It’s the TV controversy of the week. Mediapart accused M6 of having excluded one of the couples from its Scènes deménage program because it was “racialized”…
M6 was targeted by Mediapart this week, in an investigation into the sidelining of one of the duos from Scènes deménage, its short early evening humorous program, which makes fun of the love, family and professional life of several couples from different generations. In a long article published Thursday, the investigative site indicates that Claudia Mongumu and Ryad Baxx, who have played Jalil and Louise since 2021, were excluded from the successful comedy film because their couple would not have been “universal” enough. Understand, too “racialized”, according to the Mediapart translation.
Scene of Households had in fact announced to change its casting last July, the couple formed by Louise, a restaurateur of Congolese origin and Jalil, a firefighter of Algerian origin, being removed from the skits offered each evening to reduce “the number of couples in the series,” the channel indicated. For the moment, this disappearance has not yet been seen by viewers, the scenes of the couple already filmed being broadcast until September 2025. A new duo will arrive in the series at the beginning of 2025, played by Élodie Poux and Majid Berhila.
What is M6 accused of in Mediapart?
Mediapart’s investigation highlights testimonies, screenshots of email exchanges and even recordings which prove that the couple removed from the program was removed for racial reasons. Claudia Mongumu herself testified about being sidelined for her origins and her skin color. If the drop in audiences was invoked by M6, the argument of Quentin de Revel, the director of fiction at M6, captured in an audio recording, would have been different among the actors. “In our eyes, you were the least mature couple. (…) I find that your couple does not tell something sufficiently universal”, he would have indicated, invoking “something which does not take, something where we recognize each other less, so.” M6 would have prohibited the two actors from publicly discussing their departure.
While Le Parisien was also investigating this affair, Mediapart also produced “language elements” which were to be sent to the daily newspaper and in which M6 had Claudia Mongumu and Ryad Baxx say that they had “decided to stop the series to work on other projects. An explanation denied by Claudia Mongumu, who refused to “participate in any way in a charade to preserve M6”. To which the channel’s communications manager reportedly replied that it was necessary to “find a lie no matter what.”
“We have continued to be invisible,” also believes the actress, who affirms that the couple posed a problem for M6 from the start and who was moved by email to the deputy director of fiction at M6 in January 2023. The agency of the two actors would even have sent, at the end of 2023, a report to point out this unequal treatment.
What is M6’s response to the accusations?
M6 defended itself in Mediapart from any form of racism or invisibility. In a press release published after the publication of the article, the channel also expressed its “dismay” at the “innuendoes are shameful and slanderous” relayed by the site. She recalls that it was she who, initially, put this couple on the air, like other characters representing diversity in Scène deménage, and cites “media events” highlighting Claudia Mongumu and Ryad Baxx between 2021 and 2024.
“In 3 years of Scènes de Ménages, Claudia Mongumu and Ryad Baxx have played in nearly 1,100 sequences of the series, which shows M6’s involvement in the visibility of this couple and the importance given to them” , we can read. “The couple unfortunately did not have the expected success with viewers, we assume as a broadcaster and producer our responsibility for the writing of the situations or the staging. (…) There is never had the desire to ‘invisibilise'”, M6 further promises, adding that, “as mentioned when announcing their departure, M6 and Kabo wish to continue to offer projects to Claudia Mongumu and Ryad Baxx. role in the Clean series that we have just shot is therefore completely false.