ASK agents
Andréa Martel
Played by: Camille Cottin
- The Ace: Andréa is a Type A, hyper-assertive agent who can force her way through almost any obstacle if she puts her mind to it.
- Breakout Character: She's easily the most iconic character in the show, with her actress (Camille Cottin) securing roles in English-language films as a result of Andréa's popularity.
- Brutal Honesty: Many, many times. When someone complains, Gabriel points out that while Andréa might temporarily offend someone, her comments have a tendency to stick in people's heads and earn a call back.Author: I will autograph it [my book] for you. I can maybe write my phone number as well?
Andréa: No. The autograph is good enough. - The Casanova: She leaves a trail of broken hearts behind her. It comes back to bite her when she tries to seduce the uptight and romantic Colette. Discussed when she realizes how the title character of the Don Juan adaptation matches her behavior.
- Hot-Blooded: It doesn't take all that much to get her to start shouting.
- Jerkass Has a Point: While Andréa was undoubtedly failing to manage her personal relationships with Colette and Flora in an effective way, it's not hard to see why she got upset when Colette temporarily dumped Flora on Andréa and skipped town, seemingly just to punish Andréa for her absenteeism.
- Ladykiller in Love: Becomes this when she meets Colette.
- Meaningful Rename: Her birth name is Andréa Marteau, which she changed in order to avoid easy puns ("marteau" translates to "hammer" in English) that generated a degree of bullying in her youth and to erase her provincial origins.
- No Bisexuals: Andréa denies being bisexual when asked, instead claiming to be a lesbian, despite the fact that she has had sex with men in the past (however, she notes that her preference is for women). Even when she does have sex with Hicham, it's because she's trying to keep him from having sex with Aymeline Valade.
- Parents as People: Andréa legitimately cares about her daughter Flora, but her Workaholic attitude often prevents her for being there for her (which Colette increasingly grows to resent).
- Smoking Is Cool: Is often seen indulging in cigarettes.
Mathias Barneville
Played by: Thibault de Montalembert
- The Chessmaster: He always seems to have a ploy up his sleeve.
- Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Although he does maintain a degree of emotional loyalty to ASK, Mathias is quick to capitalize on any misfortune his colleagues suffer starting from the first episode, and seems to relish in the cutthroat part of the business. Hicham fires him for this at the end of season 3. It gets to the point that someone he is plotting with outright asks him if he enjoys manipulating people all the time, just because she can't believe it.
- Fake Aristocrat: He comes across as being a man of significant means, but it's really his wife Catherine whose family has all the money. (Although his actor, Thibault de Montalembert, is a direct descendant of the old French noble class in Real Life.)
- Heel Realization: Mathias is able to rationalize his underhanded operating as "just part of the business" up until he steals his own daughter's first film contract and suffers a heart attack after she steals it back. When Noemie delivers a succinct "The Reason You Suck" Speech to him in his hospital bed, he finally begins to reevaluate his self-serving, workaholic philosophy.
- Papa Wolf: Downplayed since he's mostly trying to keep her at a distance to preserve his image, but Mathias nonetheless his moments regarding Camille.
- Pragmatic Anti Hero: Mathias is a deeply cynical and business-oriented man whose main focus is on the bottom line, and who demonstrates little care for morality until the very end of the series.
- Sharp-Dressed Man: He's typically seen wearing well-tailored three piece suits. Later on, in Seasons 3 and 4, he begins dressing in slightly more casual, but still stylish, turtlenecks and jeans.
- Token Evil Teammate: The most ambitious, backstabbing and venal of the agents. His colleagues don't like him much, and they certainly don't trust him at all.
Gabriel Sarda
Played by: Grégory Montel
- Aggressive Categorism: Most of the ASK agents can't stand StarMédia, but Gabriel seems to have the most visceral hatred for anything to do with them, as evidenced by his loudly decrying what he sees as ASK selling out on its principles by hiring Elise Formain and subsequently treating her as though she's the embodiment of evil. Zigzagged in that a) Gabriel turns out to be right about Elise's motivations, and b) he winds up going to work for StarMédia at the end of the series, although he isn't happy about it.
- Beard of Sorrow: Although he's generally seen sporting Perma-Stubble, he grows a massive beard following his breakup with Sofia.
- Beware the Nice Ones: When Mathias comes into work the morning after the others learn that he betrayed them to the Americans, it's Gabriel who knocks him to the ground in a flying tackle.
- Comfort Food: Consumes a lot of whipped cream (straight from the can) whenever he's stressed or upset.
- Crazy Jealous Guy: With Sofia in season 2. Gabriel is deeply insecure about his beautiful younger girlfriend doing an erotic musical with the young and dashing Julien Doré. He ends up sabotaging the project and Sophia leaves him when she finds out.
- I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: In the final episode, he accepts a position at StarMédia in exchange for Elise not using her connections to block Sofia from getting role in a François Ozon film.
- Loser Protagonist: Subverted. Although Gabriel is a short, dishevelled-looking guy who sometimes has trouble standing up for himself, he's great at his job, and several legitimately gorgeous women—including Monica Bellucci—become attracted to him over the course of the series.
- Nice Guy: Gabriel has a reputation for being the nicest agent in Paris. He is emotionally invested in his talents, struggles the most when he has to deliver bad news, and is disgusted with the underhanded methods his colleagues sometimes use. Even when he's trapped in an elevator with someone he hates, he ends up trying to comfort her through a claustrophobic attack.
Arlette Azémar
Played by: Liliane Rovère
- Brutal Honesty: She's about as tactless as Andréa, although she's substantially less abrasive in person.
- Canine Companion: She carries her dog, Jean Gabin, around with her wherever she goes.
- Cool Old Lady: A Deadpan Snarker senior citizen who seemingly spends most of her free time smoking weed.
- Advertised Extra: Judging by how heavily she's featured in the opening credits, you'd expect Arlette to play a major role in the series, but she generally functions as a Satellite Character who pops in a few times per episode to deliver sarcastic quips about her many years of experience in the industry. In fact, Camille, Hervé, Noémie and Sofia all have more screen time, and unlike Arlette they get storylines of their own.
- The Heart: In a blunt way, as she holds the agency together and tends to be the one who delivers moral lessons.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Arlette is The Stoic of the ASK offices, but she's truly shattered when Jean Gabin dies in the final episode.
- Static Character: Justified—by the time the series starts, Arlette is an industry veteran with nothing left to prove.
ASK junior agents and assistants
Camille Valentini
Played by: Fanny Sidney
- Audience Surrogate: Camille's lack of experience provides many opportunities for exposition in Season 1.
- Naïve Newcomer: In the first episode, Camille has freshly arrived in Paris from the south of France and has basically no knowledge about how the entertainment industry works. However, she manages to get hired as Andrea's assistant in the first episode, and learns quickly—by the fourth season she's Outgambitting her own father.
- Nice Gal: Camille is a genuinely caring person who wants to do well in her job while also not having any ego or desire for the limelight. As Hicham points out, this actually makes her an ideal agent.
- Secret Other Family: She is Mathias' daughter from a long-ago assignation. Mathias has a wife and a son in Paris who have no idea about her, causing a major Surprise Incest problem when Mathias's son Hippolyte falls for Camille.
- Significant Wardrobe Shift: Camille goes from brightly-colored nails, messy updos, and casual clothing to wearing darker, more professional outfits, and keeping her hair down as the first season progresses (in other words, she starts dressing more like Andréa).
- Weak-Willed: Camille's greatest flaw. She's easily pressured into bad ideas by those (particularly Hervé) who have more dominant or outgoing personalities than she does, and her kind, self-sacrificing nature often gets taken advantage of by people with opportunistic motivations. Her Character Development revolves largely around her learning to put her foot down and to trust her own judgement.
Hervé André-Jezak
Played by: Nicholas Maury
- All Gays are Promiscuous: His definition of not having had sex in ages is six days. In the season 2 premiere he denounces fidelity as an idea, calling it "hetero-conservative thinking" and stating that everyone's body belongs to themselves and not their partners.
- Camp Gay: Mainly due to his over-the-top vocal mannerisms, since in terms of his physical appearance and fashion he's actually fairly Straight Gay.
- Deadpan Snarker: He's an extremely reliable source of snarky quips.
- The Diva: And how! Just one example of many—when Camille gets promoted over him, he's so upset that he goes so far as to wear a T-shirt shirt depicting a stab wound in the back.
- Large Ham: He's comedically theatrical and overdramatic in his day-to-day life. This eventually comes in handy when he starts pursuing an acting career of his own.
- Pet the Dog: Hervé tends to be self-centered and bitchy, but he's also shown to genuinely care about his friends and is extremely concerned when Gabriel goes off the rails following his breakup with Sofia.
Noémie Leclerc
Played by: Laure Calamy
- All Girls Want Bad Boys: She's in love with Mathias, a guy who routinely and unapologetically throws people under the bus if he thinks it will help him advance in his career.Hervé: For everyone, he is the most horrible agent in the world but for Noémie, he is the perfect man.
- Buttmonkey: Suffers a whole bunch of amusing and largely self-inflicted mishaps, with the show taking full advantage of Laure Calamy's natural talent for physical comedy.
- Hidden Depths: Noémie tends to present as an overly emotional Cloudcuckoolander, but on many occasions she shows herself to be intelligent and a highly valuable assistant to Mathias.
- Ignored Enamored Underling: For Mathias in the first couple of seasons. He never does get it, until the moment in season 2 where she grabs his hand and puts it on her breast. After that, they have an affair.
- Nervous Wreck: Virtually anything can send her into an anxious tailspin, particularly if it revolves around Mathias' health and safety. In one episode, when her attempts to reach Mathias by phone repeatedly fail, she gets so worried that calls every hospital in Paris before hiring a team of firefighters to break down the door to his apartment. (It turns out he's just relaxing in a bubble bath with headphones on—or, at least, he was trying to, before the fire brigade showed up.)
- Prone to Tears: She has a hysterical breakdown virtually Once an Episode. Generally it's Played for Laughs.
- Shameless Fanservice Girl: Starting when she flashes one of her breasts at Mathias at work (much to his shock), Noémie turns into the series' resident Ms. Fanservice, with her nudity becoming a Once a Season occurrence and culminating in her comedic full-frontal scene in the Season 4 premiere. This really stands out in a show in which all the other characters either remain clothed or are granted Scenery Censors.
- Undying Loyalty: For Mathias. When he is forced to leave ASK at the end of Season 3, she willingly quits her job to go with him, although she continues to maintain her friendships with Hervé, Camille and Sofia.
Sofia Leprince
Played by: Stefi Celma
- Chronic Self-Deprecation: Despite her undeniable talent in both acting and singing, Sofia subjects herself to harsh self-criticism and constantly worries about making a bad impression on directors and better-known fellow actors. By the end of the show it seems like she's started to gain some confidence in herself.
- Jerkass Ball: Picks it up in Season 4, when she starts hanging out with another actress named Mel, whose Toxic Friend Influence leads her to act like a diva. When she finds out that Mel has actually been trying to prevent her from landing projects, Sofia cuts ties and returns to her normal self.
- Ms. Fanservice: An In-Universe example—she supposedly spends most of her screen time in Julien Doré's "erotic musical" The Orgasm Of The Ocean naked (and, despite the film bombing, she quickly becomes a Lust Object). Sofia later complains that Doré edited out the scenes in which she was actually wearing clothes.
- Sucks at Dancing: She doesn't know how to breakdance, which proves to be problematic when she auditions for a role which requires it.
- Waiting for a Break: Her main arc across the series. After Sofia gets picked up as a client by ASK, she fails a series of auditions, but finally gets a potential hit with a starring role in Julien Doré's musical. Unfortunately the film does poorly, with the popular attention it does receive being directed almost exclusively at the sex scenes. Just when all seems lost, however, she manages to nab a nomination for Best Female Newcomer at the César awards, and her career finally begins to gather steam by Season 4.
Other
Hicham Janowski
Played by: Assaad Bouab (seasons 2-4)
- Jerkass Has a Point: Very often.
- Hicham tells Gabriel that his being Sofia's agent and boyfriend is a bad mix. To Gabriel's dismay, basically everyone agrees with him. The point is further proved when Gabriel sabotages Sofia's project with Julien Doré due to his insecurities about their relationship.
- Although Hicham's unexpected promotion of Camille to full agent creates a huge amount of upheaval in her personal life (and ultimately leads to her temporarily quitting ASK), he's not wrong that her hardworking yet polite and selfless nature makes her ideal for the job. By the end of Season 4, Camille is the one who who starts her own agency.
- Mean Boss: Hicham is competent and genuinely cares about running the agency well, but his tolerance for mistakes is extremely low and he steamrolls everybody he comes into contact with, generally behaving like a jerk. Eventually, in season 3, he begins to make an effort to be a nicer person after realizing that literally nobody likes him (aside from Arlette, with whom he shares an Odd Friendship).
- Out of Focus: While he does make some appearances, Hicham is a less prominent character in Season 4. He decides to spend more time in London with his son and gives over day-to-day management of ASK to Andréa. She runs it into the ground.
- Parents as People: Hicham's attempts to bond with his son, who lives in England with his ex-wife, repeatedly fail because they mainly revolve around his making sweeping, expensive gestures rather than actually getting to know the kid a little better.
- Spear Counterpart: To Andréa. Even though they don't get along with one another, they're highly similar—ambitious, assertive people with Hair-Trigger Tempers who struggle to balance their work and their relationships with their (ex-)partners and children.
Catherine Barneville
Played by: Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu (seasons 1-3)
- Bourgeois Bohemian: She comes from a wealthy background but is also clearly left-leaning politically and at one point takes a trip to an ashram in India.
- Nice Gal: Is consistently kind to Camille, even after she finds out that she's Mathias' daughter. And while she's justifiably furious at Mathias for cheating on her, when she was pregnant no less, she seems prepared to believe that he's grown and changed in the interim.
- Out of Focus: After being a major presence in the first three seasons, she doesn't appear at all in the fourth, although Mathias does attempt to call her when he's in the hospital during his heart attack. Justified since by this point she's separated from Mathias.
Colette Brancillon
Played by: Ophélia Kolb
- Intimidating Revenue Service: She's an icy, professional, and buttoned-up tax assessor who is completely uninterested in anyone's excuses for the agency's casually fraudulent accounting practices. Her report results in a 500,000 euro fine. (Her demeanor really turns Andréa on, however.)
- Lipstick Lesbian: Between her and Andréa, Colette is more traditionally feminine.
- Sherlock Scan: Colette rejects one of Andréa's attempts to flirt with her by listing all the personality flaws she found just by looking at Andréa's monthly receipts.
- Uptight Loves Wild: Colette is the uptight to Andréa's wild.
Elise Formain
Played by: Anne Marivin (season 4)
- Ambiguously Bi: Andréa and Gabriel both seem to view Elise as a closeted lesbian, but she's also apparently having an affair with Igor, the head of Mediawan (although, given her manipulative nature, this could just be Pragmatic Pansexuality).
- Casting Gag: Elise coaches Mathias on how to help her poach the popular comedian and actor Dany Boon for StarMédia. Anne Marivin played Boon's love interest in the French box-office smash hit Bienvenue Chez Les Ch'tis, a film which gets referenced several times In-Universe.
- Creepy Twins: Her two assistants, who aren't really twins but do look very similar, and who are characterized as brainless blonde automatons who exist solely to carry out her orders. Elise refers to them as "my girls" and thinks they're fantastic. Everyone at ASK finds them extremely off-putting.
- Follow the Leader: In-Universe, Gabriel suggests that she's purposely styled herself after Andréa.
- Karma Houdini: In spades. By the last episode of the show, she's succeeded in destroying ASK, coercing Gabriel to join StarMédia, and gaining Jean Reno as a client. Apart from Andréa shoving her into a wall, suffers no personal or professional consequences. The only thing she might not get is Jean Reno, because he hints to Andréa that he's not going to stay as Elise's client any longer than the end of filming.
- The Sociopath: She poses as a woman passed over for a deserved promotion to gain Andréa's sympathy and trust, flirts with her (and Camille), and manipulates her into revealing embarrassing secrets about clients (which Elise later uses to torpedo their relationships). She manipulates Gabriel by holding up Sofia's contract for a breakout film and breaks up Igor's marriage and affair by sleeping with him to further her machinations. And absolutely nothing anyone says to her has any effect—while Mathias gets pangs of conscience, Elise responds to every probing question and emotional attack with a smile and a flippant remark, perfectly serene in her triumphs.
- Viler New Villain: She's introduced in the fourth season and by the end of it, she's managed to make even Mathias look like a paragon of integrity.
