Chapter Text
French Leave: Also known as a French Exit,
an informal, hasty, or secret departure.
Louis’ Hollywood Hills bungalow was something straight out of Architectural Digest, meticulously furnished, with windows showing off the Hollywood Sign in the distance if you squinted. So perfect it was almost cliché. He’d spent months choosing the furniture with an interior designer and was quite proud of how his house had turned out in the end.
Everything from the very particular shade of his burnt orange curtains to the starburst mirror above the fireplace had been selected after agonizing hours of looking over options. Sometimes, when Louis stood on his balcony and took in his view of Los Angeles and its city lights, he really did feel like he’d finally made it.
While on the press tour for his last film, a romantic comedy called Somewhere in Central Park, Louis had been interviewed by a reporter who asked him what it felt like to finally be a star.
“Am I a star?” Louis had laughed and asked her humbly. “I wouldn’t say so. Not yet.” It was true that Louis did not feel like a movie star at all, but the truth was, he was well on his way to becoming a star if he wasn’t one already. With two leading roles this year and a much-anticipated Santiago Francis movie set to film next summer, Louis had essentially “made it” as an actor. Somewhere in Central Park had more or less launched him into mainstream recognition and solidified him as a Hollywood heartthrob.
With this newfound attention came speculation about his relationships and his sexuality. Is Louis du Lac Single? read tabloid headlines. Here’s What We Know About Louis du Lac’s Dating History. The speculation had infuriated him and concerned him all the same. The alleged connections between him and his female co-stars, the probing into his past life before stardom all became too much very quickly. He publicly came out as gay shortly after the press tour for his last movie had finished despite the protests of his PR team who considered it to be too soon a revelation in his career. His fanbase, they argued, currently composed of mainly young women and teenage girls, would dwindle if they knew they had no romantic chance with him. Louis had always known that if he managed to become a big actor, he would come out publicly as soon as he was comfortable with it. He could not stand the idea of living with the information buried beneath the surface, threatening to come out at any given moment. The public response happened to be overwhelmingly positive.
Just one month after Louis had come out, he was contacted by Santiago Francis, asking him if he’d be interested in filming a movie in the south of France.
“I wanted to speak with you directly,” Santiago told him with his slow, drawling voice, “not through your agent.”
“And why is that?” Louis had been in the middle of getting ready to go out for dinner with some friends. The fact that he’d been interrupted by a work phone call in the middle of it had annoyed him slightly.
“It’s a serious movie,” Santiago explained. “I watched those two rom-coms you were in—”
Louis bristled upon hearing the emphasis on the word “serious”. “I actually consider all my movies to be serious,” he replied pointedly, “the rom coms included. Do you intrinsically view media targeted towards women as inferior?”
“I was going to say I thought your work was stellar.” Louis doubted that was Santiago’s original intention, but he let him continue speaking. “But the movie I’m talking about has some heavier subject matter.”
“Murder? Death? Grief?”
“No, not that dark. Infidelity. It’s a doomed romance between two men.”
Louis, who’d been struggling to latch a watch onto his wrist, sat down on the edge of his bed and frowned. “I think we see enough doomed queer romances in Hollywood.”
“It’s set in France in the year 1989 and it’s beautifully written. It handles the subject matter very delicately,” Santiago said, ignoring what Louis was saying. “I want you to have the lead role. Of course, I still want you to send in a tape but believe me, I’ve seen around a hundred and fifty men audition for this and not one of them has what it takes but you do. You have the emotional vulnerability required for this. You have the passion. It’s far too early to say but this could be what gets you an Oscar nomination. This is the kind of movie the Academy loves.”
Louis chewed his lip. “An Oscar nomination?”
“I’ll have your agent send you the script,” Santiago said and with that, he hung up the phone.
It had been nearly a month since Louis had gotten the phone call and sent in his tape. He had the role in the bag. Antoinette Brown was casted next.
“She’ll be playing your old college friend in the movie” Jesse, his agent, had told him.
Louis was satisfied with this. Antoinette was incredibly accomplished both as a singer and actress and far more experienced than Louis was. She had been on Broadway for a number of years before she’d made her way to Hollywood and established herself as a force. Her casting had excited Louis but the anticipation of the third role, the role of his lover in the film, was still up in the air.
When Jesse had called him early that Sunday morning, telling him she had news of the final casting but that she wanted to inform him in person, Louis had been too anxious to be annoyed about being woken up so early.
“Could you text me the name?” Louis asked, still lying in his bed. “I don’t think I can wait, and I don’t see why it needs to be in person.”
“I’m already driving, Louis,” Jesse said. “Also believe me you’re going to want to hear it in person from me first.”
"Well,” Louis said somewhat impatiently, pacing around in his dining room, “who did they pick?” He sighed when Jesse, who was now seated at his dining table, did not answer immediately. “Who did they pick?” he asked again.
Jesse looked up from her laptop, her face barely concealing a hint of annoyance. “Hold on, I gotta pull something up, but your mind is going to be blown. Trust me on this.”
Jesse tucked strands of her curly red hair behind her ear as Louis came to stand behind her. He watched as she clicked through files on her computer, folder to folder, until she pulled up a video of a blonde man standing in front of a blank wall—a taped audition. Jesse turned up the volume and pressed play, and the man began to speak, reading out the lines from the script Louis had received just months before.
Louis leaned in closer, squinting. “Is that—”
“It certainly is,” Jesse beamed at him.
“So, Lestat de Lioncourt auditioned? I have to say that is shocking. It’s not the kind of project I would imagine him being interested in. Largely out of his sphere, isn’t it?”
Jesse stared at him. “He didn’t just audition. He’s got the role.”
Louis’ eyes widened. “No—”
“See?” Jesse grinned. “I knew your mind would be blown.”
Louis pulled out a chair and sat down heavily. “Why him? Out of everyone, why him? This was supposed to push me into an Oscar nomination. Even if the film is submitted for consideration, why would the Academy Awards even breathe in my direction if my co-lead is a pop star?”
“First of all, he’s a rock star, Louis. And second of all, whether you get an Oscar nomination or not hinges on your own performance. Lestat’s involvement in this movie is for the best. His casting will have hordes of fans flocking to theaters.”
“I see. So, he was cast for what? Money?” Louis pinched the bridge of his nose. “What acting experience does he have beyond that random cameo he did two years ago—with his shirt off?”
“His audition was really good,” Jesse insisted. “Like, seriously good. I mean, just look at him.” She gestured to her laptop. “I understand you’re not happy, but I have no involvement in the casting process, and neither do you. I just wanted to deliver the information in person.”
“Are we not doing a chemistry read first? Is that just out the window?”
Jesses shrugged. “It’s not the first time actors have been cast without a chemistry read being done. Believe me, from what I’ve heard, he really was the best. They probably had to sit through hundreds of auditions of American actors doing awful French accents. Having a Frenchman play a Frenchman was probably the best option.”
“Is every Frenchman in Hollywood dead? What about Swann Arlaud?”
“He was considered, but they wanted someone younger. Listen, the casting announcement will officially be made to the press sometime next week and Daniel's arranging for you to have dinner with Lestat—
“Dinner?” Louis repeated incredulously.
“You have to get to know him. Seriously, Louis. Watch his audition. Give him a chance.”
Louis sighed and looked back at Jesse’s screen. There were certainly worse things in the world than spending the summer in France, filming a movie with a costar he likely wouldn’t mesh with. “Send me his audition then. I want to watch it by myself.”
Louis did watch Lestat’s audition that night, at the dinner table. He pressed play and watched as Lestat began to speak. Louis had never heard Lestat speak before as the only time he’d ever heard his voice was through his music and even then, Lestat’s rock music was hardly Louis’ taste at all.
Lestat’s voice was low, melodious and Louis had to admit his speaking, even in the tense scene he was filming, came across as incredibly natural. Louis was shocked to see that he was even capable of conjuring tears at the right moment, letting his eyes get watery just before he let a few slip down his face. Louis knew successful actors who couldn’t cry on camera if their life depended on it. Too many of them lived with the fear of looking ugly as crying could often be an incredibly ugly thing.
Lestat had the face of a movie star, that was for sure but good looks were not enough to carry someone in Hollywood. How many rounds of auditions had Lestat gone through? After all, a snippet of a scene just a couple minutes long is not enough to gauge the extent of one’s acting abilities.
Still not fully satisfied by what he had seen, Louis began to search up Lestat’s interviews, given that he knew nothing about the man despite his fame. He came across a few interviews of Lestat on a late-night show where he came across mostly charming and cordial if not a bit irritable when certain questions were asked.
“What is the most difficult part about making an album?” Lestat was asked by Jimmy Fallon in a clip from an episode that had aired just last year.
Lestat paused to think. “The most difficult part would be finishing the album then having to answer questions like these.”
The response elicited laughter from both the audience and host and while it was certainly delivered like a joke, Louis could not tell if Lestat had wanted it to be taken as one.
He next came across a video compilation titled The Vampire Lestat Being a Brat Part 1. Louis rolled his eyes. He’d forgotten the man literally referred to himself as “the vampire Lestat”—Or was that his band’s name? Louis wasn’t even sure. Louis scrolled down on the side of the screen and his jaw dropped. That one video was apparently only the first part of a series of seventeen videos.
The first video started off with Lestat apparently refusing to come on stage during a concert in Chicago because he felt that the crowd wasn’t chanting his name loudly enough. The next clip was Lestat snatching a paparazzo’s camera out of his hand and throwing it onto the sidewalk. Louis could empathize with him on this one. He hadn’t been dealing with the paparazzi for anywhere near as long as Lestat had been, but he could barely stand them himself.
Louis skipped forward in the video and came across an interview of Lestat and his bandmates all seated together on a sofa. Lestat, dressed in a garish lime green jacket, seemed particularly bored, looking off into the distance while anyone spoke.
“I have to ask,” the interviewer, a middle-aged woman with teased hair and heavy makeup, said to Lestat, “is that really your natural hair color?” She gestured to her own hair. “I just don’t think I’ve seen anyone with hair so blonde.”
“Is my hair color real?” Lestat repeated with a wide smile like he found the question as funny as it was intended to be. Still smiling he leaned over to the interviewer and slapped his knee. “Oh, it’s very real. Realer than your botched nose.”
Louis gasped out loud. The response caused Lestat’s own band members to go very still. The interviewer's reaction was cut off so Louis could not see how she replied, and he found himself staring at his laptop blankly as the next clip played on his screen.
That summer in France was going to be the longest two months of his life.
DEADLINE
‘French Exit’: Lestat de Lioncourt to Star Alongside Louis du Lac and Antoinette Brown in Upcoming Romantic Drama Set in 1980s Southern France—Filming to Begin This Summer
EXCLUSIVE : Somewhere in Central Park star Louis du Lac, rock musician Lestat de Lioncourt, and Academy Award nominee Antoinette Brown are onboard to star in 1989-set romantic drama film French Exit.
The movie follows a young American writer (du Lac) as he spends the summer in a small French town searching for writing inspiration. While staying with an old friend (Brown) and her husband (de Lioncourt) in a 17th century villa, the writer eventually finds himself tangled in an illicit affair with his friend’s husband. As the affair progresses, he is forced to grapple with his conflicted feelings about love and the morality of his own actions.
The film heralds from director Santiago Francis (Death in Venice) and will be the tenth film in his current lineup. Production will begin on June 14th in Saint-Elise, France. Catherine McKenzie and Anne Howard serve as executive producers.
Francis said: “We couldn’t be more thrilled to have such an amazing cast with us and we can’t wait until you see what they bring to the screen.”
Du Lac, de Lioncourt, and Brown are all repped by Creative Artists Agency.