As a plot devoted to Hortense is about to begin in “Here everything begins”, producer Sarah Farahmand comes back for us on the departure of Clément Rémiens and tells us more about what awaits us by this summer in the series.
After a start to the year marked by the departure of Clément Rémiens, the rivalry between Laetitia and Clotilde, the vegan intrigue devoted in particular to Jasmine and Anaïs, or even the birth of the Théo-Célia couple, Here everything begins will be of interest in a few days to Hortense (Catherine Davydzenka), whose viewers will discover the dark side through a huge unexpected secret.
Met at the beginning of April on the occasion of the Canneseries Festival, Sarah Farahmand, the producer of the daily soap opera of TF1, returned to our microphone on the establishment of the “post-Maxime” and teased us what awaits us in the coming weeks and months on the air.
From the prom which will turn into a disaster in May to a new intrigue on the Teyssier family, through the first discussions concerning the new students that we discovered in Here everything begins at the start of the school year.
Allociné: At the start of 2022, was your biggest challenge with the authors to imagine the post-Maxime period, following the departure of Clément Rémiens?
Sarah Farahman : It was more of a challenge to imagine his departure and to make a departure that lives up to the importance of the character. And also, it was necessary to prepare the ground sufficiently upstream to bring on other characters, so that we did not have the feeling that the hero is leaving and that the public does not say to themselves “what will become of the series ?”. So the after-Clement is managed rather well in the end.
For Maxime’s last plot in January, you had a great guest in the person of Michel Sarran. Do you plan to bring other chefs into the series?
We have seen that the return of the public was quite exceptional on the arrival of Michel Sarran. We were lucky that he played well (laughs). One of my great reservations about bringing in real chefs who play their own role was acting. In the case of Michel Sarran, the fact that he was used to sets and cameras took away a dose of stress I think. He knows how to do it.
To model the character, he talked a lot about cooking. But he also held the scenes very well where he had to talk about other things, such as when he suggested that Maxime leave the institute to open his restaurant in San Francisco.
So we’re thinking in any case about bringing in others, but after that it has to be really occasional, that it lends itself to it. But yes, we have that in mind. We have a small list.
Could the presence of real kitchen influencers also be a possibility?
Why not. That would be a good idea yes.
What can you tell us about the next plots?
In the next episodes, we will discover the dark side of Hortense. We’ve known her since the beginning, super positive, optimistic, she always sees the sun everywhere. She always tries to turn everything into a positive. But she also has a dark side. She has moments of blues, moments when she gets angry at others. And we’ll find out that she expresses that in a video diary.
His videos will leak and his friends, his relatives, will resent him saying “But why are you saying these horrors about us? Where are you betraying our secrets from?”. Because some characters will feel betrayed and secrets will be revealed. Gaëtan, for example, will be one of the “victims” of these videos.
In reality, all this hides a greater malaise in her that we will discover. We wanted to look back on the character of Hortense by saying to ourselves “How can we twist her a little but not too much?”. It has to remain the character that we know, and at the same time that the public has the impression of learning things about her
And after this arch, we will have the plot of the prom which turns to the disaster with the questions around the person responsible for the disaster and the consequences for the most injured.
ITC / TF1
Will the salt marshes remain an important setting in the series despite the departure of the Rivière sisters and Noémie?
Yes, absolutely. It’s a setting that the public likes a lot and which allows you to get out of the institute even if the closed session doesn’t seem to have bored anyone so far. On our side, we remain amazed every day when we arrive at the castle. But going out once in a while is good. We are always thinking about what we can reinvent on the salt marshes and we have some ideas for next year.
In future episodes, there will also be small events that will happen that will allow the characters of the institute to do extra work at the salt marshes. We will see that with Ambre and Enzo in particular.
We also know that a focus on the Teyssier family is on the program for future plots…
Yes, we are going to meet Axel’s father (Thomas Da Costa). We’ve heard a lot about it. For us, Axel’s interest was also to find out more about Emmanuel. Where is he from ? How did he have to fight? Is he connected, or not, with his parents and his family? We will therefore finally discover the brother of Teyssier.
You mentioned next year. The end of the school year and exams are looming. Can we imagine having to say goodbye to certain recurring characters by this summer?
That, you will see (laughs). We try to renew ourselves. And we also have a production reality. Our actors are starting to be requested elsewhere. We are very happy for them because it is a source of pride to say that it is necessarily a little thanks to Here everything begins that they have progressed and gained notoriety.
For us, that’s what we dream of for our actors. We know that an actor is not made to do just one role, so we always try to arrange the schedule so that they can do other shoots. But that also means that if an actor isn’t there for two months, it can be annoying. It’s a win-win on all sides.
Will we be entitled to a new large summer arch this year?
Absolutely. There you will have the prom, an ark which will be interested in the Teyssier family which will be a little shaken. Afterwards, we will have the end-of-year exams and then a summer ark which, like last year, will take place partly outside the institute for some students. And then the competition at the start of the school year, and that’s it.
That’s what’s great about Here it all begins: this mix of meetings. We know that between the last week of August and the end of September we have the exams, the competition, the new arrivals. We are currently working on the characters for season 3. It is very exciting. It’s one of the moments we prefer because we feel younger. We feel like going back three years when we started the series.
And then we wonder what may be missing, what is very current, what kind of character there is in other series that we don’t have yet and what it would look like with ITC sauce, what are the links with the characters we already have. I think we have an exciting promo coming up.
ITC / TF1
Some casting announcements concerning these characters also leaked in early April…
Half. That is to say that we are working on these characters there in discussion with TF1. We have maybe six characters who should arrive. It doesn’t break down in 24 hours so we put the cart before the horse. We are now starting to launch the castings in agreement with the casting director to bait. You have to say a little about the characters so that you want to apply and so that the actors recognize themselves.
We always wonder. Should this be considered leaks or is the buzz it will generate somehow still pleasing? To give you a number, the casting director posted this on Friday, April 1. Some actors have taken it up on their social networks. In two hours, she had received 500 emails. At 5 p.m., she had received 2,000. Her mailbox crashed.
For her, it’s not very funny but for us it proves that there is still an interest in the series, that people want to take part in it and that makes us very happy. If she had told us that she had received two emails, I think we would have been very upset (laughs). It’s the proof that there is always a strong excitement and I hope that we give birth to vocations in actors and that we will help them to dare. Two years ago, Nicolas Anselmo responded to a classified ad. He had never done that. And the rest we know.
Anyway, the first names of the characters are often working names in casting announcements, it’s not definitive, is it?
Yes, these are names that can change. And then these are just first names. We don’t talk about their secret, we don’t say their link because there are plenty of them who have links with characters we know. These are things that can evolve and there it is rather characters that we want to find. Sometimes someone passes the casting for Salomé and will become Célia. This was the case of Rebecca Benhamour for example.
A prime Here it all begins is still not on the agenda despite the success of the series?
No. We are very well in our time slot and with our audience. A bonus is not an end in itself. This is not a sign of success. For us, success is when you are at Canneseries and you see people screaming to come in, you feel the attraction of the public or when you receive 2000 emails because people want to be in the series. It gives us much more pleasure than telling ourselves that we will have to do a bonus. It’s so complicated to do that I don’t dream of it at night.