Les Combattantes on TF1: “Sophia Essaide’s character shouldn’t have been so important in the first place,” according to director Alexandre Laurent.

AlloCiné: From Le Bazar de la Charité, did you want to go on a new adventure with producer Iris Boucher and the cast of the series?

Alexander Lawrence (Director of Les Combattantes): Yes, I think we started talking about it as soon as we started shooting Le Bazaar de la Charité. Iris told me: “Alex, I think we already have our next project together”. And it’s true that the Bazaar adventure was pretty crazy for all of us, so there was a desire to rejoin this team to tell another story.

And I think it was the day after the premiere at the Grand Rex that we told ourselves “Come on, we’re trying to do this new series in two years.”. It would take another five months, but when we started it was just a treatment, a story of fictional characters by Cecil Lorne. And we managed to get out fighters in two and a half years. Despite covid. It was a real challenge, but he set the course. The timing challenge was definitely part of the project.

Is the budget of the series more important than the charity market?

Higher, yes. I think it’s 20 million for all eight episodes of Les Combattantes. The market was small. I think it was about 16 million.

You left with three actors from Le Bazar, and Sofia Essaidi was added to that starting trio. How was Sophia chosen for the role of Caroline?

In fact, we really intended to cast the same three actresses against each other. We even asked ourselves to do it brilliantly, cast all the actors of the charity market in new roles, then told ourselves that it was not bad news for the audience. So the idea from the beginning was to have three heroes and find Audrey Fleuro, Camille Lou and Julie de Bona.

But in Marguerite’s storyline, played by Audrey, there is a Caroline DeWitt character who has arrived. He’s a character that shouldn’t have been that important in the first place, that was more secondary. But this Caroline liked the channel and, suddenly, the character grew as she wrote. And quickly, after a month of development, we told ourselves “We’ll need a fourth heroine, that would be great”. So we made this character of Caroline, whom Margarita met in the first version of the script, more important. And we’re glad because Sofia is great in the series. It’s a big meeting.

In the episodes, the war sequence takes up more and more space. Was filming the war the main challenge of the series for you?

It was especially good (laughs). Although war slowly creeps into the series, starting with civilians, it’s a real choice. We enter it little by little through the eyes of our characters.

I have seen many war movies. I had in mind Master Spielberg and his masterpiece Saving Ryan. It follows a character on the battlefield, and I really liked the idea of ​​being behind the character you’re following, because there are so many characters in this type of movie, you can get lost quickly. And that can throw us out of perspective.

As a result, I wanted to film the war in the same way, from the point of view of the follower. Like Marguerite in Episode 3. It takes a lot of practice. We only had 95 or 96 days to shoot the entire series. Which is less than 12 days per episode. It’s actually in line with what we have in the classic mini-series, which is not period, not war. We couldn’t do more. There were more in the beginning, but can’t be 3000 extra, great set… there’s an equation to solve.

As a result, we prepared the scenes immensely with our stunt adjuster and his team. We choreographed the sequences in advance, then rehearsed with the actors a few times before shooting so that we were really ready when it was time to shoot and didn’t waste a lot of time on set. It was a huge time saver.

Even if the characters are fictional, such a series requires historical accuracy. Have you worked with historians?

completely. We had two historical advisors, two historians, in addition to other advisors who collaborated on the series. For example, we had a daily military advisor on set. I didn’t do military service because it wasn’t mandatory at the time and I didn’t want the series to be “fake” because there were big mistakes.

In order to be as close as possible to historical accuracy, we interviewed and sent the texts of the various episodes to two historians: Françoise Tebault, who helped us with the psychology and positioning of women during the war of 1914-1918, as this is her specialty, and Jean-Pierre Verne, who is 14 – 18 years war specialist, who created the Great War Museum with his collection.

We sent texts, telling us what was good or not. We still had a few minor hiccups. In particular, we took liberties with the use of weapons. We thought that this happened two months earlier in this village (laughs). For script reasons. But otherwise we were ultra loyal. To tell you the truth, at the very beginning of the project, before reading, during the fantasy, I said to myself “We’re going to try to change the tone a bit and tell it all in a bit of a western way.”. Because I told myself that war was a no-go zone, I thought it made sense.

And finally, a week later, after talking to historians at the Meo Museum, I realized that there was a real duty to remember. Hence the epic music and tone that is quite realistic and respects the story. We examine a part of French history that still characterizes the people today. We had invested in a real form of respect. We didn’t want to distort. This was important, especially since the series focuses on showing the role of women during the Great War. Because we know that they are the great forgotten of history.

Was it difficult to find the right balance between the realistic aspect of war and the very soapy side of the story of these four women?

I think it goes really well together. We’re on some heavy, scary, heavy core. This is the reality of war. And the positive aspect, in terms of storytelling, is that it heightens all the senses. That is, every heroine, every person is placed in extraordinary situations. And those we choose to follow and for whom we invent stories become stronger.

And as much as we show the horror, as much as I realize that the breath of Les Combattantes is these four women and all the other men who are drawn around them – I think of Tom Libby’s character, who is a surgeon and who gives of himself to help others. We are in mutual aid, in humanity.

The charity market was primarily in the background of feminism. This is what we clearly find in Les Combattantes, as we tell the story of the work of these four women and others through the workers, the nuns, everything that was not told and emphasized at the end of the First World War. But I find it’s also about humanity and mutual aid in general. How do people cope with horror? All our characters are heroes. They are there to help France, to help others.

And there is a character that we hardly see in the first four episodes, that is the priest character played by Laurent Guerra. What about this clergyman? He’s the main antagonist of Mother Agnes, isn’t he?

Before being the antagonist of Mother Agnes, it was also the point of view of the church of the time, which was separated from the state and which, through war, tried to regain its place in society, in the state. And, yes, he is the patron saint of the monastery, but I can’t say more. Then it is very salty (laughs). But, yes, you will see that he is a real antagonist.

What’s interesting is that unlike Bazaar, we delve deeper into the secondary characters. The two villains we see right from the start, in the roles of Grégoire Collin and Yannick Koirat, we really dig their psychology. We had Lenverpre at Le Bazar which was very, very bad. He was the stereotypical villain, it was great. But here our villains also have a flaw.

Despite the fact that Grégoire Collin’s character is a fat pig who abuses a prostitute and that this scene serves to show what a despicable character he is, we’re also going to go back through Sandrine Bonner to her childhood, we’ll explore some things. The same about the character of Yannick Choirat, there is a story with his sister. We go into their family history. The characters are more perfect than in the charity market.

Were there things that were difficult to do or show as a bonus on TF1? Nudity, everything that happens in a brothel, it might have been too bold for the channel…

Agree with TF1 from the beginning, it was all written. Grégoire Colin’s scene in the brothel, for example, is a scene that can be discussed, if only in relation to the audience we are addressing. He could do this sequence for another two minutes, but in this case, it’s no longer a family. It is no longer available for premium on TF1.

As a result, such a sequence is very truncated, we shorten it. The idea is not to intimidate people. We treat him as a despicable character, but we don’t show too much either. And most importantly, nothing is free.

Now that Les Combattantes is on the air, what will the sequel look like for you? A third series with the same cast? Or do you want to return to a more modern series?

We discuss the third series of Yes with Iris Bucher and TF1, which will once again take place in a different era. But nothing is done. We have to wait for the Les Combattantes auditions.

And besides that, I read things. I want to do an expectation, for example. After recalling the fights we had to fight to get the rights we have today, I want to do a series on the battles we have to fight today so that we don’t end up being lied to again. late.

There are genres that have been seen and discussed, and today we need the exotic. Stories and genres that amaze us. The audience needs it. Me too.

I started on RIS: Police Scientifique twelve or thirteen years ago, and it’s crazy to see how much French fiction has evolved since then. I’m not just talking about fighters. I’m thinking Black Butterflies, Vortex, Prometheus coming soon. These are the series I want to discover.