During the entrance examination, viewers of “Here it all begins” discovered Jim, Bérénice, Malik, Carla, Maya, Léonard and Pénélope. The producers of the TF1 soap opera give us the secrets of making this new promo.
Each return is synonymous with new faces in Here it all begins, and the start of season 4, launched Monday evening on TF1, was no exception to the rule. Far from there.
On the occasion of the institute’s entrance examination, viewers thus met Jim (Loan Becmont), the eldest son of chef Leroy, but also Bérénice (Bérénice Tannenberg), Constance’s half-sister. , who suffers from school phobia and has to deal with the legendary sadism of Teyssier (Benjamin Baroche).
Without forgetting Pénélope (Laurence Facelina), thirty-something in retraining, Carla (Aaricia Lemaire), a confident young woman from a very well-to-do family, and Malik (Oscar Al Hafiane), a little prodigy in the kitchen who arrives in Calvières in the hope to meet Ophélie, for whom he had a crush on an application, and who actually happens to be Ambre (Claire Romain).
These hopeful aspiring chefs, who join Maya (Alexandra Favalli) and Léonard (Thomas Vilan), introduced a little earlier this summer in Here it all begins, will they realize their dream? Will they be part of the twenty candidates who will have the privilege of forming the new promotion of the Auguste Armand Institute? Response Friday on TF1.
In the meantime, Sarah Farahmand and Egantine Sofianos, respectively producer and artistic producer of Here it all begins, tell us how the profiles of these new characters were imagined, who want to be very different from what has already been offered in the soap opera for years. previous ones, even if the idea is always to best represent the company.
Because one thing is certain: Jim, the former soldier, Penelope and his outspokenness that will make sparks, or even Leonard and his unfailing benevolence promise not to leave anyone indifferent and to touch the hearts of TF1 viewers. .
AlloCiné: How did you draw the new profiles for season 4? What were the areas of development for the institute’s new promotion?
Sarah Farahman : It all started at the beginning of March. We are used to having a big weekend with the authors of the series during which we think in every way about what we want. What character do we want to see in the series? What are we missing in terms of profiles? What have we lost? What have we never had? From there, characters emerge.
Then, the authors work again in small groups. It takes about a month and a half to define all the characters that we would like to have, that we believe are representative of today’s society and that will bring something to the series. We didn’t want copies of existing characters or characters who wanted to leave. That was not the goal at all.
ITC/TF1
For the character of Jim, for example, we said to ourselves that we didn’t have a somewhat mysterious guy, a somewhat bad boy. It is annoying and at the same time we want to know more. Who is like that today? Person. It’s kind of born out of that.
Then, we said to ourselves that we had to attach a son to Leroy. It’s its opposite, so we found it super interesting. Leroy, we saw that he was a fairly open guy with participatory methods. What’s the opposite? Military. So we built things like that. It’s as if we had plenty of keywords. And we said to ourselves that we had never had a soldier in the series. It’s something that we had mentioned in the past several times but never retained it because it brought nothing. There, when we oppose him to Marc Leroy, it necessarily tells something.
We imagine that you also wanted to explore Constance’s past and family, after being very interested in the Teyssiers for three seasons. What is the relationship between Constance and Bérénice, her half-sister?
Eglantine Sofianos : They are quite close. They did not necessarily grow up together and Constance did not play the role of mother for Bérénice either. We don’t want to fall into the image of the “big sister mom”. That’s not the idea. However, there is trust between them. Bérénice can confide in her sister with complete serenity where, faced with Teyssier, she will be a little more fragile.
When Bérénice arrives at the institute, Constance is still on an internship in Paris. How will Teyssier welcome him?
Given the personality of Bérénice who is quite reserved in front of Teyssier, it is sure that she will have to take her courage in both hands.
Screenshot/TF1
For the first time, the new promotion includes a woman in her thirties, older than her classmates. Through Pénélope, did you want to deal with the theme of professional retraining, which you had never tackled before in the series?
Sarah Farahmand: Absolutely. We wanted to show the professional retraining but also the shock of the generations at work and in studies. Penelope is going to be an interesting character because she’s really on the border between the two. With the youngest of her promotion but also with Constance and Laetitia with whom she will establish relationships.
Leonard is already a favorite for some viewers. Without falling into stories of boxes to be filled in, was there a slight desire on your part to bring, with this very sunny, very bright and very important character in terms of representation, something that you had a little lost following the departures of Greg and Eliott?
Sarah Farahmand: Representation is very important to us. As much as I was saying that we didn’t want to fill in boxes, it’s as much effectively representing today’s society as representing all sexual orientations. It was indeed important without it being a subject either. There was a real will on our part, we didn’t want to say to ourselves: “It’s good, we already had homosexual characters in season 1, we don’t need to have them anymore”. That’s out of the question. We also wonder about all the forms of diversity in reality.
Screenshot/TF1
Afterwards, it wasn’t just that that interested us in Leonardo. We really wanted to show what it was like to grow up in a home, to create a family with people of our own age. It is also this feeling of betrayal that Maya and Léonard were able to feel vis-à-vis Salomé when she stopped giving them news. It’s also showing how they really see each other as brother and sister.
Maybe if Leonardo had been heterosexual, everyone would have at some point expected a romance between them that we weren’t necessarily interested in. If from the beginning there is one of the two who is not interested in the other, the question does not arise. We are really in a brother and sister thing with Léonard and Maya.