MATTHIAS DANDOIS: I wake up and the first thing I feel
is like a really sharp pain in my foot,
and I look at my foot, and it's just...
I'm just like...
Oh my God! This is crazy.
My name is Matthias Dandois, I'm from Paris, France,
and I'm a BMX professional rider.
I won the World Championships eight times.
This is a story of when I got a Staph infection in my ankle before
shooting my first feature film and I nearly lost the role.
We are in Marseille, south of France.
We're having a big competition on the beach.
The sun was going down
and the DJ was playing some sick tunes.
It didn’t really feel like a contest, it was like a big party.
You know it was BMX.
And one of the most famous directors and actress in France
is at the event, Axelle Laffont.
After the competition, she comes up to me and she say,
"Yeah I'm doing the casting for my next movie,
You would be great for one of the main roles."
I'm like, "Oh ok, that sounds fun."
[LAUGHS]
Then she said, "I think that would be great
if you could come and do casting in Paris."
So I show up to the casting, it's pretty much like an office room.
The other show is in Paris. Yeah this place had no soul.
I don't like this place.
In my head, "This is a bad place."
And Axelle the director is here, and the director of casting is here.
She put on the camera and then... [BEEP]
And then I'm like,
"Woah, this is weird, like I'm actually acting."
And the first time I did it, it didn't feel natural at all.
And the second time
didn't feel natural at all, the third time was worse.
And I looked at the casting, they both look at me like,
Yeah... it was okay, we'll call you back.
And I'm like, "Oh I know it's terrible."
I go back for the casting.
So I'm here in the same room with that camera and tripod
and the director of casting,
I know she hates-- she f*** hates me. [LAUGHS]
I think I did pretty well on that second casting,
and a few weeks later, Axelle called me and said,
"Yeah! You got the role, and we start filming in two months."
And I'm like, "What the f***!"
I'm going-- I'm going to have
one of the main role in the featured film.
But Axelle was like, "Yeah I think still it would be great...
He just has to practice a little bit."
So she told me to take some comedy classes and then to come back.
So like two months of comedy classes,
I was meeting with the coach in my apartment.
She had short hair, she was smoking a lot of cigarettes,
and she trained some of the best actors in France.
We were working on my body posture and the lines.
All I've done my whole life is ride BMX.
You obviously use your brain to learn the script.
So there was a lot of lessons, a lot of head faults,
a lot of frustration,
but at the end, I felt ready for the movie.
After that,
we do a lot of meetings with the production.
And the production, they look at me in the eye and say,
"We know you are a BMX rider.
We trust you, don't get injured.
We need you for the movie, now everything is rolling
and we are spending a lot of money on that movie,
so we trust you.
I'm like, "Yeah, fine, we're good."
But I have like a competition in New Orleans.
So I go there and I'm like,
"This is a competition, I got to win."
So I ride the competition,
and I crashed on my foot.
And I twist my ankle between the floor and the tire.
The skin just goes like...
As soon as I crash, I think about the movie.
I don't think about the competition.
I think about the movie and I'm like, Oh... F***!
[LAUGHING]
But somehow, like it doesn't really hurt.
So I ride the competition
and I end up winning the competition
with a sore foot.
And after that,
I have to go back to France to shoot the movie.
Going to the first day of the movie and I'm alone in my room,
and I didn't really slept really good that night because of the stress.
And I wake up in the first thing I feel is like
a really sharp pain in my foot, and I look at my foot,
and it's just...
It's like I have an elephant foot and it's red.
And it hurst, like it's crazy.
And I can't work and I'm freaking out.
But I'm like, "Ok. It's okay.
I'm just going to pretend everything is fine."
So just get ready normally, put my shoes like...
My shoes was just like didn't want to fit,
and yeah, I go down to the movie set.
[FILM MUSIC PLAYS]
The movie set was crazy.
It was I think, 70 people that day.
Four big cameras, a whole crew running around
and the first scene we shot,
we are on that little boat,
and you know, a boat is really unstable.
And my ankle is killing me, like on the boat I'm just like...
And Axelle, she noticed.
She looks at me and she says,
"What's wrong with you? You don't act normal."
I remove my shoe,
[SCREAMS]
and the face she made when she looked at my foot was,
I will remember all the time like,
"Woah! Dude! We got to go to the hospital right now.
Your foot is looking bad."
She drove me herself to the hospital.
Go to the hospital and the intern, he looks at my foot,
he looks at me and said, "Hold on."
He called like a couple of people, and now there's like three people
with masks in the room just looking at my foot.
They call the doctor and the doctor looks at me and says,
Dude! Your foot is so infected.
And they say, "Ok, you're going to stay here three days.
Tomorrow morning I'm gonna open your foot surgery."
I'm just like, Oh my God! This is crazy.
And at 5:30am,
the nurse comes and she gave me a razor.
She tells me to shave my whole leg off.
Half of my leg was shaved, the other one still has hairs.
Most of the red was gone,
but now I have like a massive pimple.
Imagine the biggest pimple you've ever had.
Like I'm touching it and it's all like...
[GIGGLING] It was disgusting.
The surgeon comes into the room, they put an anesthetic into my leg.
"And sir, I'm going to touch your ankle
and I don't think you're going to be able to feel anything."
And he touches and I'm like,
"Dude, I feel your finger like normal."
And he says, "Yeah that's what I feared."
He said, "There's so much puss into the ankle that I cannot put like,
the anesthetic, we can put as much as you want
and you're not going to feel the anesthetic.
So I'm sorry but I'm going to cut you open with no anesthesia."
And what he said, he had a crazy Italian accent in French.
[GIGGLES]
And he says, "Grab your T-shirt in your mouth
and you know, it's gonna be fine."
I say ok and go like that and...
So he cuts my ankle with a scalpel like...
And then he pressed and I nearly fainted.
The pain was so hard that I like,
I bit through my T shirt like...
I still have that T-shirt, it has a hole in it.
And like I see the eyes of the nurse and she's like freaking out.
[LAUGHING] [GRUNTING]
But after he does that, my ankle is feeling so better.
That day like, I'm going back to the set
and it's the worst walk of shame I've ever done in my whole life.
[LAUGHING]
It's like five days later, this f*** BMX guy
that ruined meeting of the movie comes back.
I said, "What's up guys?"
And they say, "Alright,
so this is the scene we're gonna shoot this morning,
and this is one of the love scenes in the movie."
And I'm like, "Fantastic!"
[LAUGHING] So I'm like, "Okay..."
And so I'm freaking out and I talked to the actress
and then one of the advice she told me was,
"Yeah just pretended that I'm dead."
And I'm like, "What?"
She's like, "Yeah just pretend I'm dead.
No worries, just go for it."
I'm like, "Okay."
Great advice. Thank you.
It's not creepy at all.
Action.
We do the scene, and it's a bunch of people
in that hut and I'm butt naked with my shaved leg
and my big foot and that girl is really hot.
We shot the scene, and I think everybody's
really pleased with how I did.
The movie got on Netflix and we were top three.
They had the premiere in Paris in opera.
and it was insane, like red carpet,
all the photographers you can think of,
my whole family was here and it was an insane experience.
I definitely stayed in touch with Axelle.
She still hasn’t called me for her next movie,
but maybe just lost my email.
[GIGGLING]
[CLAPPING]
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