Jean-Pierre Foucault takes on a new challenge by taking on the role of actor in the “Meurtres à…” collection. An experience that pushed him out of his comfort zone.
At 76 years old, Jean-Pierre Foucault has not finished surprising his audience. The host, who built his career on hosting cult shows like Quite an evening, Who wants to make millions? Or Miss Francehas launched a new challenge. This Saturday, October 12, France 3 viewers will be able to discover the venerable godfather of the PAF in a new light, in the shoes of a fictional character.
Jean-Pierre Foucault embodies the central character of a new opus of the collection Murders in… on the third channel. A program which has been littering our French landscapes with corpses for more than ten years, under the benevolent (and undoubtedly interested) gaze of tourist offices, happy to see their region in the spotlight.
What does Murders on the Blue Coast say?
Murders on the Blue Coast tells the story of a young police inspector, who chose to be temporarily seconded to Provence in order to be closer to her mother, whom she thinks is inconsolable since the death of her father. She finds herself investigating in pairs with Lino Perrin, a good-natured captain who knew her when she was a child, into the assassination of a construction contractor, pushed from the top of a viaduct.
This is where Jean-Pierre Foucault comes in. He plays Marc Valenci, heritage architect and main witness to the murder. Chloé will quickly discover that Marc is also her mother’s lover and that he knows much more than he wants to say about this first death, soon followed by a second. What is Marc hiding? Is he guilty or is he protecting his son, the handsome Diego, to whom Chloé is not indifferent?
“But what possessed you to say yes?”
The challenge of this detective fiction, with a role with dramatic overtones, is significant for someone who has never acted in comedy until now. Enough to have some apprehensions. “I hesitated before giving my agreement”, confided Jean-Pierre Foucault in the columns of Télé 7 Jours. But it is precisely this taste for challenge and novelty that convinced the host to accept this role, in addition to his attachment to his heart region, Provence, where he lives most of the year.
On the set, the presenter quickly became disillusioned when he realized the magnitude of the task. Accustomed to animating while being in front of the camera himself, he had to learn to compose a character under the direction of director Marjolaine de Lecluse. A much more arduous and demanding mission than one might think, admits the PAF star. And to add, with his sense of the formula: “Even afterwards, I thought: ‘But what possessed you to say yes?’ I realized that it was extremely complicated to interpret a character, especially since the director, Marjolaine de Lecluse, was quite demanding…”
It now remains to be seen whether the mission was successfully accomplished and whether Jean-Pierre Foucault manages better than others to put himself in the costume of a real actor, while avoiding sinking into ridicule with him.