2023-10-03 14:15:10
The actress Eva Victor, revealed by the series Billions, divides her time between big productions and indie works. She came to visit us during her last stay in Paris.
In the series, you often play young people from Gen Z who question their environment. Are you as committed as the characters you play?
Eva Victor: I had the chance to play roles of people who try to do good. I like the idea that my generation wants the world to be better, that they at least have this hope. As I can be quite pessimistic, it’s inspiring for me to play them.
You are on strike right now.
Yes, in support of the Writers’ Guild of America (WGA). I feel lucky to do it with the other members of my union, SAG, knowing that we are acting for those who are doing least well: many do not even earn enough to be entitled to health insurance (the threshold being set at $27,000 per year). This is insane.
Negotiations are moving slowly.
Yes, because studios and streaming platforms want to continue making billions at our expense. They are not ready to give up what they have acquired on our backs. Right now, they want the right to our image forever by using Artificial Intelligence to eliminate our jobs. It’s frightening. They don’t want to recognize the value that we artists bring to the world. This is senseless, and devastating. There, they want to drag things out so that we end up giving up. We have to hold on.
You are also an author, with texts published in the New Yorker.
If I mightn’t write, I don’t know what I would do. I’m so grateful that it was a job, that I was able to make money from my writing. People sometimes think that writing or acting are dream jobs, and therefore they don’t deserve to be really paid. No, it’s work, daily, solitary, complex… It must be valued!
You were born in Paris. How did you move from France to Los Angeles?
Yes, I was born here, in the 1990s. My mother lived here for around ten years, she was an architect. And regarding a year and a half following I was born, she moved to San Francisco where she met the man who raised me with her.
How did you start acting?
I knew I wanted to be an actress when I was 18. I studied theater in college, then I moved to New York and I was like, “This has to work!” » I started auditioning, I acted in a few plays, I made my own little videos that I put online. I did that for regarding two years, it put me on the map. And I was on the set of a film for the first time and I understood that this was what I wanted to do.
On your social media bio, you put the pronouns “she” and “they”.
I feel pretty fluid, and I think that attitude translates into everything we do. I wouldn’t call myself an actress, for example, I just do what I want to do, when I can. Here you have “iel”, but it’s less common, right?
Yes, it remains within a restricted group of people.
I love when people use “they” or “she” interchangeably, because it reminds me of my fluidity. And I like it when it confuses people. I think we live in such a binary world that this stuff deserves to explode and go beyond the binary.
Are you viscerally New Yorker?
I love this city. But now, I left New York and traveled a lot for two years. Every time I go back, I tell myself that it is a magnificent city, like Paris, with its particular magic. You can walk, the streets are lively… It’s difficult to feel alone there.
Unlike Los Angeles?
I’m from Northern California. I spent a lot of time there last year to see my family and enjoy the nature which is more easily accessible there than in New York. There’s something truly beautiful regarding being in a cabin, alone, in the California wilderness.
Do you need solitude?
I need a lot of time to think. So yes !
Are your stays in Paris a kind of pilgrimage?
I try to come back here once a year. To recharge my batteries, to visit the place where my mother gave birth to me. You imagine ? It’s the 1990s. This woman is pregnant, alone, American. I think what if she gave birth to a baby in the middle of the night in Paris, in a city where she didn’t speak the language very well, and in a hospital surrounded by French nurses smoking cigarettes while she gave birth , I can do everything !
When you are in Paris, do you feel connected to her?
Everytime ! We each have the same tattoo of Île Saint-Louis on our arms. When my mom got the tattoo, she almost fainted, but it was really cute. One day, we will come and settle here to grow old together. A day.
Interview Anaïs Dubois & Laurence Rémila
Photos Julien Grignon
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