Extract from Manon Bernard's article on Europe 1.fr
11:07 am, April 27, 2021
The first episode of Loft Story is broadcast by M6 on April 26, 2001, the public discovers this new concept: reality TV. Since then, the programs are full of them. On Europe 1, actor Jean-Marc Lancelot, voiceover for the credits of the show, reviews all the precautions that preceded its broadcast.
INTERVIEW
The first French reality TV show is 20 years old. On April 26, 2001, the M6 channel broadcast for the first time the adventures of Loana, Steevy, Kenza and ten other singles locked in a house and filmed 22 hours a day. Loft Story quickly became a huge success with up to 11 million dollars. viewers some evenings. The actor Jean-Marc Lancelot, voiceover of the credits which has become cult, is the guest of Théo Meneval, Tuesday morning on Europe 1.
"We weren't supposed to tell anyone what we had done about that credits," he recalls. At the beginning of 2001, the show Loft Story, adapted from the Dutch Big Brother is a "mystery". It's impossible to know what it will contain or what repercussions it will have.
"It was something amazing, really"
Everything is carefully prepared so as not to reveal anything. "Above all, we shouldn't have said anything to anyone. We were also made to sign confidentiality clauses with our contracts," says Jean-Marc Lancelot. When recording each candidate's first names in the credits, the show's production box, run by host Arthur, even includes ten fake names to confuse the issue. These precautions scared the voice-over actor "a little bit" at the time.
And it was not until the big day of the broadcast that Jean-Marc Lancelot discovered the concept of the show. He notices the content but also the images. "When we recorded the credits, I didn't have an image of the candidates because it had to be kept a secret until the end. They were blurred with big crosses on them," he recalls. Before saying, "It was something amazing, really."
To listen the entirety click here