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Cannes Confidential: Meet Jamie Bamber

Sammi

So the first question is: Tell me about your role in Cannes Confidential.

Jamie Bamber

So I play a guy whose everyone calls Harry but actually you don’t really know who he is. And he happens to literally run into Kenny Demasi, who is the local police detective. As she hears There’s been a murder of a famous Banksy style artist. They have a road collision almost. And they get off on the wrong foot, Harry’s infuriatingly climbing, and she’s quite garlic and intense and angry at him. And he proposes a solution. He’s got a mechanic for her, but she is not content with that. And they leave on infuriating terms only for him to pop up in at her destination, which is that the victim sister’s house with a smoothie in hand. So he’s someone who just keeps on popping up everywhere that she turns and therefore is a suspect in the original murder case. But actually, she realizes by the end of the show that there’s more to him than that, and that he is hiding a very checkered shady past. And in order to keep her at bay, and her inquisitive detectives mind at bay, he throws her a bone, which is that he knows something about the corruption charge against her police commissioner dad who finds himself in prison. So they each have something on the other. And they’re each trying to protect themselves from the other. And essentially, the show is about this odd couple as they help each other to solve one particular intrigue, which is the incarceration of the Father but also all these cases along the way, which Harry’s able to chip in with and that infuriates in turn, Camille’s actual partner who is a genuine detective, and also has a romantic design on her colleague. So it’s a very awkward professional and Mrs. Potentially amorous triangle. Yeah.

Sammi

How was the role initially described to you?

Jamie Bamber

Do you know initially it? I’m not sure it was described, I read the script, Chris Murray’s script. And it was very different from the one that we now have a completely different case. It was much more of a two hander. And the pitch I suppose was this is a male female version of the persuaders. A show I hadn’t really watched that much of but I’m a huge Roger Moore, Tony Curtis fan, I love I love that effortless wrap party. The way they get it under each other’s skin and gradually, you know that that sort of genre of odd couple, bickering and bantering and growing in affection for each other through the animosity. So it was really that that attracted me. But yeah, I read a read an entire script before it was pitched.

Sammi

And how did you prepare?

Jamie Bamber

How did I prepare by working on Harry’s facility with words and dialect and the dialogue, really, and I was given quite a lot of leeway in terms of polishing the scripts that came through, because I really wanted to hold on to that quality, that he has a facility with words. He’s kind of a walking human Wikipedia, but he uses it as a barrier. To stop people asking too many questions about him. If he can answer enough questions about the world, then people won’t ask questions about him. So it was that really, that I worked on that sort of endless facility with words and thinking of jokes that were potentially lying somewhere around the dialogue that was in the script to come up with new stuff. And hopefully adding fuel to this infuriating quality that he has towards his is would be partner in the show played by Lucy.

Sammi

Yeah, and the next question is, what was it like working with such a great cast?

Jamie Bamber

Amazing. So Lucy Lucas, very well known in France for a TV show she’s been doing for 13 years. So she’s, you know very much and is a popstar in France, and everyone knows her. So I was very much the sort of interloper into their world, although I’m very comfortable in France and lived there. But yeah, to be playing opposite them was just a treat. I mean, Lucy is so adorable, that, you know, it’s very easy to sort of, you know, strike up some sort of chemistry with her. But the other element to it obviously was was there was there Having to speak English so, you know, I wanted to help them as much as I could. We had played well Bianca, who was a wonderful French actor and a friend of Lucy’s who is there as a dialect coach. And so with Pei dweller myself, we were constantly just making sure that you know, this triangle relationship works that that the humor works that each of us was equipped with what we needed to make the character stand out. And that that was our real challenge day in day out was just making sure that strange triangle really fist

Sammi

Yeah. Without giving too much away, what are some of the things you’re looking forward to people see on the show?

Jamie Bamber

A darker side to Harry. I’m looking forward to people seeing all different aspects of of that part of France. We go to the Edo seminar gate where the man in the iron mask was held. We go to the casino, the famous majestic hotel right on the closet right next door to the Bellagio festival where the great Cannes Film Festival is held. And yeah, also we go into the, you know the streets behind the beachfront in Cannes where the real people live. And we go to the famous MGC, which is like a youth center. Right on the beach at La Baca, which is one of the poorer parts of town. Yeah, and you hopefully you get a sense of this complicated place that is very much a short window to all the glitz and the glamour of the world’s property, fashion, movies, film and entertainment through much of the year but actually exists as this fishing village that’s been thrust onto the world stage. And hopefully that’s the thing that people will will discover is the real character of what it might be like to live in Canada long after the tourists have gone.