“He was committed, lit, whole, talented, powerful. So Olivier Abbou, who announced the sad news on his Instagram account, summarizes his “hero, friend, accomplice”. Adama Niane, died on January 29, in Paris, of unknown cause, at the age of 56. The actor had collaborated a lot with this director, who made him shoot in the Maroni series and the film Furie, where he gave him the leading role.
Born on August 23, 1966, in Paris, Adama Niane, trained at the Institute of Theatrical Studies of Paris-III-Censier and at the Ateliers du Théâtre Gérard-Philipe, began on stage at the end of the 1980s. He played in Fantasio, by Alfred de Musset, The False Next, by Marivaux, Quai Ouest, by Bernard-Marie Koltès, Le Pays loin, by Jean-Luc Lagarce, Combats de possédés, by Laurent Gaudé, before turning to television series . He went on to play small roles in Mysteries, Commissioner Moulin, Julie Lescaut, PJ, Braquo, Sam, before landing, in 2009, the recurring role of a lawyer, Sébastien Sangha, in Plus belle la vie.
In the cinema, he played in Baise-moi, by Virginie Despentes, in 2000, and in 35 rhums, by Claire Denis, in 2008. He was especially noticed in L’Affaire SK1, by Frédéric Tellier, where he was, according to Le World, “impressive in Guy Georges”, the killer from eastern Paris, facing Raphaël Personnaz, Nathalie Baye and Olivier Gourmet. The actor did not want to meet the killer: “To extract what information? Try to ape it? I preferred to trust my work and my instincts as an actor,” he explained to Parisian.
Monk and robber roles
He will then play, alongside Djédjé Appali and Eriq Ebouaney, in Le Gang des Antillais, adaptation of the autobiographical story of Loïc Léry, a young Martiniquan who became a robber, who wrote in prison under the impulse of the writer Patrick Chamoiseau. More recently, Adama Niane played a monk in La fille de l’hiver, an episode of Alex Hugo, on France 3, and was in the credits of The island of thirty coffins, a series adaptation of Maurice Leblanc’s book, on France 2. In 2017, Adama Niane shared the poster for the miniseries La Mante (TF1), with Carole Bouquet, Pascal Demolon, Fred Testot and Jacques Weber.
But it is above all his face-to-face with Omar Sy, in the series Lupin (another adaptation of Maurice Leblanc’s masterpiece, on Netflix), which will be remembered. Adama Niane embodies the villainous Leonard, of whom he makes “a fascinating character, almost mute, threatening and fragile, of which we do not know if he is moved by cruelty or by an impulse of self-destruction”, according to the critic of Le Monde.
Omar Sy insisted, on Monday January 30 on his Twitter account, to salute beyond “the immense actor alongside whom [he had] the chance and the pleasure of playing”, a man of “rare benevolence”.