A black musketeer did indeed exist in French history. The character of Aniaba inspired an anticipated series on Disney+, “Black Musketeer”. Franceinfo met the screenwriter at the “Marseille Séries Stories” festival.
After Knightretracing the journey of composer Joseph Bologne de Saint-Georges during the reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI, thehe catalog of the Disney+ platform could be enriched with new content highlighting a black character forgotten in history books. This time, with an elite guard from the African continent and exploring the world of Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
The screenwriter Thomas Mansuy, who has already collaborated on Derby Girl (Francetv Slash) or Ten percent (France 2) and which is also tackling a first season of lucky Lukeparticipates in the development of Black Musketeer. For a few days, he is a member of the jury of the “Marseille Séries Stories”, a festival dedicated to series adapted from literary works which opened on Thursday November 16. For franceinfo, he details his project for the first time.
Black Musketeer is being written. What is the series about?
Black Musketeer is based on Aniaba, a real historical character, a man from present-day Ivory Coast, heir to the throne of the kingdom of Assinia and whom Louis XIV brought to France for diplomatic reasons. This man will grow up at court, be baptized by Bossuet, become godson of the king then musketeer. The goal was then to send him home to take power. We make him a fictional, romantic character, placed before the musketeers that we know, d’Artagnan and company, to tell his destiny. That of a fiery young man, lost in a country that is not his, prey to racism.
Do you intend to make it a series of pure fiction or will historical reality enrich it?
The project is absolutely not intended to be historical, it completely betrays the history of France I must say. We are writing a swashbuckling comedy with great action and ideals: honor, good, evil, the crown of France. There is humor as you can find in Pirates of the Caribbean which is one of our references, that is to say a mixture of first degree, epic adventures and slightly comical situations.
Can we know which actor will play this new Disney hero?
Absolutely not because we don’t know it ourselves. We are in the process of writing the series, there are still a lot of unknowns.
The on-screen representation of diversity has today become a social issue. Some expressed their incomprehension at having seen a black actress appear this year to play the little Mermaid in the variation of the work in live action, when others salute the success and the necessity of the series Miss Marvel featuring an American teenager of Pakistani origin and Muslim faith. How do you approach your series in this context?
For us, it is important that characters of color, of different genders, sexualities, religions exist. It’s important because we write for an audience that wants to identify with it. As a white man, I always had white heroes to identify with as a child: Indiana Jones, Clint Eastwood, Jean-Paul Belmondo… As an author, I know that all of this is part of the construction of an individual is also what makes us dream of being able to find ourselves in a character. Continuing to represent only a small part of the population is nonsense. Series are an opportunity because, more than in films, they create galleries of characters. In Black Musketeer, the issue of representation is absolutely not free. Aniaba’s first quality is not that he is black but a hero driven by personal ambitions, who has things to learn about himself, who must find meaning in his life. The color of his skin represents, at that time, an obstacle and will support the fact that he is excluded, that he is lost, faced with incomprehension because people see him as strange. We are dealing with a time which is that of the beginnings of slavery and not everyone knows what a black man is.
Have you built a team that is itself diverse?
When we started working on Black Musketeer, we obviously thought about the controversies that could arise. We think that we will avoid them because the subject of the series is not representation, we will not need to deal with social, societal causes. But we thought a lot about these questions and a West Indian author who has worked a lot on these questions, on identity, joined our writing team. And I think we managed to handle the subject properly.
Are platforms today looking for series offering more diversity on screen?
No, we do not receive specifications with expectations on inclusiveness, diversity… The subject of representation is in the spirit of the times and obviously it is a very good thing. Personally, I don’t feel any pressure on the subject. We see it for example on female characters, we now have the reflex to have a lot more and we don’t force ourselves. Today, we are going further by creating much more complex female characters. For us, authors, it is much more interesting if only for the dramaturgy.
How does Alexandre Dumas remain modern and THE Three musketeers conducive to multiple adaptations for cinema and series in 2023?
What is very interesting about Alexandre Dumas is that he was almost a series author before his time. The three Musketeers were originally written as serials for the press and it shows in the writing. Dumas created suspense because readers had to read the rest the following week. There are multiple intrigues, completely incredible twists and turns, excitement. The author had a writing style over the pen and the adaptations of the Three musketeers are more structured than the original novel. So yes, in that sense, it is quite easy and even wonderful to adapt Dumas’ style.
And what is less easy on the other hand?
Language. Dumas’ characters speak a very beautiful language, a sustained language and it’s magnificent to read them, they come out with barbs almost like alexandrines. So we must ask ourselves the question of language adaptation. Should we keep this elegance, simplify or modernize? The other difficulty lies in the necessary costumes, it is expensive. Horse chases are expensive. Naval battles are expensive. The La Rochelle headquarters is expensive. Obviously, there is an economic concern.
Everyone imagined the characters from the novel The three Musketeers. The book belongs to the heritage of literature. Is it intimidating to tackle it?
Obviously, but I think it was more complicated for the very first person who adapted the novel. With this impression of touching the sacred. Now we all have an idea of Three musketeers which, very often, is not that of the novel. Myself, my first approach was the cartoon “Albert, the fifth musketeer”… We are attacking a monument but we are also attacking a collective imagination. I almost want to say that everyone is entitled to their little part of Dumas. We work with characters that everyone knows, we feel strangely quite free.