Gary, in The Circle France.
-
Netflix
On the occasion of the 20 years of reality TV, "20 Minutes" offers a series of articles on this phenomenon which has shaken the small screen.
In April 2020, Netflix put online the first season of the French version of its "reality game"
The Circle
, adapted from a British concept.
Inès, Gary, Maxime and Romain were part of the cast.
A year later, and while the platform launches season 2 of the American version of the show, she and they tell
20 Minutes
behind the scenes of the shooting.
A year ago, Netflix launched the first French season of
The Circle
.
This reality show, adapted from a British concept, is a race for popularity.
Candidates and candidates live in the same building but never meet during the game. Their only way of interacting with others is to discuss, in writing, through a social network: the famous “Circle”.
Regularly, players are invited to rank their comrades in order of affinity.
The most popular become the "influencers" and are responsible for eliminating the tenant of their choice.
To spice it up, it is possible to participate under a false identity if one feels that you do not have the best profile to curry favor with others.
While season 2 of the American version is posted on the platform on Wednesday,
20 Minutes
contacted four figures from the first
The Circle France
.
Gary, Inès and Romain participated under their real identity.
Maxime pretended to be his wife Valeria… Here is how she and they experienced the adventure from the inside.
THE CASTING
Gary:
I was picked up by private message on Instagram.
"Would you be interested in participating in an innovative experiment?"
I sent a one minute video.
It rained.
I then went through all the stages of the casting.
I was introduced to the concept as a reality TV game linked to social networks and Netflix, I was like, "If it works, great, if it doesn't work, too bad."
»
Inès:
I lived in England, so I had heard about the concept broadcast on Channel 4. I had never thought of doing TV.
I was like, "They're going to be pissed off!"
I imagined that the girls on TV were more pleasant, more bimbos.
I did a few videos and I obviously wasn't that bad.
I wanted to communicate who I was, a feminine chick who has the likes of guys, who loves boxing and can be
girly
.
Maxime:
I found myself in this adventure by pure chance.
I had seen an ad on social networks, I applied.
In my application video, I said, "If you don't take me, your program won't work."
They called me back two months later.
Romain:
At first, we don't really know what we're going to set foot in.
I managed to take a month off for the shoot.
We could not warn people, it should not be rumored.
Gary:
I only told my sister - who was pregnant.
On the voicemail of my answering machine, I explained that I had gone for a spiritual retreat.
People called my sister, thinking I had joined a cult.
Inès:
It was a real mess.
I told some people that I was going to trek in Nepal.
I told some friends that I was going to Fontenay-le-Comte, in Vendée, to help my grandfather in his vegetable garden and that I would cut my phone.
The only people in the know were my close associates at work.
THE GAME
Maxime:
In Manchester [where the shooting took place], we were confined two weeks before the game began.
We did not have access to the telephone, we were conditioned to disconnect from the world.
We were allowed to call our loved ones five minutes a day with watch in hand.
I had to choose between calling my wife, my father or the office… I could not call two people on the same day
Gary:
We were supervised, very accompanied, very followed.
All the candidates did not arrive on the same dates, some were by plane, others by train.
As soon as we wanted to do something, we had to notify our "nanny".
It was impossible to cross paths.
Maxime:
And then one day, you find yourself blindfolded, in front of a door and you say to yourself that it is there, you are going to enter an apartment and therefore in a game. You are in the total unknown.
Romain:
The discovery of my apartment?
I just remember that there were macaroons on the table and it was very bright.
Inès:
I couldn't concentrate on the apartment.
In my head, I was like “mash, you're on set”.
Gary:
I think I had the nicest place.
There was a
queen size
candy pink sofa
.
I thought I was in a doll's house.
We were entitled to personal effects, I installed them to tell myself that it was my secret garden, the setting for my diary.
I left with the vinyl of
Christophe Honoré's
Love Songs
soundtrack
, my favorite film, as well as a photo of my best friend and my niece.
Inès:
As I didn't want the faces of my relatives to appear on TV, I brought photos of Dumbledore, for the father figure, and Sophie Marceau, for the mother figure.
But the images did not fit into the frame.
So the production reprinted them for me.
Except that they chose a photo of Sophie Marceau in her twenties, in lingerie, suddenly, it was no longer too much in the delirium of the mother figure.
I ended up with this on my nightstand.
Inès, in The Circle France.
- Netflix screenshot
Romain:
I only took my blanket: a string.
That's all.
Maxime:
The day before departure, I had bought about fifteen books from Cultura.
It had been a long time since I had read.
I took a monster pleasure in reading:
The art of war
,
rich father, poor father
…
Inès:
I had brought books on behavioral psychology which were taken from me.
I was only able to keep my recipe books and a book by Jean d'Ormesson,
Le Guide des Égarés
, who is my spiritual guide.
Gary:
Being able to take books is the difference with a lot of reality shows.
I left with
Call Me By Your Nam
e.
A “cook for solos” style book that I have never used since I do not know how to cook.
Besides, there was no microwave, it was a tragedy for me.
Maxime:
I was so into strategies that reading helped me disconnect.
Inès:
I started out as a strategist and then fell asleep on these ambitions.
I had a lot of doubts about myself.
I had
flashbacks
from my high school days when, on the first group chats, people used acronyms that I didn't understand.
I was sometimes lost, I have the likes of girls not of my age.
I was afraid that people might think I was playing under a false identity.
Maxime:
I had been told that the goal was to be yourself or to pretend to be someone else in order to be the most popular in the game. I thought that using such a profile that my wife Valeria's was going to work.
She's beautiful, she's blonde, and on social media, girls are more popular than boys.
Basically, I'm not a social network.
I don't post a lot.
I like to take beautiful landscapes, beautiful houses - I work in real estate.
My wife, on the other hand, uses them a lot and I know something about them since I'm the one who photographs them every time.
Valeria had full confidence in me to play under her identity.
It was for Netflix, it would have been for classic French reality TV, maybe she would have been reluctant.
Gary:
Right now, you have to do your profile, your bio.
You try to be as attractive as possible because you have to be the most popular.
Even though I was myself, I had a strategy.
Homo, in general, is a girl's best friend, but he can be a danger to boys.
Guys are like peacocks, they lift their tails when you stroke them across the grain, so I wanted to be seductive to win their favor.
I was very fit with them.
Maxime:
I knew I was being filmed, so I told myself that we had to do TV, give the public what they want to see.
We remove the blockages that we can have on a daily basis and we go for it without limit.
Gary:
We were filmed all the time, for our safety, for a lot of things.
Honestly, I haven't seen the cameras.
I lived this experience like going on vacation.
Sometimes I didn't have the necessary perspective not to take things too seriously.
Inès:
Being filmed all the time was the hardest thing for me.
In addition, the time you take stock of your day is when you brush your teeth or when you go to bed.
From waking up to going to bed, we were in the game.
Romain:
At first, I had a hard time living in isolation, without TV, without daylight.
We were not allowed to go outside, except twice a day for five minutes, always being accompanied.
Maxime:
I was allowed to smoke five cigarettes a day.
They came to pick me up to take me to the terrace and then bring me back to my apartment: the people who guided me did not speak to me.
Romain:
It's a job to do on yourself, you get used to it.
From the moment I set foot in this adventure, I was fully into the
game
.
But it's long, very long, when there is no game [candidates must regularly participate in fun tests, answer quizzes…].
Sometimes you could spend four or five hours doing nothing.
Inès:
I found the time long and I found it hard to drop out of the game. I kept thinking about what I could do, evaluating the different options… I was exhausted but I hated taking a nap because that, since we have no notion of time and we do not see the light of day, when we fall asleep, we do not know whether we have slept for two minutes or three hours.
Maxime:
I had no trouble getting into the character of Valeria, but there are challenges that have unsettled me.
There was one where we had to decorate a cake.
The result was absolutely nothing feminine and I was afraid it would betray my identity.
In dictating my messages to The Circle, I had to make sure to give everything to the feminine otherwise, at the slightest oversight, I would have been toasted.
Anticipating the answers was relentless, I couldn't relax.
It was intense, I lost ten kilos during the shoot.
Gary:
I had a terrible time being eliminated.
It's violent to see his name and “player blocked”.
Everything suddenly stops.
When I was told that I could go visit a candidate before leaving the game, I thought of Inès.
I was afraid to be pissed off when I saw her.
She had put me at the stake.
Inès:
I expected him to come see me.
It was really hard, you go from one minute to the next from a player to a human person.
I contributed to its elimination and a few minutes later I have in front of me someone very empathetic, hyper human, adorable.
With Gary, we cried in two minutes.
Gary:
We hugged.
What I lacked was the connection with people.
It's very complicated to be alone in front of yourself.
Inès:
At the time of its release, in his video message broadcast to all the candidates, Gary exposed me, probably without wanting to.
Gary:
I came out as one of the most hated players.
It's great to be the villain of a TV object.
Inès:
I spent the next night thinking: “I know I'm going out tomorrow, it's time for me to fuck up the shit and save those I like.
"
In The Circle, Maxime pretended to be Valeria, his wife (framed photo).
- Netflix screenshot
Romain:
The truth is that
The Circle
is one of the best experiences of my life, it was only happiness from A to Z. I was myself, without artifice, without lies, without doing from the sequence to the sequence, I let myself be guided by my own feelings, I did what I wanted to do.
In addition, for me, there was the victory at the end.
It was a relief to get out of the game, go back to real life, and walk away with a big check.
Maxime:
Not having won is my worst memory.
The best is the meeting during the final dinner [before the announcement of the results the finalists meet for the first time, in the flesh, around a table].
It was hilarious.
Despite arguments during the game, the human side returns and ends up winning.
The finale of the French version does not compete with any other version.
In the British version, the one who was duped takes it badly and reacts very badly.
Romain
[who virtually “flirted” with Valeria in the game]
:
When I discovered that Maxime pretended to be Valeria, I took it well because it's a game. The first second, I was shocked , afterwards, I said to myself: "It's good, I got screwed, I will not have a girl this year, I will not go out with Valeria.
"
L'APRES
Maxime:
We cannot put words into the experience we lived because we are so disconnected from the real world.
It's like coming back from Mars.
The day we were given our phones back, I didn't know how to use them anymore, it was incredible as a feeling.
Inès:
When
The Circle France
was put online on Netflix, I watched it like a bandage is removed.
I hate to hear my voice.
From the first five minutes, I said to myself “What anguish, this is the disaster!
I watched it all in a day and a half, not turning it on too loud, and never watched again.
Maxime:
We started watching at 7:00 p.m. and finished at 4:00 a.m. with my wife.
She laughed a lot and thought I was a very good player.
Gary:
It's a beautiful mirror.
I find that it's true to what I am: you can see that I'm hypersensitive, that I live with my emotions, that I'm a bit
bitchy
- and again, they were quite soft in the editing.
Where I was disturbed is on the episode of my departure.
I didn't experience it the way it was shown.
I think I was the character that we loved not to like because I disturbed my choices, situations X or Y. Living the thing, I did not anticipate what people would think. .
I take responsibility for everything I have done by listening to my heart.
Romain:
As soon as it was uploaded, there was an impact on my number of followers.
I was going to see what was being said on the networks, I did not have a single negative comment.
That benevolent people, not that of the French, of the public of the whole world.
Since then, I've done other reality shows and it has nothing to do with it: it's negative, people empty their bags on us.
While the Netflix audience, not at all.
Maxime:
I took almost 70,000 subscribers in a month, when I was nobody.
This remains incomparable with some American candidates who have taken a million subscribers.
Gary:
You're never prepared to take buckets of shit.
I received messages like "The gays are going to hang them by the cock".
People said that I would have sold butter to the Germans, hated me because I was the traitor, because I am homosexual.
The LGBT public did not defend me.
In the comments under
Têtu's
articles
, I read violent things against me.
At the time, it's difficult, it was during confinement, I had no one around me to support me in all of this.
Looking back, I love the role I got.
And I think people ultimately find me endearing.
Inès:
I was a little out of step, I was in the countryside, in England, which is the only country in the world where Netflix does not offer
The Circle
.
I was really cut off from the world.
It didn't have an effect on me directly.
The most positive aspect is that I am told that I represented a girl of North African origin - I am half Vendée, half Moroccan - in a different way than usually portrayed in the media.
It was the most recurring comment and one that warmed my heart.
Gary:
We are a cast very similar to the first
Loft Story
.
We have real jobs, we are people that you meet every day when you go to buy your bread, not remade bimbos and bodybuilt guys.
Maxime:
When I went out shopping during confinement, people would ask me for selfies with them.
When we are unknown, we remember all our lives the first photos we take.
There, the euphoria subsided.
Gary:
I haven't changed my life.
Today I take care of the social networks of the company that employs me.
Romain is a candidate for The Circle France - Screenshot / Netflix
Romain:
Since then, I have done
The Villa of Broken Hearts
, and I have toured in other programs which will be broadcast during the year.
It's not what I planned to do and it's not what I'm going to do with my life, reality TV won't be my career.
Maxime:
We can develop business online.
Having visibility on social networks is important.
With Valeria, we went on
La Bataille des couples
which will be broadcast in September on TFX.
We had proposals, we jumped at the opportunity.
We are aware that social networks can be a supplement to income.
Romain:
I launched my YouTube channel with my girl, we're looking for interesting content.
For example, I will go and meet three candidates from
The Circle
Brazil.
I don't think I'll stay as an iconic reality TV candidate, I'd rather be described as a content creator.
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