This is one of the surprises of the return to France Télévisions! After 4 years of absence, Frédéric Lopez will return to France 2 with a concept close to the late La Parenthèse inexpectée. He tells us more.
What made you decide to return to the small screen?
I hadn’t disappeared from the TV, just from the light! I remained a producer, notably of Meeting in unknown land. I have practiced and studied mindfulness meditation. It’s been four years since I met a person who didn’t ask me what I’m doing now. And if The unexpected parenthesis will return to the air. As by an alignment of planets, Sunday in the countryside will be a little sister of this show, but instead of being broadcast at 11 p.m. on France 2, it will be broadcast at 3 p.m.
Did you come up with the concept?
Not at all, I was very much at home in the Cévennes far from any media fuss, without an interview even though I am very talkative, and I had no intention of showing my face on TV at all.
So what happened?
Anne Holmes (director of programs at France Télévisions, editor’s note) turned my brain around. She first came to see me, we chatted, it was very nice but I told her from the start that it was not worth her insisting.
How did she manage to convince you?
She came back to the charge. She spoke to me about my values and by evoking something intergenerational, a value that obsesses me, she touched my heart. A Sunday…, it will be sincerity, humanity, authenticity, inclusion… I offered to do one out of two, she told me that it would be refused. I spoke about it to my team, faithful since my beginnings. They told me that they were able to manage to shoot two hours of programs twice in 48 hours. I said bank.
What will this look like? A Sunday in the countryside?
In a house, which we are still looking for in the Paris region, we will try to reveal facets of three guests, beyond the legend that surrounds them. There will be depth and a lot more laughter than in The Unexpected Parenthesis. We’re finalizing things.
The public on Sunday afternoons is not the same as that of the second part of the evening. Who are you going to invite?
For me, there is not too much difference. We have always mixed the generations in The Parenthesis… The show will also now reflect this movement of exodus to the countryside that followed the Covid, the happiness far from the cities that many people are looking for. And the next day’s lunch ritual will be special.
That’s to say ?
At the time of The Parenthesis, I almost had to chase away the guests of one lunch show, to be able to accommodate those of the next one. This time, each guest who wants to stay will have to introduce me to someone they admire, not necessarily known. My son Victor and his girlfriend will be present and the program which will be called You’ll love it will be on my YouTube channel.
Other projects?
I would like to end Between my fears and my dreams, my biography which is a sea serpent. I have a fiction project inspired by real events in production, When nothing is certain, everything is possible. This is the story of a man to whom the unspeakable happened. He is saved by love, a forbidden love. If we know that these two love each other, she loses her job and her family, and he loses his reason to exist.
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