At 57, Sophie Davant is one of the most popular TV hosts.
Invited from Europe 1, Sunday, she returned to her beginnings as a television game host, notably evoking her fight to present Fort Boyard, then the adventure game "The trail of Xapata", shot in Mexico .
INTERVIEW
She is the most popular of the TV hosts.
After 20 years presenting weather reports and other broadcasts, Sophie Davant is now setting audience records with "Affaire concluded".
She was, on Sunday, Isabelle Morizet's guest on Europe 1. The opportunity to tell listeners how she fought to present Fort Boyard when she was barely 30 years old.
>> Find all of Isabelle Morizet's shows in podcast and replay here
"The less we hear you, the better off we will be"
At the time - in 1990 - "the concept was not quite developed", says Sophie Davant at the microphone of Isabelle Morizet.
"I arrived in the middle of filming, the show had not yet been broadcast so I did not know what to talk about", she continues, explaining to have been thrown in the bath, without any explanation.
"In the end, I was worse than zero," smiles Sophie Davant.
Journalist by training, she had never presented a game. "After ten minutes, I hear screams in the control room, and Jacques Antoine (creator and producer of the show, Editor's note) turned towards me and said: 'You, the less we will see you, the less we will hear you, the better we will be' ".
Then follows a sequence of deep distress.
In tears on the boat that had brought him to the Fort, Sophie Davant collapses, humiliated.
"Laurent Cabrol told me 'come home, he doesn't have to treat you like that'", she still tells at the microphone of Europe 1. "I replied: 'No, I'm not going home. I'll show them who Raoul is' ".
"He ended up worshiping me"
Results of the races: Sophie Davant convinced Jacques Antoine so much that he decided to make him present a show even more sporting than Fort Boyard or Koh Lanta.
It was about "The track of Xapata", shot in Mexico under torrential rains, in an atmosphere of the end of the world with a 4x4 that she had to drive in the mountains despite torrents of mud.
"It didn't stop raining for four weeks," recalls Sophie Davant.
"They were demoralized, devastated, and there was a real loving relationship with Jacques Antoine, who ended up adoring me."