Mireille Dumas: When Celebrities Confide – Overcoming Challenges in Celebrity Interviews

For his documentary Mireille Dumas: when celebrities confide, the journalist returned to a celebrity interview that gave her a particularly hard time.

Mireille Dumas was the guest of Media culture on Europe 1 this June 8 on the occasion of the documentary The TV years of Mireille Dumas: when celebrities confide which will be broadcast this Friday on France 3. The journalist-director has been, from the 1980s to today, the confidante of many stars or anonymous in her broadcasts private life public life, Drop the masks, Life at the place or other portraits and documentaries. In this story which retraces several decades of encounters, Mireille Dumas looks back on key moments in her life as an interviewer. Some of them were spotted by Philippe Vandel, host of Europe 1, like the meeting with the actor Benoit Poelvoorde in 2007.

The “benevolent neutrality” by Mireille Dumas

Young actor who came to promote his film Cowboy, he had then taken a long time to drop the mask to reveal himself in front of Mireille Dumas. As she explained how she goes about making her viewers feel like she’s “a little mouse in a shrink’s office” as Philippe Vandel imagined and that she detailed her concept of “benevolent neutrality” which consists in “not to judge, not to be in a priori to let the word express itself”the director returned to her interview with Benoît Poelvoorde who, “not yet able to remove his clown mask, polish the table”describes Philippe Vandel.

The journalist’s big fear of Benoît Poelvoorde

Afterwards, the journalist still managed to move the actor almost to tears when she talked to him about his mother. “I wait for flashes of truth and each time I am surprised because what is expressed and what is always the most surprisingit’s when you get out of what you expect, when you’re off the beaten track”she says before remembering that this moment had earned her a small fright. “I was afraid with Benoît Poelvoorde of completely missing out on him because he was so intimidated at the start that he joked a lot.” Fortunately for the journalist, things worked out: “At one point, he got loose“.