Succeed Florence Pernel in "The judge is a woman"?
Everyone had advised him against it twenty years ago.
Marine Delterme, model and then actress in the cinema, finally agreed to play Alice Nevers, because she “needed to work” and especially because this role, which reminded her of her law studies, made her “very much want”.
Eighteen seasons later, the detective series still attracts more than five million viewers on average.
But TF 1, which targets women purchasing managers under the age of 50, who are less likely to follow the adventures of the judge now, has decided to turn the page.
Well almost.
A double episode will close the saga, one of the last historical ones, in style in a few months, as Marine Delterme reveals to us.
And she already has other plans.
Is this really the end of "Alice Nevers"?
MARINE DELTERME.
First of all, it was extraordinary to play a heroine for so long, thanks to the audience who gave me a lot of love and loyalty.
Reciprocal loyalty, I gave 20 years of my life to Alice Nevers and it changed and grew me.
It was so strong that I couldn't stop it on my own until then.
But with TF 1, we felt on the last shoots, that we had to postpone after the first confinement, that the world had changed and that we had reached the end of a cycle.
The events were so strong that we had to ask ourselves the question: what are we going to do next?
These six months of forced stoppage, also allowed me to position myself on my desires.
Who do I want to embody?
It is time for me to advance other projects that directly echo this new company.
If TF 1 has decided to stop “Alice Nevers”, it is mainly because of the drop in audience for women responsible for purchases under 50, the target targeted by advertisers ...
That there is a decrease in housewives did not prevent Gilles Pélisson
(Editor's note: boss of the TF 1 group)
from speaking of "Alice Nevers" as the success of the fall in the same way as "Balthazar".
With more than 5 million viewers on average, we are still there, powerful.
After the audiences, you know ... Me, I'm an actress.
What would make me happy would be to have a nice finish.
But TF 1 was very clear, there will only be a final if the writing is up to the task, by offering strong and eventful episodes to the spectators.
The ball is in the camps of Ego production, which will start working now.
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Was it important to you that the series came to a real end?
Yes, you see the quality of a love story in the way people break up.
There are those who tear each other apart, who insult each other and put themselves on trial.
And those who manage to get along, as Agnès Jaoui and Jean-Pierre Bacri did by continuing a dialogue in the remarkable work.
I would like a happy ending that meets the expectations of the public, that they are not disappointed but happy to close this parenthesis with us.
This judge character has been a part of your life for 19 years ...
Alice Nevers changed my life.
Embodying this strong woman gave me the foundation, confidence.
Before I was an actress waiting for the desire of the other, a date or a meeting.
While there, I participated in the writing and observed many directors on the same compulsory exercise.
I also acquired the reflexes of a producer.
Do you remember your first scene?
It was at the courthouse, which was filmed at the time at the medical school located at the Odeon.
I was very young, very nervous.
I had made myself some sort of armor, a very strict costume to be credible.
I had worked with a coach.
It was a mixture of excitement and apprehension.
Would anyone believe in me?
Takis Candilis, TF 1's director of fiction at the time, gave me this advice: if you want to reach the general public, you have to be an open book, and convey strong and true emotions.
What will you feel at the final clap?
I will be very moved.
People have been engaged with me for so many years.
As proof, the thousands of letters I received.
As the producer Pascale Breugnot says, Alice Nevers is a landmark for viewers.
Despite her flaws and weaknesses, she is a strong and positive woman with morals, she is upright in her boots.
Did playing Alice Nevers really close doors for you as your entourage dreaded?
Of course !
Since Alice Nevers, I have only made two feature films.
At the time, it was one or the other.
The system was completely siled.
Fortunately, all of that has changed.
Movie actors come to TV and vice versa.
But I have no regrets because the strength of television is the speed of filming and editing which allows us to stick to the news.
And then there are more beautiful roles for women.
With Marc Lavoine, you are going to share the poster of a TV movie on TF 1 entitled "Far from home" ...
Yes, I will play Victoire, an expatriate painter in Amsterdam with her husband, played by Marc.
It makes me happy to find him again when we met thirty years ago in New York.
He is incredibly talented and charming.
An au pair will arrive in our house and it will turn our life upside down.
It is a genre film in the pure tradition of psychological thriller.
According to our information, you will also be shooting for France 2 ...
Yes, in "Manipulation".
It is a series of six episodes on the descent into hell of a woman victim of a narcissistic pervert and who loses everything: her daughter, her friends, her job and her self-esteem.
We have all known a friend or a friend under the influence, and we all have an opinion sometimes even a judgment.
With this fiction, we will realize that everything is complex and ambivalent.
Fiction is used for this, it allows the field of reflection to be opened up by leaving behind ideology and received ideas.
It also makes it possible to do prevention by demonstrating the mechanisms of domination, with a very romantic and cinematographic subject.
Other projects?
During confinement, I developed a scenario that deals with the major problem of incest.
For the record, with the psychiatrist Muriel Salmona, I went, two years ago, to the National Assembly, to screen a remarkable documentary on pedophilia, entitled “Stolen childhood”
(Editor's note: broadcast on LCP in March 2019)
, and directed by Sylvie Meyer, in front of the deputies.
We expected two hundred, only twenty came.
This shocked me a lot, and revolted me.
The Kouchner affair happened and shocked the French.
I now hope that this will make it possible to change this law which does not protect our children and is not up to our nation.
Only 1% of pedophiles are arrested and tried.
It is necessary to criminalize any sexual act on a minor under 15 years old, full stop.
You recently confided that your "obsession" was to make a film ...
Yes, it's an order, but on a subject that fascinates me: the friendship between Monet and Clemenceau, around the Water Lilies.
The question is fascinating: in the face of old age, should we abdicate as Monet thinks or, on the contrary, continue to fight and desire life like Clemenceau?
For me to always fight and keep up with the moving world, curiosity and desire keep alive and in these difficult times.
It's a mantra that I repeat to myself every day.
