Daniel Brühl had just started shooting the series “Becoming Karl Lagerfeld” last year in Paris, and he felt the eyes of the French crew on him. The German actor, who played the title role, was nervous. After his first few days on set, he returned to his dressing room to find a huge bouquet of, as he put it, “the biggest and reddest roses I’ve seen in my life.” There was not a single comment.
However, when Brühl later put the flowers in a vase at home, he saw that there was a card in between. “It said, ‘For Karlito, from Jacquot,’” he recalled in a video interview. “Nothing else.”
He realized that the gift came from his co-star Théodore Pellerin, a Canadian actor who plays Lagerfeld’s great love, Jacques de Bascher; Pellerin had signed the card with their characters’ nicknames. Brühl then knew that things would turn out well for him and the series, which revolves around the intense love story between the two men.
“Becoming Karl Lagerfeld,” which premieres Friday Hulu, is set largely in the 1970s, a decade that was crucial to Lagerfeld’s development as a fashion designer and to his personal evolution. It was before he formed his signature look: a sharp-angled figure, decked out in monochrome suits, high collars, black gloves – although the tinted glasses and signature ponytail make an appearance. Like Andy Warhol, another secret pop culture icon, Lagerfeld painstakingly crafted his public identity. Brühl said: “So who was the person before he became famous?”
Brühl briefly met Lagerfeld, who died in 2019, during a photo shoot about 20 years ago and remembers him as “very charming.” When Brühl had to become the designer, he did a deep dive and read, for example, about the many artistic areas Lagerfeld was interested in: “literature, art, architecture, design and fashion of course,” Brühl said. “I wasn’t bored for a second when I spent time with Karl Lagerfeld.”
Still, there had to be a way in, and for creator and showrunner Isaure Pisani-Ferry, it was the Bascher, who was 21 to the designer’s 38 when they met. “It was this moment in the ’70s when he fell in love, which means loss of control — and this is a man who needs to be in control,” Pisani-Ferry said of Lagerfeld in a video call.
The Bascher was the opposite, a dandy who enjoyed riotous laziness with an elegant insouciance. His slowness and tendency to excess fascinated and disturbed Lagerfeld, a workaholic who did not drink or use drugs, nor did he seem interested in sex. Lagerfeld later said yes never consummated their relationshipand a quirky seduction sequence is among the most moving scenes in the series.
Lagerfeld’s self-control translated into a constantly composed attitude. The show provides rare glimpses of his inner turmoil as he devours a lemon tart or a chocolate bar with pleasureless intensity. “Why is this person so guarded?” Brühl wondered. ‘What is he afraid of? Fear, as we know, is always such an interesting motive. But it was on the one hand fear and on the other hand extreme courage, because he found his way as a gay young German in the 1970s, when being German was not exactly the most attractive thing in Paris.
This was in stark contrast to Bascher, who came from a noble provincial family and easily integrated into the Parisian elite. Frustrated by Lagerfeld’s reluctance, the young dilettante simply sought his pleasure elsewhere, most infamously with Lagerfeld’s old enemy Yves Saint Laurent (Arnaud Valois), who became obsessed with him.
Although Saint Laurent has very little screen time in the series, he has an outsized impact. He continually haunts Lagerfeld, who was acutely aware of his own artistic shortcomings compared to his brilliant, groundbreaking rival.
“Lagerfeld was superior to those who surrounded him at the time, much more cultured and refined, and probably smarter and more of a strategist, but it was painful for him to see that he was not a genius,” says Raphaëlle Bacqué, a researcher. reporter for Le Monde. Bacqué’s biography, “Kaiser Karl,” inspired “Becoming Karl Lagerfeld,” and she is the show’s executive producer.
Lagerfeld’s complicated relationship with Saint Laurent was an important source of inspiration for Brühl, who has been working since his breakthrough role twenty years ago in the film “Goodbye Lenin!” has worked steadily in Europe and Hollywood. (His next projects include the upcoming HBO series “The Franchise” from Sam Mendes and Armando Iannucci and the film “Eden” with Ron Howard.)
“What always interests me in life is envy and jealousy, and as an actor this Mozart-Salieri dynamic with Saint Laurent was always a very strong, guiding motif,” Brühl said. “It explains a lot of his love, hate, frustration, motivation and the fire he had within himself to become someone. But there was a complex that never completely disappeared, because he knew that in the end, Saint Laurent will always be considered the god and the artist.”
When De Bascher slept with Saint Laurent, it complicated matters even more for Lagerfeld. Pisani-Ferry said: “You have mixed up the feelings and the professional, the need for recognition and the issue of sexuality all in this one phase of his life. to live.”
Lagerfeld supported De Bascher financially and introduced him to his circles. But he also benefited from the relationship professionally. The Bascher was a source of inspiration for Lagerfeld and provided a connection to the exuberant, creatively fertile nightlife of Paris. As Jérôme Salle, an executive producer who also directed three of the show’s six episodes, notes, Paris in the 1970s was a heady place.
“It was super creative, super crazy,” he said. “It was this magical moment between the sexual revolution and AIDS.”
De Bascher took full advantage of that window, and the show spends a lot of time with this proto-influencer who monetized his spare time as best he could.
“He was influential because of his style, his taste for nightlife and the freedom with which he lived his life,” Bacqué said. “Isaure is milder towards him, while I have mixed feelings: his laziness and his light-heartedness are annoying, but at the same time he is attractive.”
Everyone involved in “Becoming Karl Lagerfeld” agrees that regardless of the imbalance between Lagerfeld and de Bascher’s attitudes and abilities, their bond was real, even if it defied convention. Salle said that “for Jacques, the love is very sincere, and Karl loves Jacques as much as anyone.”
“What is very moving for me – and I talked about this a lot with Daniel and Théodore – is that this love story was indeed toxic,” he said. “But they did love each other.”
