What It’s Like to Act With a Puppet In a French Avant-Garde Rock Opera

If Simon Helberg ever thought his greatest acting challenges were behind him, that moment would have had to have been before he read the script for Annette, the latest from Leos Carax, the singular French director responsible for daring, demanding films like Lovers on the Bridge and Holy Motors. In theaters now and on Amazon Prime August 20th, Annette spins a tragic tale of love and parenthood between Henry (Adam Driver), a self-loathing stand-up comic, and Ann (Marion Cotillard), an opera singer who’s earned renown for her death scenes. Their tumultuous relationship unfolds over the course of a rock opera powered by songs written by brothers Ron and Russell Mael, who’ve performed together as Sparks for going on 50 years. (You might have caught Edgar Wright’s excellent documentary The Sparks Brothers, released earlier this year.)

Helberg, who is best known for his twelve seasons as Howard Wolowitz on The Big Bang Theory, plays a character known only as “The Accompanist,” a pianist and aspiring conductor in love with Ann. Helberg actually once trained as a jazz pianist and kept his skills sharp even after acting pulled him away from music. He also played a pianist in his last film role, opposite Meryl Streep in Stephen Frears’ Florence Foster Jenkins in 2016. Annette is his first role of any kind since The Big Bang Theory drew to a close in 2019. To land it, he even took the extraordinary step of obtaining French citizenship when it seemed like this might be necessary to meet the quota needed for the film to qualify as a European production.

Annette lives on the razor’s edge dividing dark comedy and high tragedy, and required Helberg to evoke pathos while acting opposite the sad-eyed marionette who appears as the titular child character for much of the film. He was also asked to conduct an orchestra of professional musicians and tussle with Jean-Claude Van Damme’s stunt double. Helberg spoke with GQ about his new passport and the challenges of figuring out how to realize Carax’s strange, specific vision for the film.

GQ: Were musical skills a prerequisite for this part or was your background more of a bonus?

Simon Helberg: It was a prerequisite. Well, that and being a European citizen. The first thing I did was, of course, lie about my nationality and say, “Well, of course I'm in the process of transitioning to a European citizenship,” which was not true. But they were so desperate to find somebody who could play piano and the music is deceptively challenging. It has this kind of spiraling madness to it, particularly the piece that they wanted me to play, “I’m an Accompanist.” So I figured I will sort of back my way into this, say I'm going to be French one day, as we all hope to be, and let's play this piece. I sent the piece to Leos and he was very positive. I guess not many people were able to play it or to play it and be the part. So I got this email that read, “Yeah, he likes you and where's that French passport?”

I went through this crazy process to become a French citizen. My wife [actress and director Jocelyn Towne] is a French citizen. Her mother is French. So she has an actual legitimate way in. I hired a lawyer. I did all this paperwork. I ended up at a fundraiser. The French consul was there and I danced with him and complimented him on his velvet jacket and did all the hustling I could. I got very far in that process before they said, “Well, we just reinstated a fluency test as a prerequisite to becoming a citizen.” I did not speak French. So I hired a tutor.

Meanwhile, I was kind of corresponding with Leos indirectly, I would say, and he still was considering me for this role. So I learned enough French to go into the consulate and pose as a European man. And then, one way or another, I ended up with that passport, but I still didn’t have the role. I flew to New York to meet Leos. He seemed appropriately indifferent to me. Then I had to send in a clip of me singing one of the songs in the film and I needed to redo the piano part. He had a lot of notes and it just went on and on. And I never really knew if I was going to end up in the film.

So now that you have your dual citizenship, what are you going to do with it?

Espionage. And it's a burgundy passport, which is just a lot more pretty than that royal blue. So, at the very least I'll display it somewhere in the house.

Musically, did you feel like your chops were where they needed to be for this role?

You always have insecurities and doubts. I knew that I was able to play the piano up to snuff for the film, but I haven't ever done any singing in movies. I have a little bit on stage and here and there but I'm not, by any stretch of the imagination, a trained singer. Then there was the conducting aspect, which was sort of unspoken, oddly. I don’t know if it was just blind faith or just an oversight, but there was never any mention of, “Oh, and you have to actually conduct in this movie.” Because when I got to Belgium, I was faced with a full orchestra. I knew going into it that I was going to be conducting because obviously I had read the script, but nobody ever said, “Oh, do you need any guidance on that?”

So I made it a big part of the preparation to work with conductors and spend endless amounts of hours watching videos of Gustavo Dudamel and Teodor Currentzis and Leonard Bernstein. I read his biography and I tried to do a lot of the outside-in work too, just to understand the aesthetic of it and the look of it and the physicality of it. Then I tried to understand what might comprise the psychology of a conductor, because they're pretty fascinating people across the board, I found.

When I got to Belgium, the first day I was conducting in the scene where Annette sings for an audience for the first time. And I actually had a chance to look into the eyes of this 60-headed monster of professional musicians and conduct. It was an amazing and slightly unnerving and magical kind of experience because there's so much control and so much power you're wielding this little baton. And every time they slowed down, I would think, “Why are they slowing down?” And then I would look at my hand and I'd be like, oh, my hand is controlling this beast. And then of course Leos asks the most of all the people around him and demands the impossible. It was a real consistent theme during the movie. 

You have a scene where you’re conducting and singing and also have to convey that your character is in the grips of overwhelming emotion: Is the level of difficulty as high as it looks?

It was a challenge that I was excited to meet and didn’t know if I could. That was the way I felt the whole film. I went into some kind of fugue state during that scene. We probably ended up doing about 24 or 25 takes. There’s a track that goes around me and a live orchestra that’s playing. There’s just so much that has to go right, and so much that can go wrong, that you either surrender to it or you may just implode. And I definitely had moments where I just didn't know what was really happening anymore.

I don’t know if Leos sometimes wanted to break people down to that real vulnerable, raw state, but I always felt like I was in very good hands with him. I had so much trust and faith in him that I felt like it was just an adventure. And I was happy to have somebody there who was so clearly living every moment and had such a particular and meticulous vision for it. Leos is maybe the most detail-oriented visionary person that I’ve worked with. You just know that he could see the painting and he was trying to throw you onto that canvas in just the right splattering so that it would represent what he saw in his head.

He took me out at one point during that scene because he wanted to talk to me about it. And we went and we sat by a window and he smoked a cigarette and we looked at the people below us. I don't think he ever said anything about the scene. We just sat and I was sort of starting to tremble. What does he want? And then at the very end, as we walked back in, he showed me the monitor and he would just sort of say, “Good, good,” as these moments would go by. “Eh. Good.” Then, [adopts French accent], “You see how your hair is moving?” And I said, “Oh, yeah.” He’d say, “That is not good.” He didn't want my head to move at this one moment. And then he said, “You see how your mouth was open after you said that? Well, close your mouth. Otherwise, it was okay.”And I’m like, “Oh my gosh.”

Then we went back in and we would shoot it ten more times. But I never felt actually insecure about it. I was just happy to try to experiment. It felt playful to me, if also somewhat grueling and tedious in moments. It felt exploratory and that was what I really responded to.

With that level of precision, do you feel like your own choices are kind of taken out of the process?

You’re always operating within some set of parameters. If it hadn’t been Leos and it hadn't been the Sparks material and I hadn't been in that group of people, I may have felt stifled. But, again, Leos is a master of what he does. I think that you have to find whatever freedom is available to you within the framework that's provided. I would much rather have somebody who has a really clear sense and a clear vision of what it is that they want than somebody who doesn't have any clue as to what story they're trying to tell or why it's important to them. I could sense the personal nature of this in Leos.

I have done projects with people whose sense of freedom is that you can throw out the lines. Or at the end of this take, you can rip the tablecloth off the table or do whatever you want or just have fun with it. Or you can try very, very different things within each take. But that isn't the way Leos works. Then you reconcile that way of working with your definition of what it is to collaborate. I felt like just by the nature of me being there and having done all the work and the preparation I had done, I was bringing myself and opening my being up to this role and to that moment. And then Leos could sculpt me and I didn't feel any proprietary need to exert my own voice any more than it is always there when you're standing in front of a camera being honest.

How was it playing opposite a puppet?

I was very eager to meet this puppet. It’s hard to say “puppet” and sound in any way serious. I thought in French, at least we might have some hope, but no, it’s “la poupée.” So that's even sillier than the word “puppet.” But when I was introduced to her, I was taken into this sort of back room where these puppeteers, who are so brilliant, had been working on constructing her for years. I really was very moved the first time I was taken into a room with her and looked into her eyes.

I feel like that is part of the desired effect in casting a puppet in this movie. The amount that we as an audience can infer onto that face and what we read into it and what we bring to it from our vantage point as part of our experience is in some ways more profound than when we're being guided or told what to think or feel. It’s how we interact with this lifeless creature. There's so much emotion somehow when you look into that face and then you wonder, "Well, is that there? Or is that me and what I'm bringing to it?”

I found those scenes to be exciting and like everything else in the movie, insane and challenging. These puppeteers are brilliant and skilled at what they do, and they've been working their whole lives. And all of a sudden they have to be brave enough and selfless enough to hand off this puppet to these actors that have no training in that medium and have no experience, really. And then all of a sudden you’re standing there and you’re ten minutes away from shooting. And they're trying to teach you in French how to operate this puppet while you're singing or while you’re in a scene working with Adam and Marion.

And they say, “Okay, well then you turn to Adam and we can't actually have you manipulate the puppet with the controls because the camera's going to be going around you so you can hide your hand behind her head. And when you turn, you just slowly kind of, even with your pinkie, you press, and her whole head will turn. But you have to make sure the eyeline works with Adam’s. And if you move your arm here, her elbow will do that and it'll give her life and you can bounce her leg with the other side of your hand while you're holding her this way.”

I feel like all my questions are about how hard it was to make this movie, but we have to talk about the musical fight scene.

That was another hurdle. There’s a French way, I think, of doing certain things. Or at least that's my experience on this movie, which is very [in French accent] “Ah, pssshh.” It’s a lot of, “Don’t worry.” “Well, what if when I get thrown into this table, like, I die or something like that?” It's a lot of spitting on the ground or exhaling. “We’ll just kind of find it, and if you die, at least it’s on camera.” I mean, that’s an exaggeration to some degree, but there was a real quest to capture life in this movie. That state of the unknown and a sense of danger I think is really the recipe for great acting and in many ways for an experience watching a film that I think we all identify with, which is when it just feels alive in some way or another.

Showing up to the set that night, there was a stuntman who I had not been told about who was waiting there to talk to me. He was Jean-Claude Van Damme’s stuntman, apparently. I felt sort of comforted by that and also confused. And then he left, which definitely was not comforting. But before he left, he'd given me all these thick rubber vests and hip guards and coccyx buffers and things like this. And I didn't even know why. I didn't even know why he was there. I knew we were going to have some kind of tussle, and I knew that Adam had to get me in the pool at some point. So then, like everything, you walk down to the set and Leos tells you, or someone just kind of casually mentions, that it’s all going to be done in one shot.

Everything was always this way. It’s the middle of the night. You're in Antwerp, Belgium and Jean-Claude Van Damme's stuntman is leaving you with a bunch of weird undergarments.

This is your first film in five years? What's it like to decide what to do next after having the same job for twelve years?

My criteria is really to try not to repeat myself. That’s one thing I'm always watching out for. And working with exciting people. Obviously the bar has been set really high with this film, working with Leos and Adam and Marion. And getting to do Florence Foster Jenkins with Meryl and Hugh Grant and Stephen Frears. I feel like being on a show for that long definitely can set little traps in terms of perhaps being pigeonholed, but at the same time, it really enables me to be very picky.

I've had an interesting go of it too, because those last two films I did with Stephen and with Leos, both of them had never seen The Big Bang Theory. That allowed for this wonderful, somewhat objective meeting between the two of us where they can just look at me and I can look at them. And they’re not bringing anything else to that meeting, except the question of, "Hey, is this actor the right guy to play this role?” And that’s all you can really hope for, as an actor, I think, to find different characters that you’re able to jump into and to tell as many different kinds of stories as you can.