While Woody Allen was filming Midnight In Paris, the tabloids went wild with the speculation that poor Carla Bruni-Sarkozy was such an inept actress that she needed 35 takes to film just one scene that involved a baguette and no dialogue. Now, the 2011 Cannes International Film Festival has commenced, and Allen (along with most of the principal cast) is on hand for the screening of Midnight in Paris, which contains a very wide-ranging cast including, of all people, Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Adrian Brody, and (of course) Carla Bruni-Sarkozy. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Allen addresses (among other things) those rumors about Carla’s alleged skills as an actress as well as paparazzi fallout:

THR: What led to your casting Carla Bruni?

Allen: With Carla, my wife and I were having brunch with the Sarkozkys about a year and a half ago. I had never met them before. He was very charming, very nice, and then she walked into the room. She was so beautiful, so charming and charismatic, I said, ‘Would ever think of being in a movie? Just a small thing, for fun, for your own amusement. I knew she wouldn’t be available for three months of shooting, but I knew she had been before audiences before, playing the guitar, singing, making recordings. She said, ‘Yes, just once in my life I’d like to do it, so I could tell my grandchildren I was in a movie.’ So I said, ‘I’ll make it very simple, just a couple of days work. Something I know you can do, not something we have to work six weeks on. If you can relax and enjoy yourself, you will be fine.’ And she said, sure, she’d love that. And so she came in. She was no problem, she was very natural. The tabloids kept printing that I was doing a million takes with her, but I wasn’t at all. I was doing the normal amount of takes. I certainly don’t do a million takes with anybody, and I was only doing a normal amount with her. Her husband came to watch her work one night and thought she was just great, beautiful and a natural actress. All of the scenes that I wrote for her are in the picture and she did them well. It was a very pleasant experience doing the picture and very pleasant working with her.

THR: Did you realize when you cast her, she’d be a magnet for the paparazzi?

Allen: We have that all the time, whenever we are working in the street. When I was working in England with Scarlett Johansson, the tabloids were all over the place. When I was working in Barcelona with Javier and Penelope, the tabloids were out en masse. And when I work in New York, and there is someone in the movie of interest, they just come flocking. Here, interestingly, her first scene was in the Rodin Museum, so we had that privately to ourselves. So the paparazzi couldn’t get in there. Of course, then when we were working on the street, they were there, but that does happen. It happened with Marion Cotillard and Owen Wilson just as much.

See, I was really skeptical when the Daily Mail quoted a source saying that Allen “wasn’t particularly enthused” about Carla’s on-set performance. Mostly because Woody Allen never looks particularly enthused about anything. Even when he cracks a smile, the guy looks positively miserable. Anyway, Owen Wilson fans will be pleased to know that Woody wanted to cast Owen so badly that he rewrote the main East Coast character to suit Owen’s West Coast personality:

THR: The movie has a very eclectic cast — how did it fall into place?

Allen: I was certain I wanted Rachel McAdams. I knew that. She had always been what I conceived of for her part. The lead was a more East Coast character in the original script (casting director) Juliet Taylor suggested Owen Wilson. I had always been a fan of his, but always felt that has a very West Coast persona. He belongs very much at home on a beach or with a surfboard. So I rewrote the script, making the character a West Coast character. I sent it to Owen and I was very lucky he wanted to do it. Once I had them, I thought about Marion Cotillard. I guess she is the first person you think of when you think of France and getting an actress who is great in the same sense that when I was making Barcelona, I thought of Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem because they are the internationally known giants of that country. The same thing here. Marion is not just a local French actress, she’s a great, internationally known movie actress. And she was available and willing to do it.

THR: Is that unusual for you, to rewrite a character to suit an actor?

Allen: That does happen, and I’m happy to do it if I can get an actor like Owen, who is a strong person to play something. Then I am perfectly willing to rewrite a character if I can rewrite it. Of course, there are some characters that you could never change. That would ruin the story. But very often you can adjust a character. If you have a strong personality, sometimes it requires an adjustment.

[From The Hollywood Reporter]

Ideally, Owen’s performance will be good enough that it will help revive his career after it went to the dogs with Marley and Me and Marmaduke, but we’ll have to wait and see on that one. For now and since it’s Cannes time, everyone wants to know whether the Sarkozys will attend the premiere, and even Woody admits that he has no idea if they’ll show up or not. While Carla hasn’t been snapped at the photocall, there’s still time for her to make an appearance at the premiere itself. In the meantime, here’s a look at the rest of the cast and some more on-set photos of Carla’s actressin’ skills.

Photos courtesy of WENN and Fame Pictures