The Netflix mini-series “Tapie” tells the story of Bernard Tapie and focuses on the businessman’s time at the helm of the Olympique de Marseille football club. Besides, how were the scenes taking place in a stadium filmed?
Netflix has just made the French mini-series Tapie available to its subscribers. In this fiction inspired by real events, the extraordinary destiny of businessman Bernard Tapie is at the center of the story. Laurent Lafitte (from the Comédie-Française) slips into the skin of this public character who was criticized and died in 2021.
The “Boss” of OM
Sometimes a singer, sometimes a business manager, then a TV presenter or even a government minister, Bernard Tapie also left his mark as the “Boss” of Olympique de Marseille.
Moreover, this project co-created by Olivier Demangel and Tristan Séguéla (who suggested that Laurent Lafitte see Bernard Tapie) looks back on the glory days of the main person at the head of the football club.
30 years ago, therefore, Bernard Tapie’s OM won the Champions League against AC Milan on May 26, 1993. A historic victory for the club, provoking joy and hysteria among the supporters, who we see again in the series. Besides, how were these match scenes shot?
“We screamed in the night“
For AlloCiné, Tristan Séguéla (who also directed the seven episodes of Tapie) responds: “People won’t be surprised to learn that we didn’t fill stadiums and that we didn’t go back to Munich to the Olympic Stadium (laughs) We used a lot of special effects and those filming moments were amazing.”
“There were around fifty or a hundred of us on the pitch shouting, trying to reproduce the scene of jubilation just after OM’s victory in 1993 (laughs). We screamed in the night on a field in the suburbs of Reims! We had to trust post-production”remembers the director.
“Me, Laurent, all the actors, we really hoped that this moment would come out as we wanted. [au montage final, ndlr]. But when we shot it, we were pretty much alone… There was a lot of work, but it was pretty awesome to reproduce that“, concludes Tristan Séguéla. A result on screen that is larger than life!