Before being shaken up by the appearance of the internet and the revolution of social networks, television was the setting for the main political contests. Theater of murderous debates or sequences that have become cults, the small screen offered a multitude of highlights under the Fifth Republic. This summer, Le Figaro tells you behind the scenes of these meetings.
“I specify, Christine Angot, that you adapted your novel, An impossible love, to the theater”, launches David Pujadas. This March 23, 2017, love is impossible, and, on the set of France 2, the actors engage in a lively exchange. The aftershocks fuse. One gets carried away, the other objects. One month before the first round of the presidential election, the French are witnessing a strange spectacle and, above all, the failure of the beautiful dialectic that one could have hoped for from an exchange between the writer, Christine Angot, and the politician, François Fillon.
The right-wing and center candidate has been answering questions from journalists for an hour. “We were in a particular phase of the campaign where we were in survival mode,” says one of the members of François Fillon’s team, then entangled in the “Penelope Gate” and the luxury suits affair. “We had placed a lot of hope in this show, says this same close. We knew there would be adversity and it suited us very well. Anything that accentuated the “Fillon against everyone” side was welcome: against right-thinking, against Parisian journalists, against the system… And the face-to-face with Angot illustrated all that.
On the screen, the interested party appears, then exchanges a cold handshake with François Fillon. “From there, David Pujadas stepped back to leave them both, says Didier Froehly, the director of “L’Émission politique”, the talk show at the time. We had no control over anything.”
“Good…, launches Angot, a smile on the corner of the lips. You did not withdraw. You are there.” His opponent stiffened. “Do you know that if you are elected, we will have a president in whom a large part of the population will not have confidence?”, She continues. For now, calm still reigns. A sneaky calm, however, because the storm is already brewing. “Do you see this bracelet?, insists Angot. It was given to me ten years ago by someone who called herself my friend, but who wanted to get something from me, to corrupt me. I accepted the bracelet and eight days later she asks me to write something about her latest book. I refused. But if I had accepted, I would surely have had five or six bracelets today on my arm. What is shocking is that you have put yourself in the (following) situation: of having services to render.” This is the “sequence launched, reports Didier Froehly. It’s a football match that begins and we follow the ball.
The presenter tries to interrupt Christine Angot, and to pass the floor. “Perhaps François Fillon’s answer?”, He ventures. “No”, slice Angot. In the audience, a few laughs ring out. “For it to be a dialogue?” insists Pujadas. “It’s not a dialogue,” retorts the novelist. “It’s rarely a dialogue with Ms. Angot, it’s true,” replies candidate LR in turn. Before adding: “By what right do you condemn me? By what right do you believe that my wife’s employment was illegal and indecent?
– I do not condemn you, I tell you what I feel. Millions of us feel that way.
– I am not guilty. You were talking about your bracelet; I returned the costumes.” Fillon’s supporters applaud. “We are not in an arena!” warns Pujadas. From a Parisian bar where LR activists are gathered, Florence Coupry, then in charge of press relations, testifies: “It was crazy, like a moment, so violent… It was almost too much and, suddenly, almost a turning point !” Another member of the campaign team adds: “We knew that defeat was assured, but there were all the ingredients necessary for a start, even a slight one. When you are in the countryside, the slightest rebound signal is to be taken…” Didier Froehly reports: “In management, no one believed in it. Fillon knew that it was constantly filming, he was super in control, in the stature of a presidential candidate. He was very careful.”
After almost six minutes, Christine Angot, exasperated, lets go: “I call you dishonest. And you know the pompom, in all this history? It’s the Bérégovoy trick you did to us a while ago.” Earlier in the show, François Fillon had said he understood the suicide of the former prime minister, also implicated. “That (Bérégovoy’s blow) doesn’t pass, sir. Are you blackmailing us into suicide?” In the public, Valérie Boyer, then spokesperson for the campaign and deputy, has the jaw that fails to unhook. “Can’t you understand that I can be hurt by false accusations?” Fillon replies. “Oh, how sad! You hurt me. He is hurt?”
The show ends quickly. “Thank you for coming by for this attempt at dialogue. Sometimes it succeeds, sometimes it fits less well”, concludes, embarrassed, Pujadas. “It happened that some guests stayed to share a drink after the show, remembers Didier Froehly. Christine Angot, she left as she came.