After the “H” hospital, welcome to the “Terminal” airport! Jamel Debbouze and Mohamed Hamidi look behind the scenes and the ambition of the new CANAL+ series.
Canal+ continues the broadcast of season 1 of Terminal this Monday, May 6 from 9:10 p.m. This sitcom made in France filmed in front of real spectators tells the crazy adventures of the members of the crew of a plane from the (very) low cost company Flywingz… Jack, the broken-arm captain played by Ramzy Bedia, and his crew (also off the mark) clearly have more important concerns than the well-being of their passengers!
Mohamed Hamidi and Jamel Debbouze (who explained to us how the series was inspired by Friends) shared the creation of this project. During the CANNESERIES 2024 Festival, AlloCiné spoke with the duo who returned to our microphone about this whole adventure…
AlloCiné: Why did you choose the airport arena for “Terminal”?
Mohamed Hamidi: When you make a sitcom, you need a place that is a place of passage, of intersections and also where you can bring in several comedy and life situations. At the airport, there are the security areas, the boarding areas, the plane, there are the crew’s costumes… It’s very strong in character characterization. So, the airport is an ideal place as was the hospital for H. It’s a super efficient and super inspiring place!
Your humor is corrosive and spares no one. It’s not easy to tackle certain subjects in our time, has that made you refrain?
Jamel Debbouze: We didn’t remember anything. Obviously, we wrote according to the times in which we live, with all that that implies, but we absolutely did not prohibit anything. We did as usual. We tried to be as close to ourselves as possible while being respectful and subversive when we felt like it.
Did you approach this project differently compared to “H”?
MH: From a purely technical point of view, we shot with different cameras. We also took on a film team, which allows us to be involved in things that are a little finer, let’s just say.
But our big novelty on this set was the spinning, that is to say a rotating audience (…) For example, we did a sequence in front of the cockpit, we played it two or three times, then bam! The stands in which our audience was seated were spinning in place
People didn’t move from their seats and they found themselves [grâce à une rotation de tout le dispositif, ndlr] in front of the rest room, in front of the boarding lounge afterwards, in front of the security room etc. This is something completely new and much more efficient in filming.
JD: For Terminal, we also only looked for stage people who, in our opinion, had an ease of adaptation in front of the public. This was not necessarily the case in H, where there was only half of the cast who had already had this relationship with the stage.
There, we only have actors who are ready to improvise, who are ready to propose, who are always moving on. In addition to the rhythm imposed on us by the decor, there is the rhythm imposed on us by the actors! I want to tell you, it was more rhythmic everywhere in the end!
How was filming an episode of “Terminal”?
MH: Ideally, we would do one day of rehearsal, then two days of filming. We had filming days that went from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m. for the public. Between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m., we were supposed to do sequences without an audience… The problem was that the audience didn’t want to leave! Often, we would then add up the total. We shot almost 100% of the series in public.
You surrounded yourself with friends for this project. Did they audition?
JD: A phone call first, a test session later. We needed to see if our texts worked, if our actors would adhere to them, if the alchemy would take… We only called friends with whom we had already played or with whom we wanted to play and whose we were sure of the effect in a certain way.
We almost wrote for them. Ramzy [Bedia, ndlr], it was yes straight away. He really wanted to go on stage again, to do comedy. Afterwards, it was very easy to go find the others.