‘They Called Me Marathon Man’: Pierre Perrier Recounts Filming On Prison Island One Hundred Miles An Hour

Broadcast every Monday at 21:10 on France 2, L’île burgnière, novelist Michel Bussy’s first work for television, It takes us to Penhique, a small fictional island in Brittany with no history, which sees its daily life on the day twenty armed activists arrive and confine all the inhabitants to a village school.

Who are these activists? Why are the residents of Penhick in custody? Who among them will become heroes, cowards or traitors? So many questions to be answered over the course of this six-episode season, twist by twist. Especially since the presence of five shuttle passengers on the island, which connected to Penhic on the mainland, who managed to escape the vigilance of Alpha and his people, could spoil everything.

While France 2 offers two new episodes of L’île burgnière tonight, Pierre Perrier (Jeux d’influence, Les Revenants), returns for us to the reasons that led him to play Alex, a former inhabitant of the island of the return. Penhick at the worst time and grueling shooting of the series. Don’t forget her brief reunion with Lanick Guthrie, the film that changed her life almost twenty years ago, and her projects on television.

AlloCiné: What attracted you to L’île burgnière when the project was presented? Was the fact that this was Michel Busi’s first work for television an argument for you?

Pierre Perrier: Of course, it was interesting to me, because Michel Bussy tried his hand at screenwriting for the first time, and the “Michel Bussy” series on the stage of the novel had not yet been released. , so it was intriguing.

Then, on top of that, the project seemed ambitious to me compared to what we generally do in French fiction. The role of Alex was fun. We’re thinking 90s action movies, I had a lot of references in my head. It was quite inspiring. I have already done a little action, but not to this extent. And then the series is quite choral. When I saw that all the good actors would be around me, it really made me want to.

Michel Buss speaks of L’île burgnière as a kind of mixture between Le Prisonnier and La Casa de Papel. are you ok with that

It’s not as much of a puzzle as La Casa de Papel, but there are a few twists on Prisoner Island, too, admittedly. I understand what he means. The story unfolds, there is somewhat of an origami construction, every episode we unfold a small piece and it gives a different figure. It was very interesting in terms of structure. And the prisoner, we also definitely think yes, with this closed and monitored perimeter.

We’re definitely asking ourselves questions about Alex, your character, who returns to Penhick the moment the activists arrive. We wonder if he might be unfaithful. That’s how you approached him in terms of acting: as a hero, maybe with two faces?

Yes, that was one of the directions given to me by the directors, Elsa Bennett and Hippolyte Dard. In the first two or three episodes, there should have been some doubt about Alex’s intentions, that we could expect a change in the situation with my character, to reveal a double face. So I played it pretty quiet at first.

At one point, there is a rather violent scene where Alex chokes a boy and chokes him. The directors wanted it to be a little too much, so that we would be suspicious, and we would say to ourselves, “This guy is capable of violence.”

Do you think Alex is really coming back to Penhick to tend to his father’s grave, or is he mainly coming back to find Candace?

I think that one and the other are inseparable. But the main reason, in my opinion, is my father’s grave. But he cannot imagine one without the other. And that love story, as well as the love triangle with Yannick (Kevin Azais), brings real tension to the series. Also, it’s not too clichéd, since Candace (Margot Bancillon) has a crush on Alex from the start, she shouldn’t fall into his arms right away at all.

It’s a love triangle whose gameplay was not so classic. Especially in a plot where there’s really a lot of action.

The viewer watching Prisoner’s Island cannot escape the detail: during the six episodes of the series, Alex runs a lot…

It was a joke on the set (laughs). They called me the marathon man. I have never been in better shape than during this shoot. I used to run for 20 minutes a day, even several times a day. On the cliffs of Brittany in South Finisterre it was still quite high, we were lucky. But it’s true, I’m constantly on the run in this series. It was really a joke, the directors looked at me and said: “Sorry Pierre, you’re still going to run away.” I finished the shoot in great shape (laughs).

Did you have a shooting feeling that was generally trying?

Yes, it was quite physical. We started very, very early because the directors were trying to catch the dawn light, so we had to be ready at dawn. But hey, it was a lot of fun filming in Brittany. We were in very good conditions, every morning we shot by the sea, it was beautiful.

After that, you should know one thing about Brittany: the weather changes every quarter of an hour. We have to deal with it. Sometimes we had connection problems. It rained for hours and hours from the bright sunlight and there was nothing you could do. You have to keep spinning.

Are there any episodes from the series that you particularly remember?

I have a good sequence with Anouk Greenberg at one point when her character, Mado, gets angry. We had a good relationship with Anouk and this is the scene that really touched me. It is not usual to see a grandmother in the arms of a young boy.

You weren’t too disappointed to have so many scenes with Lanick Guthrie, who you played with Lake killer and Fear on the lake ?

It’s true that we hardly ever played Prisoner Island together. Our heroes confront each other a bit at the end, but there is almost no exchange. But we understand Lanik very well. Besides, he is from Breton, he has a big house there, we were at his house. He prepared great meals for the whole team, it was very nice.

A lot of people discovered you in the movie cold shower fromAnthony Cordier, which was released in the cinema in 2005. What are your memories of this adventure?

It was my first feature film. It was an extraordinary, really powerful experience. I started on TV two or three years ago, doing scales on high school stuff, like Madame La Principal, which I broke my teeth on a bit because I didn’t have the training. And Cold Showers put me in cinematic conditions for the first time, with cinematic demands, with real work upstream.

We had a lot of rehearsals because the film was very difficult. We went through three months of judo training with the French national team to be at work. I had gained 10 kilos of muscle. It was very demanding as a shoot. And then this topic was not easy. There were many sex scenes, naked. You should be comfortable with that. It was a very intense experience, but a great one. We were in very good conditions. We were a whole team of young people. Antony Cordier was his first feature film. I have a very good memory. We went to Cannes, it had very good results for all of us. It gave me a leg up for everything I did next.

With the current success of fiction, young people like it elite or thenWasn’t this movie pretty hot at the time, a bit ahead of its time?

It is correct. Love and sex stories about young people have always existed, especially Téchiné films. But cold showers were about three, in relaxation (laughs). There was a kind of vision of the youth that was to come and that exists today in droves. With real liberation and a tendency to deconstruct codes. It’s funny, I’ve never seen it before, but now that we’re talking about it, it’s true that the movie was a little ahead of its time.

Would you like to work with Anthony Cordier again, who is especially a director after Cold Showers Happy few and the series Aliens ?

I haven’t seen him in a while, but if I ever get the chance, I’ll definitely say yes to him. He’s doing a great job, he’s a great director.

You are currently shooting a mini-series for M6 Terror spieswith Vincent Elbaz. what can you tell us

The series is based on a very serious book, very well documented on the subject. We are following the hunt for those responsible for the November 13, 2015 attacks through the prism of DGSI and DGSE. It is hard, but very interesting.

The work done was insane, it really shows in the series. I play a DGSI commander who is at the center of a terrorist hunt through social networks, the internet and GPS demarcation of boys, only in French territory. That’s all I can say.

I’m also shooting in Sambre, a series directed by Jean-Xavier de Lestrade, who shot me in Jeux d’influence. It’s a series about Sambri’s bully and it’s going to be very, very powerful. I am very happy to work again with Jean-Xavier, who is an outstanding director, very thorough.

And after that, I’m supposed to be shooting a quality unit on Romain Garry this summer while he’s writing life ahead under the pseudonym of Emil Ajar. I was offered the role of his nephew, who supported the identity of Emil Ajar to the press at the time. And it was he who exposed the deception after Romain Gary’s suicide, five years after Life Ahead was published.

This is a subject that fascinates me. Romain Garry is a kind of human myth, there is so much mystique around him that it is fascinating. I read the script, it is very well written, the authors are novelists who wrote about Romain Garry. I am very happy to be a part of this project.