Gil Alma is the new star of the successful France 2 series "César Wagner".

Become popular thanks to the program of TF1 "Our Dear Neighbors", the actor explains at the microphone of Anne Roumanoff that he also experienced a crossing of the desert after this participation, which he does not regret.

INTERVIEW

Between 2012 and 2017 in

Nos Chers Voisins

, Gil Alma played every day on TF1 Alain, a father of a reconstituted family not the sharpest, but very much in love with his wife Karine, played by Isabelle Vitari.

The series then gathered up to 7 million viewers and made Gil Alma very popular with the French.

But this role also puts his career in the cinema on hiatus, as he explains with humor in the show 

It feels good

.

>> Find all of Anne Roumanoff's shows in replay and podcast here

Costa-Gavras and erotic movies

For Gil Alma, the front page program indeed signals the beginning of public recognition and the beginning of difficulties.

"When I arrived in

Nos Chers Voisins,

I had nothing else at all. Nobody calls me anymore, it's a no man's land", he recalls.

"When we do comedy on TF1, when we do things to make children laugh and for families, we have no more proposals ..." It is when the series ends that this becomes really difficult for Gil Alma "I said to myself 'How am I going to get out of this?'. I had moments of doubt, that's for sure," he recalls. 

Especially since Gil Alma was already shooting before

Nos Chers Voisins

, but in a less schoolboy style.

"I was already working, I had done cinema, I had done stuff on Canal +," he says.

"I even worked Costa-Gavras. I had a nice CV."

The actor even almost started his career playing in M6's erotic films, but his mother objected.

"I hesitated, because it still made a nice little cacheton!", He laughs.

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The success of "César Wagner"

The actor finds public success with

César Wagner

, where he plays a compulsive hypochondriac and hardened celibate policeman.

The new series of France 2 gathered 5.4 million viewers during its first broadcast.

Which did not immediately reassure Gil Alma.

"I said to myself that it was a stroke of luck, because there was not much in front," he explains.

"But it continues to work well, so I tell myself if it happens, it will last."

This role of César Wagner, Gil Alma almost did not play it.

"I had to pass the casting, I really wondered if I was going to be taken, because there were beautiful people in front," he says.

He then had to wait impatiently for the response after "two or three weeks."

Problem, the actor has meanwhile engaged on another project.

"I was lucky to have another thing on France 2. I did two castings on the same day and got a positive response from the first thing, which I had to refuse when I was taken for 

Caesar Wagner

. " 

The series should continue, at a rate of "three or even four evenings per year," reveals Gil Alma.

The crossing of the desert is well finished for the actor.

He says he is also currently working on "auteur film projects", without revealing more.