The series empire. Actress Julie de Bona talks about the filming of the future TF1 series: “Les Combattantes”

She didn’t have the good part in The Charity Bazaar. She embodied a maid disfigured by the fire of this department store in Paris in this historical series with big means broadcast on TF1. The same team: same director, same producer, same actress, returns for a new historical fiction at the start of the school year on TF1.

This time Julie de Bona will play the mother superior of a convent transformed into a makeshift hospital during the First World War. The series will be called The Fighters.

#Lescombattantes the back-to-school event series!
A large romantic fresco against the backdrop of the First World War.
4 heroines, 4 extraordinary destinies

Driven by a 5-star cast #AudreyFleurot , @JulieDeBona , @CamilleLou_off , @Sofia_Essaidi and many others pic.twitter.com/4Mt6bOVhae

— TF1 (@TF1) July 23, 2022

“Already, it wasn’t a sequel, that’s what I liked, says Julie de Bona. It was an absolutely brilliant idea from Iris Bucher, the producer, who said to herself: we love our three heroines. We are going to use the same actresses, but in different characters and at a different time, to talk about the condition of women during this First World War.

So it was a shoot in costume with period sets. But what marked Julie de Bona was director Alexandre Laurent’s way of filming. “When there is a very strong scene and he wants to describe what he wants, he describes it with the music he chooses. For example, if something is going to transcend us, he will put on music that will transcend. And what’s great is that all the technicians, whether it’s the camera, the pole, the sound or the extras, they’re all in the same musical note. So we all understand the scene in our own way to him. It’s very smart to lead like that!”

“That way, we no longer need to intellectualize the scene, we feel it!”

Julie de Bona

at franceinfo

The director has favorite music like that of Christopher Nolan’s films. And that’s how the director manages to trigger certain emotions in the actors. For example in Elise’s Secret “because I couldn’t feel the fear of a ghost that I must have seen. It’s very conceptual to imagine seeing a ghost. And it came with music that scared me so much with this music. He said, ‘Action, motor’ and I did my scene crying and shaking and everything”, says Julie de Bona.