30 years of Scoop | A legacy far from being fictitious

Scoop aired on January 8, 1992 on Radio-Canada. Plunging millions of viewers into the world of a major Montreal daily, the series has left its mark in many ways, say its actors 30 years later. In addition to having convinced many young men – and especially many young women – to undertake a career in journalism, she leaves behind a foolproof technique for warming dressing gowns in the morning.

Marc-André Lemieux
Press

Spread over four seasons, the action of Scoop largely revolved around a star reporter from The Express camped by Macha Grenon. Daughter of the wealthy owner of the newspaper interpreted by Claude Léveillée, Stéphanie Rousseau was ambitious, competent and rebellious. A first in class. Around her gravitated Lionel Rivard (Rémy Girard), the explosive head of the desk, Léonne Vigneault (Francine Ruel), the roaring head of the union, Richard “Tintin” Fortin (Martin Drainville), the clumsy recruit, and Michel Gagné ( Roy Dupuis), the fiery lover.

The influence of the work of fiction created by Réjean Tremblay and Fabienne Larouche is undeniable since, even today, Macha Grenon receives testimonies from women who, after following the exploits of Stéphanie Rousseau on the screen, have decided to study communications.

“ Scoop, it was not a series on our past as Quebecers, it was a series on our present, affirms the actress. It was a series centered around a different model of a female character. They took the woman out of the kitchens. Stéphanie was independent, she worked. She was a modern woman from the 1990s. And she chose the guy. ”

Launching ramp

When we take a look at the credits of Scoop in 2022, we can hardly believe that so many big hitters have shared the spotlight of the same series. But in 1992, no one would have qualified its cast as breathtaking, since it was mostly made up of actors little known to the general public.

Having held the poster of Decline of the American Empire by Denys Arcand a few years earlier, Rémy Girard enjoyed a certain notoriety, but far from the level that awaited him later.

For the actor, Scoop represented a “first major role”. “I had an interesting character to play,” he comments. At the start, Réjean and Fabienne told me: “Rivard, he’s a homosexual, but people will only find out at 13^e episode, after adopting it, after loving it. ” At that time, different characters were not common on television. ”

Before 1992, Martin Drainville had played in the comedy show Saturday PM with Pauline Martin, but he had never appeared in the credits of a major drama series. ” With Scoop, I became an identifiable face, indicates the actor. A lot of people have started to call me Tintin. ”

For Macha Grenon, then better known thanks to her role as a cocaine addict photographer in love with Pierre Lambert (Carl Marotte) in Lance and count, Scoop has changed the game. Overnight, she became a darling of viewers at the MetroStar Awards (the predecessors of the Artis gala).

“It was a first role, it was a heavy series, it was people of immense talent, and it was very, very watched, summarizes the actress. Once I was at the convenience store and when I got to the counter there were four magazine front pages on Scoop. The challenge for me was learning to cope with all this popularity. It was to learn to live my profession differently. ”

Scoop was also a turning point for Francine Ruel. In the early 1990s, the actress and author had a few plays behind the tie, including Brew, which she had co-wrote with Claude Meunier, Jean-Pierre Plante and Louis Saia, but on the TV side, except Cormorant, his CV was rather meager.

She says that before she auditioned for Scoop, she had learned by mistake the identity of the other actresses summoned to camp Léonne Vigneault.

“They were just big names… and they were all thin, while I was chubby.” It had given me a kind of momentum. It made me work hard to get the part. I was on a mission! Because Léonne was a strong-mouthed, moving and sexy woman. She had things to say. It was the perfect opportunity to show the world that a round could be sensual and experience great moments. ”

The Mihalka effect

Failing to reveal Roy Dupuis to the general public (Caleb’s daughters had done it two years earlier), Scoop confirmed the status of safe bet of the national of the National Theater School then aged 27. First actor attached to the project, Roy Dupuis initially refused to participate because he found the texts “ordinary”. Finally, he never regretted having accepted the producers’ offer.

“The gang was really fun,” says the actor. And I really liked working with George [Mihalka, réalisateur des deux premières saisons]. He was very open, very unifying, very smiling. I felt he liked what I was doing. For me, it was encouraging. I just wanted to give more. ”

Same story with Rémy Girard, who salutes Mihalka’s daring during group scenes filmed in the former Guaranteed Pure Milk dairy, in downtown Montreal, where the sets for the newspaper were set up. The Express.

“We had a method with George. When we had time, and because we knew our characters well, we started the scene before the text, improvising a few lines. It got us in the mood. It brought a kind of fluidity. And often, those little improvisational moments were kept during the editing. ”

Reached by phone, George Mihalka has fond memories of Scoop, a work that was performing well, he believes. “We wanted to create a contemporary, different series. It was an incredible challenge. We wanted to show Montreal as a big global city. ”

Scoop propelled the career of the director, who then found himself at the helm of Quebec films such as La Florida, The Boys 4 and The ideal man, in addition to a large number of English series on both sides of the Atlantic.

“For me, it was a gateway. For the first time, I had the chance to create the whole look of a series, to choose the actors… It gave me the opportunity to become a real director ”, underlines the one who currently directs the set ofHunyadi, big budget series about a famous Hungarian warrior of the XV^e century.

Highlights

When we think of Scoop, various images come to mind: every time Lionel Rivard shouted: “We’re killing the front page!” »In the middle of the newsroom, Stéphanie Rousseau’s Porsche rides in the city center, the death of Gabriella (Charlotte Laurier), etc.

Francine Ruel underlines the conclusion of the 12^e episode, when Léonne starts the strike by calling the press workers after a heated negotiation session with the publisher Paul Vézina (Raymond Bouchard). “When I’m 200 years old, I’ll still remember it! she exclaims. It’s a TV moment that I love! ”

Another scene that the actress will never forget: the one in which Rémi (Germain Houde), Léonne’s spouse, wakes her up with a heated dressing gown after two or three turns of the dryer.

“People still talk to me about it! laughs Francine Ruel. Men tell me that because of me, their electricity bill has gone up! I find that funny. It must also mean that I have talent as an actress, because at the time of filming, the dressing gown was cold! ”

The love scenes, rather explicit for the time, are also part of the heritage of Scoop. We think in particular of this part of legs in the air between Manon Berthiaume (Sophie Lorain) and François Dumoulin (René Gagnon) in a convertible, but especially those between Stéphanie Rousseau and Michel Gagné.

According to Macha Grenon, who is shy by nature, these clips were never particularly easy to shoot, but with Roy Dupuis as a playing partner, an actor she describes as funny, professional and respectful, the experience was less uncomfortable. As for Roy Dupuis, when filming these closed-stage sequences, he avoided thinking of the millions of viewers that Scoop joined.

“From a creative point of view, these were scenes that I loved doing. I liked the idea of ​​going that far to tell a story, to get closer to a certain truth. I felt there were things that hadn’t been done on TV yet. And it was all very choreographed, a bit like a dance. The gestures were placed and decided in advance. ”

Still present

Scoop has all but fallen into oblivion. The complete series has been available on DVD for about ten years. The Unis TV channel presented its first season last fall. Its second will be broadcast on Thursday.

According to Rémy Girard, who recently revamped the first episodes, the series has aged very well. “I had a lot of fun listening to it, all these years later. I found it good. It was not free. We were talking about real things: the importance of information, the competition between media… And I believed in the characters. ”

“The authors knew their subject, it seemed,” adds Martin Drainville. And it was frankly a good idea to do a series about a newspaper. It allows you to tackle all kinds of stories. You can afford any subject because a journalist can investigate everything. ”

Unis TV is showing the second season of Scoop starting Thursday, January 6 at 10 p.m.