Journalist Audrey Crespo-Mara.

-

CHRISTOPHE CHEVALIN - TF1

  • Audrey Crespo-Mara provides, since the start of the school year, the "portrait of the week" in

    Sept à Huit

    , Sunday evening on TF1.

  • "I come with a benevolence, a quality of listening and glance", declares the journalist to

    20 Minutes

    .

  • While her name appears in the list of potential replacements for Jean-Pierre Pernaut at the helm

    of TF1

    1 pm

    , she replies: “Thierry Thuillier [news director of the TF1 group] has just offered me a new challenge with

    Sept à Eight

    .

    I'm definitely not going to stop before I start.

    "

She made her

debut

in

Sept à Eight in

early September.

Audrey Crespo-Mara is now in charge of the "portrait of the week" of the Sunday broadcast of TF1.

The 44-year-old journalist discusses the exercise of the interview in a more intimate register.

And if she turned the page, at the end of the season, of

Audrey & Co, which

she hosted for two years on LCI, she remains the "joker" of Anne-Claire Coudray at the presentation of the weekend newspapers. of the first string.

Since Tuesday, his name circulates among the substitutes and likely replacements for Jean-Pierre Pernaut in command of

13 hours

.

20 Minutes

contacted her this Wednesday morning

to take stock of its busy comeback.

How do you approach this emblematic sequence that is the portrait of “Seven to Eight”?

I respect the DNA of this highlight of the show.

It is a portrait that requires a quality of listening, of looking, to succeed in obtaining confidences and a sincere word from the guest.

Like Thierry Demaizière and Stéphanie Davoigneau [his predecessors], I try to have this empathy.

Thierry had a crazy talent, Stéphanie had a strong personality, I have mine ...

What is Audrey Crespo-Mara's paw?

It is very difficult to answer this question.

It's more for you to say when you look at the portrait.

It's a wonderful setting because it's the longest interview - 10 to 15 minutes - and the most watched on TV - 4 million viewers on average, and the most comfortable since it is recorded there where the guest wants.

For Jean-Marie Bigard, it was home.

Likewise, this Sunday, for the mother whose child is convinced to be a girl locked in a boy's body, it is undoubtedly there that the confidences are the strongest.

And my next guest, the most beloved French chef, Philippe Etchebest, received us at his home, in his restaurant which, after being closed for several months due to the epidemic, has reopened.

He also fears having to close it again, the epidemic setting off strongly in Bordeaux.

Your first two portraits have, you just said, been devoted to Jean-Marie Bigard and to the mother of a trans child.

Why these choices, specifically?

I will be keen to talk to both personalities like Bigard, Etchebest and Fabrice Luchini whom I will interview soon, but also anonymous people who jostle us.

Jean-Marie Bigard had announced that he would be at the head of the demonstration of “yellow vests” and he had launched in the air at the beginning of the summer his candidacy for the Presidential: was it a joke or not?

Through his portrait, we understood the springs of his current commitment.

As for the mother whose 8-year-old boy is convinced to be a little girl locked in a boy's body, her testimony brings us back to our own lives.

What if my child, your child, felt this way?

His testimony jostled us all….

On social networks, Internet users have criticized you for mentioning the child's birth name.

What would you say to those who criticize you for lacking tact?

Anonymous Internet users have the gift of sending comments that are sometimes violent.

Conversely, I received a lot of messages from Internet users who thanked me for the delicacy of this portrait.

I spoke a lot with the mother of "Baptiste", who today calls herself "Lilie".

Both the mother and the child were very touched by the portrait, and thanked me for my kindness.

It is essential.

To quote the first name "Baptiste", which is still that of the child in the civil registry, does not seem indelicate to me, especially as the object of this portrait was precisely to make discover, over the months, the evolution of the child.

I am neither an activist nor a prosecutor, I am a journalist, and I was keen to collect such testimonies.

For trans people, hearing this birth name, often referred to as the “dead name,” literally the “dead name,” can be violent.

This is what trans people express.

Yes, but I am not here to please the militants.

Lilie - you see, I call her Lilie - isn't called Lilie yet.

The change is not made today.

This is what is interesting: this child is transforming.

I have received many testimonies, thanking me for dedicating a portrait to a child who wants to change his identity.

I also spoke a lot, before, during and after the broadcast of the interview, with the mother and her child, and that did not pose any problem for them.

We can try to arouse a controversy, but I believe that it does not have to be.

Tuesday, on Twitter, you reacted to the announcement of the departure of Jean-Pierre Pernaut from the presentation of "13 hours" of TF1.

You said your "great emotion" ...

It was for the

13 hours

of Jean-Pierre that I produced, with great pride, my first reports in my first life.

I arrived as a reporter for TF1 after graduating from journalism school.

For twenty years, our paths have not stopped crossing in the TF1 group.

He is incredible.

He really invented his diary - it is the only one - a

1 pm

 very anchored in the regions.

It was a great idea, which is still going strong, more than thirty years later.

It is a page which he chooses today to turn and what a page: thirty-three years with audiences still in the firmament!

Your name is mentioned among the possible successors.

How would you like to be the holder of TF1's “13 hours”?

My envy is not the issue.

It's Thierry Thuillier, the head of Info, and Gilles Pélisson, the boss of TF1, who will choose the person they deem the most able to take up the torch!

But, Thierry has just offered me a new challenge with

Sept à Huit

 !

I'm definitely not going to stop before I start.

Have you been approached?

Were there any initial discussions about the “1 pm”?

Imagine the indelicacy of answering such a question while Jean-Pierre is turning a page of more than 30 years ...

You are Anne-Claire Coudray's “joker” for the weekend papers.

Three years ago, you said in an interview that you didn't want to remain a “joker” your entire career, but more recently, you said that it suited you very well ...

It is only fools who do not change their mind.

This rhythm suits me well today.

I got used to it.

It is always a pleasure, I say it and I will say it again, to find the editorial staff of TF1 where I grew up, where I spent more than ten years before starting the antenna on LCI, while having, the rest of the year, a very beautiful project which is the portrait of

Sept à Huit

.

Television

Why is the news anchor a mainstay of television?

Television

Who could succeed Jean-Pierre Pernaut at “1 pm”?

  • Interview

  • TF1

  • Journalist

  • Media

  • Television