- David Hourrègue announced that he will leave Skam this Friday in a live broadcast on the francetv slash YouTube channel.
- The director chose 20 Minutes to explain this choice.
- He expresses himself on his intention to pass the torch, takes stock of these three years spent behind the camera and confides on his future projects.
Skam's dad will let his offspring fly. David Hourrègue, the director of the first six seasons of the series, retires after three years of hard work. With him, a whole part of the technical team bid farewell to the fiction of francetv slash, along with the first generation of actors. In the coming months, Shirley Monsarrat will be behind the camera to express her vision for the series. Exclusively for 20 Minutes , David Hourrègue explains his choice, returns to this epic and the memories he keeps.
Why did you decide to stop Skam ?
When we were offered the suite, I really wanted to close the story of the generation with which I had started. We quickly realized that it would be more complicated for rights issues to be able to do exactly what we had in mind. It motivated us all the more to write the end of a generation in season 5 and to do season 6 on a subject that mattered a lot to us, self-destruction and mourning, and to orchestrate a handover. as harmonious as possible. It would have been heartbreaking to see so many people leaving and staying with this new generation. As I have given everything I had in this program for three years, there is an emotion of course, the feeling of accomplishment, and a satisfaction of leaving it in very good hands.
What does Skam represent in the life of a director ?
It represents almost full-time work since, beyond overseeing all the artistic stages, there is also close monitoring of the broadcast. We try to be the most relevant, by seeing what triggers an echo, a debate, a rejection, an identification of the public. I have never had such a meeting with the potential audience of a work until then. It was a bit of a desert in youth programs in France until our arrival, and Skam only confirmed the enormous need for this type of program, and the absolute certainty that the public no longer wants to be passive. . He wants to interact, express himself, or on the contrary block.
Shirley Monsarrat will succeed you. Did you choose it?
I strongly recommended it. There are two ways to start from a program: go away and say "after me, the flood" or, on the contrary, suggest someone whose work I admire and whom I love as a person. She will bring something different and new. We have a lot of respect for each other, we enrich each other when we talk. It takes a lot of energy and inventiveness to get out of Skam's potential pitfalls , and Shirley has no shortage of them. I am extremely happy that she is taking over and impatient to see what she will do with it.
Was there some sort of handover between you?
We had discussions before it was chosen. If Shirley has any questions, she will come and ask me, but I will never position myself as a dad. Skam is so changeable and moving that the advice I could give her may be out of date with the story she is about to tell. She just knows that she isn't going to sleep much in the months to come, but she is very solid (laughs).
Does Niels Rahou, the series director of the series, leave with you? What about the rest of the team?
We had a discussion a year ago when seasons 5 and 6 were signed and we agreed to stop together, with this wave of actors we had brought in and doing the handover. There will be a very significant change. My technical team follows me on my future projects, like my cinematographer and my editor. We always have Carole Della Valle, our producer, who stands guard over the identity of the program and its need to evolve. I know most of the people who take over, and it still stays with the family.
You were present at all stages of manufacturing: writing, casting, filming, editing, postproduction. Where did you thrive the most?
Whenever I hoped something would happen, I could count on the full support of the technical team and the actors. They agreed to give everything, and that's what makes you emerge emotionally exhausted from a season of Skam . What we have said contains so many emotions that it is an emotional marathon. There have been several pretty incredible things; the rain that starts to fall during the kiss, the fact that the actors brave the night, the cold, sometimes the storms to play the sequences, the fact that Robin Migné [hero of season 5] braves his fear of freediving to go down into the pool. It was an experience I will never forget.
What is the most precious memory you keep in mind?
I would probably talk about the sequence of the fresco at the end of season 5. We said goodbye to a whole generation who joined hands, they made a block, and there was this look that Eliott cast at Lola. We were afraid to throw our baby into this adventure and she won hearts and knocked down mountains. For this transition and everything that followed, everyone was in tears.
When we work for three years almost exclusively on a series such as Skam , we imagine that we come out exhausted?
What was most wearisome was the first two seasons because we had the contractual obligation to follow the Norwegian program line by line. I didn't really expect that. In going somewhere every day to deliver a certified copy, there was something very distorting and we quickly lost what made us vibrate. From the moment Carole Della Valle arrived and there was this desire to go very hard in a different direction, it was exhausting. We did seven sequences a day. But what could be more beautiful than getting up in the morning to tell a story.
How do you assess your sixth and final season?
We had 17 days to shoot season 6. I wanted to get as close as possible to what Lola inspired me and what this story caused me. It was a question of making a very important echo to all these letters that we received. Lola, there are thousands among the spectators of Skam who sometimes told us to engrave in their flesh their own suffering. Me, I lived this mourning which suddenly casts a shadow on a family. For ten weeks, Lola leads her fights, even if they are not finished and we are very lucid about this. This season was apart, it was important to me that it is because it was also necessary to mark a frank break with season 5 and we tried as much as possible to focus on this story and not to give in to temptation to put everyone to put everyone.
We imagine that this is news that will affect the "Skamily". How do you explain that a community is so attached to a “man in the shadows”?
The great lesson from Skam is that you can be the star of a season and be in the foreground the following season. It is a monumental work on the ego. All of this is an epiphenomenon. From the first minute of season 7, it will already be a thing of the past. Beyond me, even Slash, the broadcaster, supported the statement and the message. That's the real Skam revolution . Beyond the director and the actors' dialogue with the spectators, even the broadcaster no longer remains passive and enters the discussion. It was almost unheard of to have a broadcaster so involved with its audience. As far as I'm concerned, I don't really care. It was an incredible experience and others will soon take the reins, beyond my multiple emotions.
What are your plans now?
I'm on a big project, a series for France Télévisions, which echoes all the cries that we can hear on the street today, at a different time but all the more on the agenda. The current situation means that we are moving forward, we believe in it. We hope to shoot in the fall but we are advancing cautiously, we never know what can happen.
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