Season 7 of "Skam France" features Tiffany, a new character since season 6 -
Screenshot France TV Slash
Season 7 of Skam France is currently broadcast on France TV Slash, and on social networks.
Déborah Hassoun succeeds Niels Rahou as collection director of “Skam France”.
She explains to
20 Minutes
how, with her team of four writers, she managed to make the plague of season 6 the heroine of season 7.
A successful bet!
Déborah Hassoun succeeds Niels Rahou as collection director for the French version of
Skam
.
She explains to
20 Minutes
how, with her team of four screenwriters, they managed to make Tiffany, the plague of season 6, the heroine of season 7, whose 4th part is available this Friday on France TV Slash.
What made you want to take over the writing direction of “Skam”?
I was especially lucky that it was offered to me!
Producers Alban Etienne and Carole Della Valle thought of me because I had already worked on teen series, a genre that I really like.
I had told my agent that I liked
Skam
very much
and he had called them.
So I jumped at the chance when it was offered to me!
You don't have too much pressure when you land on a series with a large community of fans after six seasons?
There is a lot of pressure, but at the same time, the idea is to surprise the fans and not do what they expect or what they have already seen.
That's why I was drawn to the character of Tiffany.
You don't necessarily have to go where the fans want us to go, because otherwise, they would be disappointed.
It's both pressure, but it's also fun to play with that expectation.
This assumes adapting to what has already been done previously ...
What is pleasant when we arrive on a series that already exists, so framed, it's a bit of a highway without cops on which we are told: "You can take the car you want, drive as you want, zigzag , but you must not get off the highway »This allows writing a little faster, because some things are not possible, due to the tone, for stories of construction of scenes, or means of production .
There are codes that are set and that allow me to say to myself: “That is not possible, so we have to find another idea.
"
The tone has changed slightly, right?
The idea is to have complicated, difficult subjects, but being at the height of adolescence, so with a certain lightness, moments of joy and group.
We had that with the Gang and the Crew, especially with the Mif.
Before, there were a bit of boys on one side, girls on the other, we wanted a very mixed group, mixed, more LGBT too, with a relationship to the world that is not the same .
They went through difficult things but it's a group where you know how to make fun of yourself.
It is a tone that we added in addition, and at the same time, we must not forget where we come from.
In this season 7, the spectators are therefore a bit like Tiffany when she discovers the humor and self-mockery of Mif at the café in the first episode?
Exactly!
Our idea, I am working with a team of four authors, was really that Tiffany discovered Mif at the same time as the spectator.
And that perhaps surprises him a little, but that he realizes quite quickly that it is a way of managing misfortunes that brings lightness.
When she says to Max, "Me, I'm not used to talking about things like this without a filter," it shows a Tiffany was not brought up the same way and that she was until then a lot. in control.
Why did you choose Tiffany as the main character, the plague in the previous season?
Precisely that!
It's a challenge for a screenwriter to take an antagonist and make her a heroine.
I love high school movies that are a bit cartoonish, and which ultimately teach you a bit more about life.
I am a huge fan of Mean Girls.
I wanted to show why are we a plague?
Why do we need perfection?
My theory about Tiffany and Lola is that somewhere Lola saw Tiffany's imperfection.
And that's what makes Tiffany mean to her.
For Tiffany, it's unbearable that we see its flaws.
The denial of pregnancy tells this too: a psychological block, an unconscious control of his body.
How did the idea of denial of pregnancy as the theme for this season come about?
Producer Carole Della Valle has long wanted to talk about motherhood.
In Skam, since fictional time is real time, you need a story that can be told over two and a half months.
Following a pregnancy was not possible.
I also had the impression that we had already told and seen stories of girls who get pregnant, who keep the baby or not.
Denial of pregnancy interested me because it is a fear that many women have and is something that is not yet well understood.
I read a lot on the subject in relation to adolescence.
An association of doctors recommends that we teach denial of pregnancy in high school as prevention, because the more we talk about it, the more we are aware that it can happen, the less it happens.
This theme seemed relevant to me in relation to our target and also because it tells a lot about the female body.
Denial of pregnancy happens for 1000 reasons, but there is always a story behind it, a family, something of the order of social pressure ...
Successful bet, fans of "Skam" learned like Mif to love Tiffany ...
The strong teaser helped a lot to immediately empathize with Tiffany.
That was our goal: that from the start and throughout the season, we empathize with her.
Even if she was an antagonist before, if we see her give birth without knowing what is happening to her, it is so panic, that at worst we wonder what is happening to her and we want to know and at best, we wonder what happened and how we can suffer like that.
The fear she has in her eyes shows how Lucie Fagedet is a very good actress.
The relationship between Tiffany and her mother does not seem simple ...
Tiffany has very strong social pressure.
Her mother has a sort of desire for perfection.
Tiffany feels this pressure all the time, and inevitably, the denial of pregnancy is linked to it.
We do not deny pregnancy by chance.
The relationship between mother and daughter is complicated.
It also took that to empathize with her and understand why she harassed Lola the year before.
It reproduces relations of domination.
We always reproduce what we experience at home.
The Covid-19 is mentioned only once, why not have a Skam season in times of pandemic?
We started the writing workshops last January and finished at the end of February.
The Covid-19 was present, but not like today.
During the filming, we did not know where we would be during the broadcast.
We made the choice of the next world.
There was no question of seeing the masked characters.
Everyone is saturated with today's world.
By turning on their TV, viewers want to see the world as it was or will be.
We discussed with the channel to find out if it was completely erased or not… It's a bit complicated to know what we are doing with the Covid, as with all the series at the moment.
Skam is a world where the Covid existed, but where it does not exist as we know it today.
It would also have been weird not to talk about it at all.
These are subjective choices, made a little on the spot.
We can say to ourselves that everything is anecdotal compared to what we are going through, but no, the family stories, the tragedies, the denials of pregnancy, all of this continues to happen despite the Covid.
It's a complicated question that arises on all series today.
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