Family misfortunes

Tout va bien (Everything is Fine) creator Camille de Castelnau tells DQ about stepping into the showrunning hot seat for the first time on her own series, which follows a family dealing with the fallout from a devastating medical diagnosis.

Camille de Castelnau made her name as a writer on standout French series such as Le Bureau des Légendes, Dix pour cent and Drôle (Standing Up). In fact, she jokes that she “specialised” as a showrunner’s number two, working alongside Le Bureau’s Eric Rochant and Fanny Herrero on each of those series.

Now she’s stepping out on her own with her first original series, Tout va bien (Everything is Fine). Based on elements of de Castelnau’s own life, the comedy-drama explores the daily lives of the Vasseur family, whose members face numerous trials and tribulations – not least the serious illness of nine-year-old Rose, who requires a bone marrow transplant – while their relationships are pushed to the limit.

“If you really want to see your characters, you have to put them into an ordeal, a problem, a challenge,” she tells DQ. “This problem they have, the seriousness of the child’s illness, is a very good challenge to let people show who they really are because they are stressed, tired and anxious.

“This was a problem I knew because my family had to deal with this situation a few years ago, so that’s why I chose it. But it’s a fictional show really. It’s not about my family, but it’s about the emotions my family and I felt, and I tried to put these emotions into the show. I always write with that purpose, to give back emotions I have known, but everything is fake.”

The Vasseur family certainly face a multitude of emotions as they respond to Rose’s diagnosis, and each character offers viewers a chance to recognise themselves – and how they might react in a similar situation – through the story.

Nicole Garcia plays matriarch and self-help author Anne, who has been neglecting her husband Pascal (Bernard Le Coq) for years. Their daughter Claire (Virginie Efira) is extremely troubled by her niece’s illness, while dealing with her partner Antonio (Eduardo Noriega) and his ex-wife. Marion (Sara Giraudeau) is struggling to cope with her marriage to Stéphane (Yannik Landrein), her daughter Rose (Angèle Romeo)’s illness and her attraction to Louis (Mehdi Nebbou), whom she met at the hospital. Meanwhile, Vincent (Aliocha Schneider), Claire and Marion’s brother, finds his previously easy life as an air steward becomes more turbulent.

“Each character has a defence mechanism [for dealing with Rose’s illness], because if you don’t, you are too sad or too mad to take care of the situation or take care of the child,” de Castelnau explains. “You have to be efficient, you have to be there for her and to care for her. You have to find a way to go on. For some people, it’s over-caring; for other characters, it’s denial. For others, they escape, they run away from the drama because they don’t want to see it, they don’t want to know it. They don’t want it to exist.

“The grandfather, Pascal, is looking for meaning, but there is absolutely no meaning. The situation is absurd, but through the whole show he is thinking, ‘Why her and not me?’ It’s so absurd and illogical, and he tries to understand it but nothing works.”

But while Rose is at the centre of the story, she’s not a main character. Instead, the focus is on the family around her. “That’s because I really can imagine what Claire, Anne, even Pascal, all experience,” the writer continues. “But with her, I can’t. I have a lot of empathy for her but what she experiences in her mind and body, the loneliness, the pain, the fear, I can’t imagine. So I was not able to put my mind to her. It was not possible. That’s why she’s the centre of gravity of the show but the protagonists are the family.”

Produced by Maui Entertainment, Federation Studios and Petit Ermitage Production, the Disney+ original series is now streaming in the UK and Ireland after its local debut in November last year. De Castelnau is the showrunner and coproducer, and wrote the scripts with Gaëlle Bellan (La Promesse), Benjamin Adam (L’Opéra) and Christophe Régin (La Surface de Réparation).

With so many characters to squeeze into the series, de Castelnau first worked on the series alone, penning the first three scripts herself to establish the grammar of the show and bed in its structure. Notably, Disney execs told her at an early stage that this was “a show about women” and it needed more emphasis on its male characters.

“They were absolutely right and they helped me to push them up. It was very helpful,” she says. “Then once you have the grammar in the pilot, it’s OK. It’s a lot of work but it’s OK once you know where you’re going.”

While working with other showrunners on their series, de Castelnau found she had to adapt to their tone of voice when writing scripts. Now running her own show, she found her own “realistic” style for the series, which aims to reflect the ups and downs of real life.

“Life is sometimes very tragic but with pleasant moments. That’s the tone of Tout va bien,” she says. “We love life even if life can be very difficult and painful.”

Then when she had those three early scripts, she worked with Bellan, Adam and Régin to develop the rest of the episodes and co-write first drafts with each of them, before she would take the final pass.

“With Le Bureau and Drôle, we had writers rooms. I liked it; I think it can be very interesting and a lot of ideas can come from it, but for this precise project it was something very personal,” she says. “It was the first time I had to manage writers, and I was not comfortable with having a lot in the room, so we were three people – the writer, the script co-ordinator and me – and it was perfect.”

Behind the camera, Tout va bien sees a Le Bureau reunion between de Castelnau and Rochant, who directs the first two episodes. Further episodes were directed by Xavier Legrand (Jusqu’à la garde), Cathy Verney (Vernon Subutex) and Audrey Estrougo (Suprêmes).

“We speak the same language, so it was a great pleasure to see him again, with different roles,” she says of Rochant. “On Le Bureau, we were co-writers. He was the leader, but we worked together. On my show he didn’t write a line, but he was a producer and the director, so it was new because we were not in the same place.”

Filmed in and around Paris, the series adopts a warm visual style that is resplendent with bright colours – an intentional contrast to the greys and blues that accompany the frequent hospital scenes. Then there’s episode five, which was shot in Guadaloupe, with the Caribbean location unsurprisingly standing apart from the other episodes.

“I had to pick costumes and I was on the set almost every day, except when I had to prepare with the next director,” de Castelnau says about her role through production. “But I learned a lot.” One of those lessons is that it’s better to pause and regroup than try to rush and make up time when delays occur. Another was about money.

“As I was an associate producer, I learned about money and where to put it. It’s not very romantic or poetic but it’s very important,” she says. “We also had a lot of visual effects issues, since the little girl didn’t shave her head [to replicate the effects of Rose’s treatment], so it was fake. There is one episode where she’s very swollen because of her medicine, and this was very expensive to achieve. For an adult, you can take four hours to put on make-up. But for a child, they can only be on set for three hours a day. So you have to do it afterwards with visual effects. It was very interesting.”

The universal subjects of Tout va bien mean the series will be accessible to anyone who tunes into Disney+ to catch the eight-part series, demonstrating how frail outward appearances can be in the face of devastating events.

“This ordeal is a very universal one. It’s the worst nightmare of every parent in the world, and luckily it’s pretty rare,” de Castelnau says. “Unfortunately, few families don’t know this kind of very tough period when someone is ill and the life of the whole family has to change. Even when it’s a grandparent, which is sadly normal, it’s still very difficult and can separate people or make links stronger. It’s very universal.”

But despite the problems that lie ahead, the Vasseur family resolve to remain as positive as they can and deal with every situation with hope and humour. As Anne says, “Everything is fine.”

tagged in: Camille de Castelnau, Disney, Everything is Fine, Federation Studios, Maui Entertainment, Petit Ermitage Production, Tout va bien