One year ago, Welcome to the Bodins brought together 4.8 million viewers on M6. “When Nicolas de Tavernost [le directeur général de la chaîne] sent us the audience figures by SMS, we thought it was a joke, says Jean-Christian Fraiscinet, who plays Christian Bodin on stage. We know that we bring together a lot of spectators in the rooms. We’ve been playing our show for seven years, we’re going to reach 2 million viewers, we’ve done 500 Zeniths, but we had no television experience. When we were given this bonus, we were in our little shoes. »
The idea of transforming this entertainment into an annual event, each time telling a new story in the company of several guest personalities, materialized after this success.
The second edition, Surprise birthday at the Bodin’s, will therefore be broadcast this Tuesday, at 9:10 p.m. For the occasion, the comic duo has embroidered a story around the 50th birthday of Christian Bodin which he refuses to celebrate because all his previous parties have turned into a fiasco. But his mother, Marie, has every intention of marking the occasion at all costs.
Michel Drucker as a doctor, Claudio Capéo in his own role
“There is a show part and fictional sequences shot upstream. We tried to do something that looks like us, resumes Jean-Christian Fraiscinet. We tried to keep as many guests of last year, because we want to form a troupe over the years. “Elodie Poux, Frédéric Bouraly, Olivier de Benoist, among others, will thus make their return. They will be joined by newcomers such as Michaël Gregorio and Virginie Hocq as police officers, Michel Drucker as a doctor or Claudio Capéo in his own role.
“We shot at the Zénith de Nantes. It’s nice to see these artists making the trip for good reasons: because they like us and because they want to have fun with us, ”rejoices Vincent Dubois, who portrays the earthy Maria. Rather than chaining the sequences where each guest comes to do his little number disconnected from the others, the duo of comedians has endeavored to tell an “unpublished” story, the only way according to him to be able to “slide moments of emotion” amid laughter.
“Sometimes we wrote in the blur”
“It’s an incredible challenge, it takes a lot of work, says the interpreter of Christian Bodin. It’s like creating a new show, except you rehearse it in half a day and shoot it in two days. We told the guests to learn their texts well. We have little time so it is imperative that the lines are known to perfection. »
The writing, to which Thomas Maurion and Karina Siamer also contributed, required several months of work, almost a year. “As soon as we finished the first gala, we already had the idea of finding a theme for the second. We thought of several avenues, we wrote different scenarios, then narrowed it down. Sometimes we wrote in the dark, without knowing if the guests we were thinking of could come, ”lists Jean-Christian Fraiscinet.
Jamel Debbouze cancels
“We wrote with the ideal performer in mind for each character,” adds Vincent Dubois. We were confronted with refusals, pitfalls. We then had to adapt the texts for someone else. We had plans B, C and even D. We even had to make changes the day before filming. It’s creepy, but it’s a good school of writing. “ Jamel Debbouze, who was to embody “a caterer tilting in the vegan” to the great displeasure of Maria Bodin, thus canceled his arrival at the last moment for a question of incompatibility of agenda.
“You always tell yourself that it’s not going to work and, then, on the day of the shoot, there is a kind of magic that makes everything happen, maybe not like clockwork, but in joy and good humour,” says Jean-Christian Fraiscinet. For him, this second show created especially for television is “the real test”. “With the first, part of our spectators followed us, we also gained another audience, he underlines. If we do at least as well, that means we will have succeeded. »
