“They called me Marathon Man”: Pierre Perrier recounts the filming at a hundred miles an hour of The prisoner island

Broadcast every Monday at 9:10 p.m. on France 2, L’île prisonnière, novelist Michel Bussi’s first creation for television, transports us to Penhic, a small fictional island in Brittany without history which sees its daily life rock the day when twenty armed activists disembark and confine all the inhabitants to the village school.

Who are these activists? Why are they holding the inhabitants of Penhic prisoners? Who among them will become heroes, cowards or traitors? So many questions that will be answered over the course of this six-episode season that goes from twist to twist. Especially since the presence on the island of five passengers of a shuttle connecting the mainland to Penhic who managed to escape the vigilance of Alpha and his men could well come to upset everything.

While France 2 is offering two new episodes of L’île prisonnière tonight, Pierre Perrier (Jeux d’influence, Les Revenants), comes back for us to the reasons that led him to play Alex, a former inhabitant of the island of return to Penhic at the worst time, and on the grueling filming of the series. Without forgetting to mention his brief reunion with Lannick Gautry, the film that changed his life almost twenty years ago, and his projects on television.

AlloCiné: What seduced you in L’île prisonnière when you were presented with the project? Was the fact that this was Michel Bussi’s first creation for television an argument for you?

Pierre Perrier: Of course, it was of some interest to me because it’s the first time that Michel Bussi has tried his hand at writing a screenplay and that a series “by Michel Bussi” hasn’t gone through the stage before. of the novel, so it was intriguing.

Then, beyond that, the project seemed ambitious to me compared to what we generally do in French fiction. And the role of Alex was fun to play. We think of action films from the 90s, I had a lot of references in my head. It was quite inspiring. I had already done a little action, but not to this extent. And then the series is quite choral. When I saw all the good actors there were going to be around me, it also made me really want to.

Michel Bussi speaks of L’île prisonnière as being a kind of mixture between Le Prisonnier and La Casa de Papel. Are you okay with that?

It’s not as puzzle as La Casa de Papel, but there are little twists in Prisoner Island too, it’s true. I see what he is referring to. The plot unfolds as it goes, there is a somewhat origami construction, with each episode we unfold a little piece and it gives another figure. It was super interesting in terms of structure. And The Prisoner, we also necessarily think yes, with this closed and supervised perimeter.

We inevitably ask ourselves questions about Alex, your character, who returns to Penhic at the very moment when the activists arrive. We wonder if he could be a traitor. Is that how you approached him in terms of acting: as a hero with possibly two faces?

Yes, it was one of the directions given to me by the directors, Elsa Bennett and Hippolyte Dard. In the first two or three episodes, there had to be some doubt about Alex’s intentions, that we could expect a reversal of the situation concerning my character, that a double face be revealed. So I played it quite quiet at first.

There’s a pretty violent scene at one point, where Alex strangles a guy and knocks him out. The directors wanted it to be a little too much to leave a doubt and we say to ourselves “This guy has a capacity for violence”.

In your opinion, is Alex really coming back to Penhic to take care of his father’s grave, or is he mainly back to find Candice?

I think the one and the other are inseparable. But the primary reason is still, in my opinion, the dad’s grave. But he cannot envisage one without the other. And this love story, as well as the love triangle with Yannick (Kevin Azaïs), bring real tension to the series. Besides, it’s not too cliché because Candice (Margot Bancilhon) pisses Alex off at the start, she’s not at all to fall into his arms right away.

It’s a love triangle that wasn’t so classic to play. Especially in a plot where there is really a lot of action.

A detail cannot escape the viewer who watches Prisoner Island: Alex runs a lot during the six episodes of the series…

It was the joke on the set (laughs). They called me Marathon Man. I have never been in better shape than during this shoot. I had 20 minutes of jogging a day, even several times a day. On the cliffs of Brittany, of southern Finistère, it was still quite sublime, we were lucky. But it’s true, I am constantly on the run in this series. It was really the joke, the directors looked at me and said “Sorry Pierre, you’re still going to run”. I finished the shoot in great shape (laughs).

Did you have the feeling of a shooting that was generally trying?

Yes, it was quite physical. We started very, very early, because the directors were trying to catch the dawn lights, so we had to be ready for the dawn. But hey, it was very nice to shoot in Brittany. We were in very good conditions, we shot facing the sea every morning, it was great.

Afterwards, you have to know one thing about Brittany: the weather changes every quarter of an hour. We had to deal with it. We sometimes had connection problems. We went from bright sunshine to drizzle for hours and hours, and there you can’t do anything. You have to keep spinning.

Melanie BODOLEC – FTV – CINETEVE

Is there a sequence from the series that you particularly remember?

I have a nice sequence with Anouk Grinberg at one point, when her character, Mado, freaks out. We had a nice relationship with Anouk and it’s a scene that touched me a lot. It’s not usual to see a grandmother freaking out in the arms of a young guy.

You weren’t too frustrated to have so few scenes with Lannick Gautry, with whom you had played in The Lake Killer And fear on the lake ?

It’s true that we hardly ever played together in Prisoner Island. Our characters confront each other a little at the end, but there is almost no exchange. But we get along very well with Lannick. In addition, he is Breton, he has a big house there, we were right next to his house. He made great meals for the whole team, it was very pleasant.

A lot of people discovered you in the movie Cold showers ofAntony Cordier, which was released in 2005 at the cinema. What memory do you keep of this adventure?

It was my first feature film. It was extraordinary, a really powerful experience. I had started two or three years earlier in TV, I had done my scales on high school stuff, like Madame la Principal, on which I had a little broken my teeth because I had no training. And Cold Showers was the first time I was put in cinematic conditions, with cinematic requirements, real work upstream.

We had done a lot of rehearsals because the film was very complex. We had done three months of judo training with the France team to be on the job. I had taken 10 kilos of muscles. It was very demanding as a shoot. And then the subject was not easy. There were a lot of sex scenes, nudes. You had to be comfortable with that. It was a very strong experience but it was great. We were in very good conditions. We were a whole team of young people. Antony Cordier was his first feature film. I keep a very good memory. We went to Cannes, for all of us it had very good repercussions. It gave me a leg up for everything I did after.

Film Tray

With the current success of fiction for young people like Elite Or afterwasn’t this film, quite hot for the time, a bit ahead of its time?

It’s true. Love and sex stories about young people have always existed, we think in particular of the films of Téchiné. But Cold Showers was about threesomes, in relaxation (laughs). There was a kind of vision of a youth that was about to arrive and that today exists in droves. With a real liberation and a tendency to deconstruct codes. It’s funny, I’ve never seen it like that, but now that we’re talking about it, it’s true that the film was a little ahead of its time.

You would like to work again with Antony Cordier, who since Cold Showers has notably directed Happy Few and the series UFO(s) ?

I haven’t seen him in ages, but if the opportunity ever presented itself, I would of course say yes to him. He does a great job, he’s an excellent director.

You are currently filming the mini-series for M6 Spies of Terrorwith Vincent Elbaz. What can you tell us?

The series is based on a very serious book, very well documented on the subject. We follow the hunt for those responsible for the attacks of November 13, 2015 through the prism of the DGSI and the DGSE. It’s heavy but it’s very interesting.

The work done was crazy, it’s really shown in the series. I play a commander of the DGSI who is at the heart of the hunt for terrorists through social networks, the internet, and the GPS demarcation of guys, on French territory only. That’s all I can say.

I’m also filming in Sambre, a series directed by Jean-Xavier de Lestrade, who directed me in Jeux d’influence. It’s a series about the rapist of the Sambre, and it’s going to be very, very strong. I am very happy to work again with Jean-Xavier, who is an exceptional director, very meticulous.

And after that, I should shoot a quality unit this summer on Romain Gary, at the time he writes The life ahead under the pseudonym of Emile Ajar. I was offered to play the role of his nephew, who endorsed the identity of Emile Ajar to the press at the time. And it was he who had revealed the deception after the suicide of Romain Gary, five years after the publication of Life Ahead.

It is a subject that fascinates me. Romain Gary is a kind of human myth, there is so much mysticism around him that it is fascinating. I read the screenplay, it’s very well written, the authors are novelists who have written about Romain Gary. I’m really happy to be part of this project.