" Please! We repeat, but without masks! " On the set of "Tomorrow belongs to us", in Sète (Hérault), the desires of the director Sandra Perrin are orders. Facing the raging waves of the Thau lagoon, the filming looks like an anthill in the superb villa which houses the flagship family of the soap opera, the Delcourt. Yet one in three of the regular team is not there. The dresser, spray in hands covered with blue latex gloves, disinfects everything in its path. The Covid-19 went through there, depriving the series of three months of antenna, and imposing a recovery on the run, in limited numbers. She will return this Monday, June 15, at 7:10 p.m.
But in the scene played last Wednesday, not a word of the virus which required a test for each actor. "I chose a more poetic name" launches Chloé Delcourt (Ingrid Chauvin) as she surprises her husband and father, whiskey in hand, playing poker the name of her future baby.
"We will not refrain from alluding to the Covid"
The plot resumed where it left off in mid-March, coronavirus or not. "People need to get away, we are in fiction" confides the actress, between two glances at her iPhone on which she revises her lines. "We will not forbid in the future some allusions to the Covid, but it will not go any further", assumes the producer Vincent Meslet, who welcomed Gilles Pélisson, the CEO of TF 1, who came to see with his own eyes this shooting under new conditions. And whose replacement programs since mid-March have almost reached half the audience.
Out of scope, the special “Covid” bin marked with a red cross and the bottles of hydroalcoholic solution galore remind us that the rules have changed. An actor puts his hands on it? Another followed suit, as if nothing had happened. At the entrance, compulsory temperature measurement ...
Before each actor receives a large plastic case in Ikea style with their outfits and play accessories, from the wallet to the mobile phone, which no one else touches. "It's less cocooning and more resourceful, like in the theater" sums up Alexandre Brasseur, who plays Alex, Chloé's husband. “Everyone abides by the rules. The hardest thing finally was to remember the first texts. The brain is a muscle that must be restarted! "Smiles the young Clément Rémiens (Maxime).
But under the mask and the veranda, the temperature rises. "JC", the gentleman image with the looks of a Ninja Turtle with his impressive camera glued to the body, sometimes breathes badly. "The mask causes a huge loss of information, because on a set, we communicate a lot by face" observes Sandra Perrin, the director, who mobilizes fewer extras but deploys more tricks to put in images what cannot to be, from the kiss on the mouth to the chase ... "There are lots of tender gestures that work very well. Replace a strand of hair of his partner, it's pretty, and no less sensual, "she judges, concerned that the public sees only fire. "Despite the barrier gestures, it has to be fluid and elegant in terms of the image, so we have to revise to find the right camera axes," she specifies.
A new soap opera released this fall
Sensuality, however, there will be little question from this Monday, at 7:10 pm, new schedule of the soap, with episodes shot before confinement. "Tomorrow belongs to us" signals a shock return, the darkness of which risks tying up almost 4 million viewers, by seizing a timeless subject that also marked 2020: rape. It will overcome the fate of the young Amanda, as of another figure in the series, older. It is harsh and committed, with messages supported towards viewers on the need to file a complaint, and mention in the credits at the end of 3919, the listening and orientation number.
Newsletter - The essentials of the news
Every morning, the news seen by Le ParisienI'm registering
Your email address is collected by Le Parisien to allow you to receive our news and commercial offers. Find out more
Between reconstruction after these crimes, police hunt, separation of a couple, homophobia or ecological imperative, "DNA" makes up for lost time. On the summer menu: the turbulence of the Moreno family, the return of Clémentine Doucet (former Miss France Linda Hardy) or Captain Saïd. Finally, the birth of the miracle baby by Chloé Delcourt, filmed this week with a real newborn. "It's life that takes its course," insists producer Vincent Meslet. Before, for TF 1, a new major challenge: the creation of a new soap opera, called “Ici tout commence”, shot in the Camargue and broadcast in the fall, just before “Tomorrow belongs to us”… with a few bridges between of them.
