twelve and W1A, known for their distinctively stilted and jargon-heavy dialogue – to convert the stylish original into a workplace comedy brimming with deadpan cringe. ![]() In fact, translating a show that felt quintessentially French (chic, witty but also frequently melodramatic and farcical) into something recognisably British was the mission of the entire Ten Percent team. ‘When I was young, you’d made it when you were on the front of FHM. It was all expenses and boozy lunches.” She even briefly worked for one of them at the time, answering the phone at a media company, and has channelled the swagger she witnessed into her portrayal of Rebecca. “I’d ride on their coattails when I was 24 and they were in their 30s. Instead of her experiences with agents, she thought back to a collection of “hardcore Soho media women” she befriended through her cousin in the early 00s. To really make her mark as Rebecca, Leonard looked to her own life for inspiration. (Very much not cut from the same cloth is Leonard, who is palpably nervous and prone to second-guessing herself: constantly revising answers to even the most innocuous of questions.) That was especially important considering the two characters are very much cut from the same cloth: Rebecca and Andréa are both incredibly self-possessed, high-powered women with chaotic love lives and a knack for intimidating junior staff – and quite often the viewer, too. ![]() “I was really quite in love with Camille Cottin,” she explains.Īs besotted as she was with her Parisian counterpart, Leonard knew she must scour all trace of Cottin from her mind, immediately tearing herself away from the original show, “because it’s not helpful if you’re going to be approaching something for yourself”. She also happens to be one of the French actor’s many devotees – and it is her legacy Leonard is most worried about living up to. In the UK version, renamed Ten Percent, Leonard is playing the Andréa character, Rebecca. The show’s breakout star, Camille Cottin – who plays the cool, acid-tongued talent agent Andréa – graduated from domestic success to global recognition over the course of the show’s four series. She is about to play the lead in the British remake of Call My Agent!, the French comedy series that rocketed to worldwide smash-hit status during the pandemic. Whether Leonard is in fact nervous, terrified or thrilled – or any combination of the three – it would be completely understandable. Sign up to our Inside Saturday newsletter for an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the making of the magazine’s biggest features, as well as a curated list of our weekly highlights. ![]()
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