It is a dream in the kitchen, and in other parts of the house. He makes a bad tower of cream sheets. And he has movements like Jagger.
Unfortunately, Antonin Carême has been dead since the 1830s, but no one is perfect, right?
Most people have heard of Napoleon, but not many are relatives, even in France, with the history of this chef who cooked for him and his contemporaries, who rise from a poor kitchen child to become a French cooking bearer. Now a new one Apple TV+ Time drama, “Carême,” he argues that he was the first famous chef. There is even a “top chef” style kitchen contest in front of a panel of judges.
But for the environment, think of “the bear”, set in the post -revolutionary Paris. Carême even directs his staff at a time to say “Oui, chef”. (And we could totally imagine it, like Jeremy Allen White, In an advertisement advertisement of Calvin Klein, if they had existed at the time).
The series, which drops its first two episodes on Wednesday, also shows how Carême was not just a chef, or pastry teacher, or, well, sexual God. We observe how it has gotten into the political intrigue by its boss, the cunning Diplomatic Talleyrand, and used as a spy.
Even so, his goal was to be the best chef in the world. The first season of the program ends with an extraordinary outdoor coronation banquet that Carême creates for thousands of people. When he places, in triumph, a high white chef hat in the head for the first time, it is as if he were crowning and marking his ascent to the celebrity.
Benjamin Voisin, who is in virtually all scenes, plays Carême with a scarmed hair head, a golden arete and a bad arrogance that is consciously based on Mick Jagger, around 70s.
Director Martin Bourboulon says that the choice of paper was obvious once Voisin entered the audition hall.
“When you find the right actor for the right part, 80% of the work is done,” he says. “We were very impressed with his youthful attitude, but also with his attitude of rock ‘n’ roll. It is absolutely carême in real life, very attractive to all, a young man who perhaps sometimes is a bit insufficient or neglected.”
It may not be surprising that the program plays the sexual factor. The first scene establishes the tone with Carême and her lover, Henriette, in a food tasting session that is immediately transformed into sex, but then they call the service: Napoleon’s soldiers come to dinner.
Bourboulon says that the first scene was very intentional, establishing in a few minutes the three main themes of the series: food, sex and politics. Do we mention sex?
Of course, he was not an consummated chef, so Voisin received intensive lessons.
“I spent two months in the kitchen to learn the customs of the great French tradition,” says the actor. He focused on learning to realistically transmitting what Carême did better: invent wild fantasy dishes, especially extravagant dessert creations such as a huge pyramid, or the “croquembouche” tower, a cream cascade of cream. Carême is also known for inventing the Vol-Au-Vent, a ventilated French pastry housing.
But even so, this master’s manufacturer can even cut an onion correctly when he gets to work in his first great cooking work. The work of teaching him falls to the talented Sous-Chef in the kitchen of Talleyrand, Agathe (Alice da Luz).
Da Luz trained with Voisin in the kitchen brigade at Ferrandi’s culinary school in Paris, and greatly improved his skill set. “We really learned the choreography of a kitchen, we really learned technique,” she says. “And today I can boast of cutting the onions at a crazy speed.”
The actors had a dream work space: production spent six weeks building a huge and aerated kitchen where they work for Talleyrand, unlike narrow and smoked kitchens that would be more historically precise.
Spectators may feel the need to review their history. The show takes place shortly after Napoleon took political power in 1799 and became the first consul, on the way to declare himself later to the emperor.
The actors also had to review.
Voisin says he knew about “the victories and defeats of Bonaparte”, but he had to learn from scratch the history of Carême.
Lyna Khoudri, who plays Mysteros Henriette, who may or may not be on her lover’s side, says: “We are making a series about the inheritance of French culinary art, a story I did not know. I discovered why we are so famous for our kitchen in France.”
Da Luz had studied the period at school, but submerged more deeply once he was chosen. There was not much to read about Agathe, but she read everything he could find. And then, she says: “I let my imagination go,” inspired to get a woman out of the shadows in history.
Jérémie Renier, who plays Talleyrand (real name Charles Maurice by Talleyrand-Périgord), also participated in extensive research. “He is a character who has taken a thousand lives,” he said, “who lived almost a century of history, at a time when people were guillotined by not much. So … it must have been very intelligent.”
The show, for Renier, is largely on ambition. “All these characters have a goal, a dream to achieve,” he says. “The question is, what are we ready to win or lose to achieve this dream?”
The production is lush throughout the season, starting with the beautiful country houses: the filmmakers explored 60 of them and chose 12. They created new services for dinner to dress the tables and made 3,000 candles to light all the candelabras, different tones for different rooms. There were 96 vases of fresh flowers at all times in Talleyrand’s house, according to production notes.
As for the costumes, some 1,000 of them were made from scratch, because the filmmakers had a specific vision of the clothing that was not accurate of the period but not completely modern.
Then there was that crazy banquet that ends the season. When filming in the PARC of Saint-Cloud, which has dramatic sources, the production created a giant tent covered with “an extraordinary velvet amount”, and loaded the tables with food, including a 60-kilo lamb leg (132 pounds) and a 50 kilos tuna (110 pounds).
They also made 5,000 creams of cream, which met in large and imposing structures, with a new emperor, but also the first celebrity chef of the world.
