"The hunt": the (bluffing) transformation of Philippe Torreton to interpret Michel Fourniret: Femme Actuelle The MAG

A controversial subject? After making the TV movie Jacqueline Sauvage: it was him or me aired in 2018, then more recently I just wanted to go home, adapted from the story of Patrick Dils, victim of judicial error, Yves Rénier returns with a story whose subject has made the heyday of the pages of judicial history. This time he tackles the Michel Fourniret affair. In The persuit broadcast, in two parts, on TF1, Monday March 15, 2021, at 9:05 p.m., the director, a close friend of Johnny Hallyday, was inspired by Harold Cobert's book, The tit and the ogress. Inside Monique Fourniret's mind, published by Plon, in 2016. It traces the entire police investigation which started one day in June 2003, when Michel Fourniret was arrested in Belgium for an attempted kidnapping of a young girl.

To interpret the one who ended up being found guilty of the murders of at least seven victims, and sentenced, in 2008, to life imprisonment without limitation, Yves Rénier appealed to Philippe Torreton with whom he had already toured, in 2015, in Simply cop. A difficult role with all the rejection that the character can inspire. But after reading the script, seeing that the story was essentially based on the investigation without any unhealthy voyeurism, the 55-year-old actor agreed to take on the role of Michel Fourniret. To be as fair as possible to his interpretation, he prepared himself physically. Without wanting to go into the psychology of "that horrible guy", he explained in an interview with Parisian that it was necessary to find a device for "just cause something repellent in the little you see it on the screen. "

A striking physical transformation

Hours of make-up followed with Pierre-Olivier Persin to model the portrait. "We worked on the eyebrows, the hair, some shadows on the face. I have prostheses around my eyes, a kind of pimple on his temple and a four-part nose", confided Philippe Torreton during this interview, before adding that the result was there,"we understood that we were holding something the day two people from production came into the workshop. I opened the door and saw their discomfort. "In the TV movie, Isabelle Gélinas plays Monique, Michel Fourniret's wife. She is also unrecognizable. Real roles of composition for a TV movie that has already caused much ink to flow, in particular by Selim Fourniret, even before its broadcast on the screen.

Discover the resemblance between Philippe Torreton and Michel Fourniret

Read also : Michel Fourniret: Yves Rénier denounces the "bizarre blackmail" of his son Selim