Staying Fit
Photo Collage: MOA Staff; (Source: Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images)
Oscar-winning French actress Juliette Binoche, 59, makes a fashionable splash as Coco Chanel in the new Apple TV+ historical drama The New Look, premiering Feb. 14. Binoche shares the challenges of playing a real-life fashion legend, her thoughts on turning 60 and how she feels about her upcoming empty nest.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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Is it easier or more difficult to play a real person versus a fictional character?
Harder, especially when they’re not here anymore, because you cannot ask questions. So you feel responsible for what’s being said about the character you’re playing. You want to be accurate and give as much truth as possible, especially with [Coco], because she was hiding a lot of the past. It was difficult sometimes during the actual seven months of shooting because, in a TV series — I didn’t know before — you have these scripts quite late in the shooting [process]. So to reflect on it, to make sure that this is accurate ... I had to work a lot.
You wear some incredible costumes in the series. Are you a fashionista?
I appreciate [fashion] as an art form — the cuts or the choice of colors, the choice of material — very much. But I’m not obsessed with it. When I feel down, I don’t go out and buy tons of clothes. That’s not my thing. It was difficult in a way, because I couldn’t have the exact Chanel [pieces to wear] because of rights purposes. So we had to make the feeling of Chanel’s way of wearing [clothes and accessories]. I really enjoyed doing it.
Binoche, on left, stars as Coco Chanel in the Apple TV+ historical drama “The New Look.”
Apple TV+
Do you watch much television?
Not that much, because I work too much, and I love reading and I love other kinds of worlds. … I need to nourish myself in different ways. I go and see plays and I go see exhibitions.
What do you like to read?
I love spiritual books. I need them because it nourishes my soul, and I have questions about life that I feel like I urgently need to understand this or that and be inspired by different kinds of spirituality. It’s always been like that since I was a young adult. But still, as I’m going through time, it feels more and more urgent in a way.
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