While season 11 of “En Famille” continues every evening on M6, Charlie Bruneau (Roxane) and Gérémy Crédeville (Milo) come back for us on their meeting, their collaboration, the evolution of Roxane over the seasons, and the departure by Kader.
AlloCiné: En Famille celebrates its 10th anniversary this summer on M6. How do you view this crazy adventure?
Charlie Bruneau : It’s hard to realize that it’s been ten years. It happened extremely quickly. And above all, we never suspected that this series would last ten years and that we would take so much pleasure in shooting it during all this time, without running out of steam. So we feel a real astonishment. And so much the better. When the production told us “It’s been ten years”, I don’t think any of us realized it.
Geremy Credeville : I arrived very recently, and it’s true that I quickly realized that there was still a lot of freshness among all the actors. We don’t feel tired. Everyone knows each other and enjoys playing together. And I was integrated fairly quickly. I’m delighted, because it’s always difficult to arrive in a group that has known each other for ten years. But I was very well received by the whole team.
Did it immediately match between you two, when shooting your first scenes together last year for season 10?
Charlie Bruneau: Sincerely, yes.
Gérémy Crédeville: But you told me earlier that I had been cold during the casting. I don’t remember, I must have been stressed.
Charlie Bruneau: It’s true that in the casting you weren’t at all sympathetic (laughs). But we still felt a potential for sympathy behind this cold and very closed side. And then you knew Benjamin Guedj well, our writing director, who told me “You’ll see, he’s a great comrade, he’s super cool”. And from the first day of shooting it went very well. We got along very quickly.
Gérémy Crédeville: What’s good is that you can put a bit of yourself into the character. Authors are not closed. They tell us “Have fun, if it means the same thing, let’s go”. It’s very pleasant. So I start making a few more jokes on set.
Charlie, did you ask the authors of En Famille to write a new love story for Roxane after Kader’s departure?
Charlie Bruneau: Not at all. I was a strong supporter of Roxane’s celibacy. Not when they decided she had to find someone. But when Tarek Boudali left the series, they already wanted to start a new life for Roxane and I found that too out of step with everything we had set up.
We had set up for six years a very close, almost fraternal couple. And I found that, even for people watching, it was hard to identify with someone who sold an extremely strong couple and then suddenly moved on and found a new guy. I didn’t believe it.
At that time, as an actress, I didn’t really see how to recreate a relationship of complicity, a desire to play with a new partner. During one of our writing seminars, I spoke to the authors about it. I didn’t want the story of Roxane and Kader to be zapped all of a sudden. It would have been super brutal.
That’s why two years passed between Kader’s departure and Milo’s arrival in Roxane’s life. First there was Kader’s move to New Zealand, with a long-distance relationship. Then we dealt with the separation. And then it was decided that Roxane was going to meet someone.
And I admit that I was a little scared. I got along very well with Tarek. It was with him that I spent the first casting of the series. We had a lot of fun, we were very different in the way we worked, but we got along wonderfully. So I was afraid it would be less good. But in the end, when they proposed that the character of Milo arrive, we had tried a lot of things, we had gone around Roxane’s celibacy a bit, and I was very happy to welcome Gérémy.
HOMAYOUN FIAMOR / M6
Before the arrival of Milo, Roxane had approached in season 9 one of her neighbors, played by Yann Sundberg. We thought he might be her new suitor, but in the end it didn’t?
Charlie Bruneau: No, it didn’t work. There were a few leads like that that didn’t work too well. It was necessary to find someone extremely different for this new love story to develop something new in Roxane. The character of the neighbor, it did not go at all. Roxane couldn’t be with a dark man like him, it didn’t fit the Roxane we’ve known for ten years.
In season 11, is Milo more integrated into the Le Kervelec family?
Gérémy Crédeville: Yes, Milo finally meets the parents. I am well settled in the series. I saw the whole family, we did a sketch together, at the time of the family photo. That’s great. Milo is there.
What can you say about what awaits us in these new episodes?
Charlie Bruneau: What I find pleasing for me, as an actress, is that we made a perfect gentleman out of Milo, who is super cool, smiling, friendly, patient, kind. He doesn’t have so many flaws. And that softens the psychorigid side of Roxane.
It’s great to have played someone who is military in her head, and all of a sudden it cracks a little, she becomes a little cooler. Keeping the essence of the character. I find that very nice. It generates new things for Roxane.
And, beyond that, we will see more of the twins in this new season. The production cast two slightly older actors, who are eight years old. They really play, they have fun. They are no longer just a wall on which you bounce a ball, they become real characters.
Gérémy Crédeville: On set, it was funny, they suggested things in the game. We felt that they really wanted to.
HOMAYOUN FIAMOR / M6
Will Milo find himself in a real stepfather position compared to Hugo and Diego?
Gérémy Crédeville: Milo is a 35-year-old teenager. He is still young in his head, nothing is serious, everything is cool. And suddenly he makes two new little friends.
Do you already have any desires for your characters for next season?
Charlie Bruneau: It’s funny because we always have desires, but when we’ve finished a season. We explored a lot of new things, new paths, we played with new partners, and so we are coming to the end of a season and we still have desires for the next one. That’s what makes the series last.
And then, sometimes we say to ourselves “This season, we haven’t played much all seven, it would be good if we end up with everything we have built”. So, yes, there are always cravings, obviously.