Murder Club: “Thiphaine Daviot, for me, she’s a genius!”

Director Renaud Bertrand confides to Première his admiration for the little-known 38-year-old actress, who stars in the series broadcast on M6.

“Good for us if no one has noticed yet!” Thiphaine Daviot is not a star. At least not yet. And yet, it has been more than a decade since her slender blonde figure with her expressive softness has attracted attention. Thanks to Murder Clubtoday the spotlight is on her. It must be said that in the detective series – which begins this evening on M6 – Thiphaine Daviot burst onto the screen, to the point of being awarded the Best Actress Prize at the last Séries Mania festival. A well-deserved coronation, as the actress takes the spotlight as soon as she appears on screen in the series, despite the colossus Cantona at her side.

In Muder Clubshe plays an inspector who sets out on the trail of a sordid serial killer, but in the tone of a police comedy. “In the profiling genre, there has already been Mindhunter. we weren't going to do better, so we tried something different, a little offbeat, almost like Killing Eve” the director confides to Première Renaud Bertrand. “We navigate between the macabre and pure comedy. It's perilous, because on the one hand we have to believe in it, to be in stress and empathy with our heroes. And on the other hand you have to allow yourself to be delirious.”. For this, the director was able to count on the magnetic Thiphaine Daviotwhich cannibalizes the entire series with its priceless deadpan acting, capable of putting a jubilant distance with each of the macabre situations of the investigation.

“Thiphaine sometimes has this propensity to fall into the craziest comedy, and with others it would fall flat… But she is so great, that we can just let her do it“, analyzes its director before admitting:

“My operational manager was sometimes doubtful. He said to me: 'Isn't that a bit too much?' But no, absolutely not. For me, he’s a genius!”

Renaud Bertrand explains how he admires the solar energy of his actress: “I have participated in a lot of comedy filming and I have rarely seen it in real life. She has a gift, and also an intelligence for comedy, in the sense that comedy is something very instinctive. You shouldn’t over-mentalize things. She has both. It’s very rare!”

Passed through the cinema (we saw her in Eyjafjallajokull in 2013 or Hippocrates in 2014), Thiphaine Daviot revealed herself on television at the end of the 2010s, in the too short series HP of OCS, Hospital UFO in which she played a young psychiatric intern, alongside a certain Raphaël Quenard.

Then we found her in various series – not always funny – like the thriller White areathe horrific Marianne or the drama of TF1 The Hikers. She was also spectacularly funny and touching in Detoxin 2022, short but charming social comedy broadcast by Netflix.

“Thiphaine lets herself be completely led. Sometimes you have to dose her facial expressions, sometimes you just let her do it and it goes beyond all rationality“, finished Renaud Bertrandwho explains having precisely thought about putting Eric Cantona facing her, “as an immutable and charismatic block, which would be its exact opposite. There is this contrast in the physicality, in the rhythm… Together they form an opposing duo that works.”

Thiphaine Daviot probably still won't be a star after Murder Club. But we already know that we will see her again next year, in the ambitious Ghostsa fantastic comedy from TF1 in which she will play a ghost…