He’s a dream in the kitchen — and elsewhere in the house. He makes a mean cream-puff tower. And he’s got moves like Jagger.
Alas, Antonin Carême has been dead since the 1830s, but nobody’s perfect, right?
Most people have heard of Napoleon, but not many are familiar — even in France — with the story of this chef who cooked for him and his contemporaries, rising from a poor kitchen boy to become a standard-bearer of French cuisine. Now a new Apple TV+ period drama, “Carême,” argues that he was the very first celebrity chef. There’s even a “Top Chef” style cooking contest in front of a panel of judges.
But for the vibe, think “The Bear,” set in post-revolutionary Paris. Carême even directs his staff at one point to say “Oui, chef.” (And we could totally imagine him, like Jeremy Allen White, in a Calvin Klein underwear ad, if those had existed back then.)
The series, which drops its first two episodes Wednesday, also shows how Carême wasn’t just a cook, or master pastry maker, or, well, sex god. We watch as he’s pulled into political intrigue by his boss, the cunning diplomat Talleyrand, and used as a spy.
Still, his goal was to be the best chef in the world. The show’s first season ends with an extraordinary outdoor coronation banquet that Carême creates for thousands of people. When he places, in triumph, a tall white chef’s hat on his head for the first time, it’s as if he’s crowning himself — and marking his ascent to celebrity.
A Jagger vibe
Benjamin Voisin, who’s in virtually every scene, plays Carême with a scruffy head of hair, a gold earring and a bad-boy swagger that’s consciously based on Mick Jagger, circa ’70s.
Director Martin Bourboulon says the choice for the role was obvious once Voisin walked into the audition room.
“When you find the right actor for the right part, 80% of the job is done,” he says. “We were very impressed with his youthful attitude but also his rock ‘n’ roll attitude. He is absolutely Carême in real life — very attractive for everyone, a young man who is maybe sometimes a bit insouciant, or careless. “
Perhaps not surprisingly, the show plays up the sex factor. The first scene sets the tone with Carême and his lover, Henriette, in a food-tasting session that morphs immediately into sex, but then duty calls: Napoleon’s soldiers are coming for dinner.
Bourboulon says that first scene was very intentional, establishing in a few minutes the three main themes of the series: food, sex and politics. Did we mention sex?
Learning how to cook
Of course, he wasn’t an accomplished chef, so Voisin was given intensive lessons.
“I spent two months in the kitchen to learn the customs of the great French tradition,” the actor says. He focused on learning how to realistically convey what Carême did best: invent dishes of wild whimsy, especially flamboyant dessert creations like a huge pyramid, or the “croquembouche” tower — a cascade of cream puffs. Carême is also known for inventing the vol-au-vent, an airy French pastry shell.
But even so, this master pastry maker can’t even chop an onion correctly when he arrives for work at his first big kitchen job. The job of teaching him falls to the talented sous-chef in Talleyrand’s kitchen, Agathe (Alice Da Luz).
Da Luz trained alongside Voisin on the kitchen brigade at the Ferrandi culinary school in Paris — and vastly improved her skill set. “We really learned the choreography of a kitchen, we really learned technique,” she says. “And today I can boast that I cut onions at a crazy speed.”
The actors had a dream workspace: The production spent six weeks building a huge, airy kitchen where they work for Talleyrand — unlike the cramped, smoky kitchens that would be more historically accurate.
Learning history, too
Viewers may feel the need to brush up on their history. The show takes place shortly after Napoleon seized political power in 1799 and became first consul, on his way to later declaring himself emperor.
The actors had to brush up, too.
Voisin says he knew about “the victories and defeats of Bonaparte,” but had to learn from scratch the story of Carême.
Lyna Khoudri, who plays mysterious Henriette — who may or may not be on her lover’s side — notes: “We’re making a series about the heritage of French culinary art, a story I didn’t know. I found out why we’re so famous for our cuisine in France.”
Da Luz had studied the period at school but dove into it more deeply once she was cast. There was not a lot to read about Agathe, but she read everything she could find. And then, she says, “I let my imagination go,” inspired to bring a woman out of the shadows of history.
Jérémie Renier, who plays Talleyrand (actual name Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord), also engaged in extensive research. “It’s a character who has led a thousand lives,” he said, “who lived through almost a century of history, at a time when people were guillotined for not much. So … he must have been very clever.”
The show, for Renier, is in large part about ambition. “All these characters have a goal, a dream to achieve,” he says. “The question is, what are we ready to win or lose to achieve this dream?”
That crazy banquet
The production is lush throughout the whole season, beginning with the gorgeous country homes — filmmakers scouted 60 of them, and chose 12. They created new dinner services to dress the tables, and made 3,000 candles to light all the candelabras — different hues for different rooms. There were 96 vases of fresh flowers at all times in Talleyrand’s home, according to production notes.
As for costumes, some 1,000 of them were made from scratch, because the filmmakers had a specific vision of clothing that was not period-accurate but also not completely modern.
Then there was that crazy banquet that ends the season. Filming at the Parc de Saint-Cloud, which boasts dramatic fountains, the production created a giant tent covered with “an extraordinary amount of velvet,” and loaded down the tables with food, including a 60 kilo (132 pound) leg of lamb and a 50 kilo (110-pound) tuna.
They also made 5,000 cream puffs, which were assembled into grand, towering structures — befitting not only a new emperor but the world’s first celebrity chef.
