BRI: “We fired 5,000 rounds in two days!” Emmanuelle Devos and Vincent Elbaz return to the filming of the Canal+ series

On Monday April 24, Canal+ subscribers discovered the channel’s new original creation, B.R.I. (our opinion on fiction), and were immediately immersed in the intense universe of this elite police unit. Created by the director and screenwriter Jeremiah Guez and carried by great young actors (Ophelia Bau, Sofian Khammes, Wael Sersoub, Theo Christine, Rabah Nait Oufella…), the series is a success. Intense, effective and full of cinematographic references, it also distils over its 8 episodes an interesting discourse on transmission and the change of era. A theme that also interested the actors Emmanuelle Devos (who, in the show As an asiderecently returned to her difficult schooling) and Vincent Elbaz (in a very different register from that explored, for example, in the effective TV movie Everybody lies), playing the headmistress of the BRI and the leader of a gang, respectively. Télé-Loisirs was able to meet them during the Canneséries festival…

Télé-Loisirs: When Jérémie Guez presents this project to you, what attracts you?
Vincent Elbaz: In fact, my first reaction was to question myself. I hadn’t been sent many scripts and there were very few scenes with my character in them. Like any actor who needs food, I was a bit hungry. I decide to meet Jérémie and I ask him this very simple question: do you know this milieu of gypsies and the housing estates that you describe? His response was immediately positive. He had the knowledge and the experience.
Emmanuelle Devos: It’s much the same for me. I read 4 episodes and found the writing particularly brilliant. But I wondered why I had been thought of for this character of Ferracci, who heads the BRI. I don’t really shine by my natural authority! But I meet Jérémie and after two seconds I know that I want to work with him. The discussion was as brilliant as the writing of the screenplay. We are all very admiring of Jérémie’s work, his personality, the way he leads things. And really, I haven’t regretted it.

“Without doing it on purpose, but a little anyway, I played it a little Actors Studio!”

One of the themes of the series is the change of era, transmission. Was there that between you, the elders, and them, the young actors?
E.D. : Without doing it on purpose, but a little anyway, I played it a little Actors Studio! (laughs) On the set, I didn’t talk to them too much, with the exception ofOphelia Bau. I didn’t have too much contact with them. It’s not that I was pissing them off but very naturally I put a distance. But they didn’t come to me either. (laughs)
VE: That’s why Poor (who plays Julien in the series, editor’s note.) still calls you “The boss”! (laughs) You have a natural authority in this role without any aggressiveness.
E.D. : The head of the Versailles BRI told me: “I’m with mad dogs. If I raise my voice, it’s a cacophony and they won’t hear me.” He therefore deliberately speaks very softly so that they are obliged to listen. Moreover, when I spoke with him, I realized that he knew how to handle language perfectly and never let a time out. There was no “ben”, “I dunno”, “In fact”“as a result”…His speech was going straight, he was unstoppable. So I decided that my Ferracci character was going to do the same. And that effectively poses an authority that suits the character well and suits me well.

How did you build your character which is so colorful?
VE: I asked Jérémie Guez this very simple question: do we have access to the gypsies of Argenteuil in the Paris suburbs in order to discuss and exchange with them? At first that was not the case. So I told him: either you choose another actor who knows this world and who is going to make you this gypsy, or you transform this character. Two months before the shoot, Jérémie hired a non-actor, a gypsy from the suburbs of Paris. I met him and it went very well. He and his brother coached me, we rewrote my scenes together and we proposed all that to Jérémie, who validated or not. I spent three months with them. It was while seeing them that I discovered that there was a lot of work for me to do. I don’t come from that world, I don’t know it at all. I immersed myself in it, I spent my time there. It was great. We also had the idea of ​​widening my nose, changing my teeth and damaging my skin a bit.

“I had a little moment of trouble at one point, a kind of absence. I even almost fainted.”

From memory, you had never played in a scene like that of the shooting on the highway, which closes this first season…
ED: At first it was fun to do. I had done the gun grip work but hadn’t fired at all before shooting this scene. And there I had to shoot, with Ophélie who received all the burning casings from my weapon. We fired 5,000 rounds in two days! But I admit, that after a while, the “tac tac tac” bullets… I had a moment of trouble at one point, a kind of absence. I even almost fainted. It was very hot but it wasn’t just physical. It’s not normal to spend two days hearing this sound. And I kind of had a reminiscence… I thought of the Bataclan, of that famous sound of bullets that we heard in particular in the documentary Fluctuates not sink. I had a kind of vertigo.

VE: For this shooting sequence, which is inspired by the film HeatJérémie Guez totally assumes to get out of reality and the western dimension of the series.

If there is season 2, will you be there?
ED: Yes, I will!

A series to discover on Canal+