Under the sun: “I was very uncomfortable” … Avy Marciano returns to the improbable plot of Samuel’s lookalike


“Sous le soleil”, which celebrated its 25th anniversary last year, remains cult for a whole generation. While the full version is available on Salto, Avy Marciano talks about the success of the series and her return in season 7 in the role of Samuel’s lookalike.

Broadcast between 1996 and 2008, Sous le soleil, worn by Tonya Kinzinger, Adeline Blondieau, Bénédicte Delmas, Roméo Sarfati, and even Avy Marciano, fascinated TF1 audiences for no less than 14 seasons and 480 episodes. Before giving birth in 2013 to a spin-off simply titled Sous le soleil de Saint-Tropez.

While the series remains cult for many viewers and the complete version has now been available on Salto for a few days, Avy Marciano, met last year at the Monte-Carlo Television Festival, talks to our microphone about the program’s success, his partners at the time, and the possibility of seeing Under the Sun return one day in one form or another.

Without forgetting to come back to the plot that marked him the most, namely the arrival in season 7 of David Callas, who was none other than a lookalike of Samuel, the character he played at the start of the series and who ended up dying in season 4.

AlloCiné: You had the chance to participate in several successful series, such as Plus belle la vie or Sous le soleil before that. Will people still talk a lot about Under the Sun and Samuel when they meet you?

Avy Marciano : Sure. This series was very memorable, both for the people and for us who played in it. There’s no reason it should be in people’s heads without it being in my head. It’s very present Under the sun in my head, it’s very recent, the memories are still very fresh. It feels like yesterday, and yet 25 years have passed since the start of the series.

Do you remember your first day of filming on Sous le soleil?

Yes perfectly. It was very special, because I was a stalker as hell (laughs). Because I was young, impressed. I really wanted so I was a little clumsy. I even remember the first moment in Saint-Tropez, facing the team, facing Adeline Blondieau. I remember everything.

Speaking of Adeline, are you still in contact with her and with your former playing partners?

Yes, I stay in contact with most of the actors from Sous le soleil with whom I have worked. I am very good friends with Grégory Fitoussi, Roméo Sarfati, David Brécourt, Frédéric Deban.

As for the girls, I had the opportunity to meet Bénédicte Delmas on many shoots, because she has since become a director. With Tonya Kinzinger, who plays today in Un Si Grand Soleil, we saw each other less, but I still have a lot of affection for her and we regularly send each other news.

As for Adeline Blondieau, she has moved away from this profession a little. I also keep a lot of tenderness for her, I keep very beautiful memories with her, but we talk less today.

Is there a storyline that particularly stood out to you?

I don’t know if we can talk about specific plots, but there is a period that fundamentally marked me: it was the death of Samuel. I had expressed the will to stop, and the authors came up with this idea. I didn’t think it was very clever to kill him, but it happened like that.

And finally, three years later, Pascal Breton, the producer of the series, asked me to come back. Except that the character being dead, we had to find a trick. And the authors had the idea of ​​imagining David Callas, who was Samuel’s look-alike (laughs).

What often happens in soaps…

Yes (laughs). Surely for this reason: because the actors have chosen to leave the adventure at some point. But at the time it was very new. I even think I was the first to experience this in France.

Did you enjoy playing this Samuel look-alike?

Initially, no. Quite frankly, at first I was very uncomfortable. I didn’t understand how to find the best way to play this character. Especially since we weren’t really given the means. I was too young to impose a way of being authentic and of being really credible.

The will of the production and the authors was that I return to the series and that I again form a couple with Adeline. It doesn’t matter the means, as long as we have the result. We skimped a bit on credibility, but very quickly people settled for it. What they wanted was to find this couple.

The series celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2021. Why do you think Under the Sun remains important in people’s minds?

Because it was the novelty, the trip, a window on the south of France and on Saint-Tropez. The French Riviera, in people’s minds, is a bit phantasmagorical, it’s the place of dreams, of all the excesses. And then I think that the characters have been very well defined, so that they can enter people’s hearts and never leave them.

Under the sun has already had a sequel, which was called Under the sun of Saint-Tropez. Do you still think that a return of the series is possible one day?

Why not, but in another form, because it’s no longer possible to film under the conditions in which we were filming. TV has changed today. The novelty of Under the Sun is that we shot on film, so the series had a cinematographic quality at the time that no longer exists today.

On the other hand, making a 90-minute episode or a TV movie in which we find the characters who have aged would not be bad. A bit like Friends recently, or many series that were entitled to reunion episodes. I would love for it to exist.



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