One character, two personas lured Jenna Coleman into ‘Serpent’ role
For Britain’s Jenna Coleman, the enormous challenge with “The Serpent,” an eightpart true crime series on Netflix,” was truly irresistible.
As the companion, fictional “wife” and murderous accomplice of Charles Sobhraj (Tahar Rahim, ‘The Mauritanian’), Coleman, 34, offers a portrait of a woman who goes mad dividing herself into two distinct and very different personalities.
Coleman begins as MarieAndrée Leclerc, a native of Quebec who in mid-1970s Bangkok meets and is seduced by Sobhraj, a con man with a record who is bad from the word go.
Under his influence, she adopts a sophisticated identity as “Monique,” who befriends and then poisons the backpackers and travelers they meet in Bangkok where Sobhraj poses as a gem dealer. As “Monique,” she is a diabolical Lady Macbeth who becomes a devout Catholic.
“The story in itself is kind of really darkly seductive. The decision to play her was really instinctive, her psychology was so interesting,” Coleman said from her London home. “I was given the first six episodes, which I just read back-to-back straight through in one day.
“Then there were all the newspaper clippings. As a character she felt so complicated, someone I’ve never come across before.
“I mean she isn’t just the victim either. What became the key for me is when she begins her devout Catholicism. It’s where she ends in life and in our story.
“What I realized is, in her midlife and meeting Charles, that is exactly what Charles becomes for her. She treats him almost like a god, and she worships him.
“She thinks by doing anything that he says and wishes, then she is somehow doing something good and pure. And that, to be honest, was the absolute key for me.
“Her exact approach to Catholicism is almost explained by her obsession with Charles. He is almost like her religion I think.
“The way that she writes about him in particular. Reading her diaries gave me access into her inner life and what was driving her and how she was existing.
“She was living within that kind of delusional sphere that she created, which allowed her to stay with Charles for so long. And also almost willingly be brainwashed by him.
“But,” Coleman emphasized, “she chose to be. That’s why the moral examination of the character is so interesting. Because it isn’t just a case that she was brainwashed. I feel like she actively went after him as well.
“So, yeah, it’s really fascinating. I couldn’t stop thinking about her.”