Marion Cotillard was forced to lip sync, and she blew our minds with how amazing she is!
It’s the stuff of stress dreams. You’re put on the spot and forced to perform. In the stress dream version of this scenario, you totally choke and embarrass yourself in front of countless people. But in the case of Marion Cotillard, who was recently forced to lip sync on The Graham Norton Show, Cotillard turned what could have been an embarrassing moment into a tour de force performance.
As many a film geek knows, Marion Cotillard lip-synced to Edith Piaf when she gave her Oscar-winning performance as the iconic singer in 2007’s La Vie en Rose.
When Graham Norton asked Cotillard if she could still lip sync to Piaf, Marion honestly replied “I don’t know.” When Norton pressed the issue by asking “If we played a bit, do you think you could do it?”
Marion said what you say when you’re being forced to do something terrifying and you’re trying to be light and jokey about it but you’re eyeballs deep in anxiety: “Sh*t.”
Marion tries to get out of this whole on the spot lip syncing thing by explaining she wore false teeth in the movie. This, of course, changed how her mouth moved. Marion wasn’t sure she’d be able to move her mouth like Piaf without the prosthetics.
She later added “There’s a whole physicality that comes with it… and I’m pregnant!”
She definitely had her excuses reasons to bail. But Graham presented her with an offer she couldn’t refuse:
“If we play a bit, and you try it, if it’s terrible, we’ll cut it out, and if it’s marvelous, we’ll all clap and cheer.”
So Cotillard finally gave in and briefly reprised her role as Piaf on the show. It had been a while. She was out of practice. And she was sitting down. Without her fake teeth. Also, she was pregnant. And you know what? It didn’t matter at all. BECAUSE SHE WAS AMAZING.
The lip syncing starts around the 3:46 mark, and is fantastic. Let this be a lesson to us all: Sometimes you can surprise yourself with your own sheer awesomeness.
