The New Toy: by the director of Lethal Weapon, what does it look like?
In theaters since Wednesday, “The New Toy” offers a rereading of the comedy “The Toy” by Francis Veber. But did you know that there had already been an American remake?
James Huth’s New Toy
With Jamel Debbouze, Daniel Auteuil, Simon Faliu
What is it about ? Sami lives happily in a suburban estate, among his friends, neighbors and his wife Alice. For his son’s birthday, the richest man in France opens the department store that belongs to him. Alexandre chooses Sami, the night watchman, as his new toy…
A remake of a French comedy classic
2022 eskwad P Christine TAMALET
The New Toy is a reinterpretation of Francis Veber’s Toy, released in 1976 with Pierre Richard. Jamel Debbouze had already tried to make a remake of it ten years earlier but the project had not succeeded. Producer Richard Grandpierre had heard of it and managed to secure the rights to the Toy. It was he who offered James Huth to direct the film. The latter was perplexed by this offer before seeing the original film again. “I then understood that there was another point of view to offer on this subject. My feeling was radically different from that which I had had when I had seen him as a kid. Francis Veber’s Toy is at my eyes his strongest and craziest film. I realized that the themes of the film, already current at the time, were even more so today: the social divide, the child-king and the question of whether money can do everything.” He sought to move away from the harshness of the original by injecting more humanity into the narrative and expanding on the theme of fatherhood.
From Little Nicolas to Toys
2022 eskwad P Christine TAMALET
The character of the child, at the heart of the film, represented a challenge: he had to be detestable to the spectators before succeeding in winning them over. “We needed a 12-year-old child who had the maturity and the talent to play the cabin scene where Alexandre talks about his mother and lets go of the floodgates,” says James Huth. He met 150 children and Simon Faliu imposed himself during the casting: “He has the ability to play on both sides: Voldemort and Harry Potter! (laughs) Simon was up to Daniel and Jamel, he is a rare boy who has shown unfailing sensitivity and accuracy.” This is not the first time that Faliu has acted: we have seen him in Les Blagues de Toto and Le Treasure of Little Nicolas. It was during the filming of the latter that he spent the casting of the New Toy. He also returned to the world of Petit Nicolas in 2022 by dubbing the famous little boy in Le Petit Nicolas – What are we waiting for to be happy.
neighboring co-workers
2022 eskwad P Christine TAMALET
Happy coincidence: Daniel Auteuil and Jamel Debbouze are neighbors and often met in their neighborhood. Filming together in The New Toy just made sense to them. “We had the desire to work together and we had therefore been looking for ideas for years – until the day he told me about this remake project of The Toy that Richard Grandpierre wanted to produce”, says Auteuil. The two actors were delighted to collaborate, as the director reports: “They were driven by mutual admiration and respect. For Jamel, there was the pleasure of playing with one of – if not the – greatest French actor, and Daniel, for his part, knew the genius of Jamel. Through their meeting, these are two worlds that respect and admire each other.”
Husband and wife
2022 eskwad P Caroline DUBOIS
James Huth collaborated with his partner, Sonja Shillito, who officiated on The New Toy as co-writer and artistic director. Jamel Debbouze was touched by their relationship: “She accompanies him on the set, she is extremely discreet, he listens to her attentively. Besides, he always puts his headphones on one ear because she comes to talk to him in the “other! It touched me: it’s a family partnership that makes sense, and it mixes a masculine and feminine sensibility. James is not one, he is two.”
