The Serpent swaps murder for drug gangs
Tahar rahim, star of The Serpent — one of the BBC’s most popular dramas ever — has found a way to make crime pay. he will portray one of the drug kingpins behind the French connection, an underworld system that put dangerous narcotics on to american streets.
The untitled television series will be about Corsican gangsters antoine and Barthelemy Guerini, known as the Guerini Brothers. ‘They ruled the Marseilles drug trade after the war and into the 1960s and 1970s,’ rahim told me in Cannes, where he is on the Film Festival jury led by Spike Lee.
The screenplay for the show is still being written, the 40-year-old Paris-based star said. ‘I will portray one of them — but I cannot tell you which one until we are ready. We’re at such an early stage and we do not plan to film until next year.’
he stressed that it’s a different story to the one told in 1971 thriller The French Connection, about two New York cops who break up an international drugsmuggling operation.
The movie won five Oscars, including best actor for Gene hackman and best picture, and remains a stunning piece of film-making (both it and its equally impressive sequel are on Disney+).
rahim said that his series, which is being backed by Netflix, will explore how the Guerini brothers fought for the resistance during the Nazi occupation of France.
‘Some of their wartime comrades became elected leaders in Marseilles,’ he said. The brothers leveraged those alliances, which helped them gain control of the Marseilles dockyards, where officials turned a blind eye to their activities shipping heroin to the United States.
In The Serpent, rahim portrayed Charles Sobhraj, a serial killer, fraudster and thief who preyed on hippies travelling through asia in the 1970s. The actor told me he enjoyed working with ‘my partner in crime’ Jenna Coleman.
RahIM also won acclaim for his performance in Kevin Macdonald’s film The Mauritanian, the true story of a prisoner held at Guantanamo Bay for 14 years (with Jodie Foster as his lawyer).
his breakthrough came in Jacques audiard’s powerful movie a Prophet, a hit at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival.