In "The Collection", Irène Jacob, Interpretation Prize at Cannes for "La Double Vie de Véronique", by Krzysztof Kieslowski, in 1991 embodies a workshop manager in a haute couture house. Mysterious, always dressed in black, austere, she is an amazing specialist in fabrics and hems. His personal life is a vast chaos. Her husband has not returned from the war, she lives in the past and her daughter, an 18-year-old seamstress, yearns for post-war freedom.

TeleObs. This series is a first in your career.

Irene Jacob. Yes. What I liked is that it gives pride of place to the characters. Each episode tells us a little more about each of them. At the beginning, mine, Marianne, is plunged into great disarray. She is a woman of great rigor. It's quite exciting. When I was offered the role, only four episodes were written. There were things that escaped me. I had to speak with the author, ask him questions to understand his personality, his past. It's interesting, this principle of characters with drawers.

Oliver Goldstick, the screenwriter, thought that actors didn't need to know too much about their characters. Jacques Rivette, like many new wave directors, worked like that. He gave the text on the day of filming to his actors who did not really know where their role was going. After a while, I said to myself: ok, there is no need to ask all these questions. The fun in this series is this feeling of a game of chess between the characters. What one does will influence the other.

Do you know this world of fashion?

– As an actress, I had the chance to go to certain haute couture houses where I met workshop managers like Marianne. She sees a sketch and immediately knows how to transform it into a dress. She knows how to feel the weight of the fabrics, the good drape. She has this passion. She works like a doctor who looks, notes, sees. The production asked us to watch the documentary "Dior et moi" to understand the urgency of a collection and assess the gap between the artist and the workshop. A dress is like a luxury storefront that hides a lot of things.

Was acting in English a challenge for you?

– One of the difficulties of the series is that our characters are supposed to speak in French while we shot in English. This is a convention that is not easy to understand, at first. I watched a lot of movies from that time, and it was another way of speaking French, a more abrupt construction of sentences, perhaps a little rough. We get right to the heart of the matter. We go straight to the point. I have acted in English several times, including at the theater in "Madame Melville" and at the cinema in "Othello" with Kenneth Branagh. But I hadn't worked in English for fifteen years. Some actors find it liberating to perform in another language. I wouldn't say that for me.

Comments collected by Pierre Hédrich

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The Collection", season 1 (1, 2 and 3 /8), Thursday December 29, at 8:55 p.m., on France 3. With Poppy Corby-Tuech, Holly Weston, Irène Jacob, Sian Teesdale.