Make it even stronger in the second season than in the previous one: this is Agnès Hurstel's successful bet with the sequel to Jeune & Golri, crowned best French series at the Séries Mania Festival in 2021. If the first chapter focused on telling the story of the non-desire for a child of Prune, the heroine (played by Agnès Hurstel), the second depicts a broken maternal bond between the latter and her daughter-in-law, Alma, when she separates from the father of the girl (Jonathan Lambert). More mature and bitter, Young & Golri season 2 intelligently questions the bond between a mother-in-law and her stepchildren. In addition to addressing essential themes with humour, Agnès Hurstel has this time realized a dream by becoming co-director of her series.
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See alsoAgnès Hurstel: "When I started stand-up at 25, I knew nothing about this universe"
In video, Young And Golri, Season 2, the trailer
"The fictions of my childhood made me grow up with the image of the stepmother"
Madame Figaro. –What did you want to tell in Jeune & Golri 2?
Agnès Hurstel. – The fictions of my childhood made me grow up with the image of the stepmother, while today I see around me in-laws who have developed sublime relationships with their stepchildren. What interested me for this second season was to tell what happens between them after a breakup, knowing that in-laws have no legal status. And I also liked the idea of telling the story of a toxic relationship between a teenage girl and her ex-mother-in-law.
Your heroine has radically revised her judgment on motherhood...
I fought with my co-authors to get them to accept this change. It is not uncommon for a woman not to want a child at 25 and dream about it eight years later. It is the ambivalence of women that I seek to tell.
It is the ambivalence of women that I seek to tell
Agnes Hurstel
What pleasure did you have in co-directing?
I loved playing HRDs for 80 people, and I found it fascinating to push each team member to surpass themselves. It was the first time I was offered a leadership position, and I told myself that if I did not impose the management I dream of, no one would: thus, we found an organization where we could drop our children off at school, pick them up at night from the nursery; I wanted the minors of the series to evolve in a climate of consent and that everyone comes out of this shoot thinking that he would never accept inferior positions again.
"Plum allows me to go where I can't in life"
How similar do you feel to your character?
I have neither his panache nor his audacity. I am wiser, more organized and more thoughtful than she is. I wore a corset for ten years because of deforming scoliosis, and it made me lose all form of carelessness at a very young age. So Prune allows me to go where I can't in life.
As a teenager, I quickly realized that I could not bet on my physique, so I had to be funny.
Agnes Hurstel
In the series, the stepdaughter, Alma, became a teenager. What memories do you have of that period?
Excruciating memories! So I had a corset, I wore glasses, rings, I had acne... I quickly realized that I could not bet on my physique, so I had to be funny.
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How did Saül Benchetrit get to the cast of Jeune & Golri? A friend who knew her assured me that the role of Alma was for her. So I started following her on Instagram. Later, I met his mother, Anna Mouglalis, with whom I was a juror at a festival, and she introduced me to Saul one evening. I was very stressed about talking to her about my show, and she immediately said, "Is your show feminist? And smart?" I offered her to watch season 1 to get an idea and she agreed.
In the series, Prune discovers that her grandmother was Jewish. What place does religion hold in your life?
I am deeply secular, but I grew up in a family where it was said that my Jewish great-grandparents had been murdered. I adored my grandparents, and I didn't understand why they had been orphaned because neighbours or colleagues had denounced their parents. I later developed an obsession with the uniform and a fear of the police. I always chose apartments with two entrance and exit doors, I sat at the end of the row at the cinema... As an adult, I asked myself how to repair this past in my own way, and today this subject is intrinsically linked to my writing work: I wonder how to make popular comedies on this theme.
"At the moment I really want to play in fiction"
What are your future projects?
I shot two films by Quentin Dupieux, to whom I had written on Instagram after seeing his film Incredible but true (2022) to tell him all the good I had thought. He laughed at me because I wanted him and offered me to play in Yannick and Daaaaaali!, which should be released soon. I then played in Pas de vague, by Teddy Lussi-Modeste, which he co-wrote with Audrey Diwan. This film is very political, engaged and personal, and I loved this story of a young teacher wrongly accused of bullying a student in a PTA. I also just finished the "bible" of a new series a little chilling about the ambivalence of female monsters.
Do you miss the stage since your stand-up?
Not for a second! I will probably do theater again to interpret the text of one or another and with a collective, but for the moment I really want to play in fiction.
What memories do you have of your collaboration with Cédric Klapisch for his Greek Salad series?
I discovered the humility of this man, and when I shot the Christmas episode I had written and in which I played Romain Duris' girlfriend, I was so spectator of the scene that I forgot to say my line...! After all these experiences, I realize how much I really live dream years right now.
Young & Golri, season 2, by and with Agnès Hurstel, Saül Benchetrit, Jonathan Lambert, Mélanie Doutey, Marie Papillon... From June 8 at 21 p.m. on OCS Max.
