Everything for Agnès: what part of reality and what part of fiction in the France 2 series?
Michèle Laroque plays Renée Leroux in this chronicle recounting the affair of Agnès Le Roux, rich heiress to the Palais de la Méditerranée, who tragically disappeared in 1977. At the origin of the mini-series, Judith Naudet-Baulieu tells us how this was conceived. French “true crime”.
“It’s an extraordinary story. It left its mark because it spanned almost 40 years. There were three trials. And Maurice Agnelet was almost 80 years old when he was convicted!” Judith Naudet-Baulieu is fascinated by the Agnès Leroux affair, one of the most significant in French judicial history. Five years ago, the producer decided to embark on a major documentary, Confidences of a condemned man (broadcast on Canal + in 2020) evoking the legal aspect of the case from 8 hours of interview with the main accused, Maurice Agnelet, filmed by his son. At the same time, she decided to launch the production of a mini-series, Everything for Agneswith the idea of “focus more on the characters and therefore on the family saga”, entrusts Judith Naudet-Baulieu at Première.
However, for the sake of going into pure fiction. Everything for Agnesbroadcast from this evening on France 2 (and available since December on Paramount +), is a “true crime drama” which scrupulously respects historical truth. “We especially imagined the settings in which the scenes and the attitudes take place,” explains the producer, before specifying that few liberties were taken with reality: “Director Vincent Garenq and the writers read the file from cover to cover. They watched the documentary with great attention. Vincent doesn’t really like to invent things that work very well in reality. And that is the case here. It is already a fundamentally very romantic affair. We didn’t need to romanticize too much. For example, the investigation was led by two police officers. Obviously, they didn’t have those names or those faces. It didn’t exactly turn out like that. But the interrogations described in the series are recounted as we read them in the investigation file. The evidence against Maurice Agnelet is this. There was already everything. Because it’s a really crazy deal in real life.”
Beyond the narration, Judith Naudet-Baulieu also admits to us that there is “a principle of responsibility towards families. Renée Le Roux and Maurice Agnelet died in recent years. On the other hand, the children still live and have lived their whole lives with this affair. So whether for the civil parties or the defense, it was necessary to do work that was as unfictionalized as possible. Romantic does not mean invented. We tried to tell things as we studied them.”
Moreover, the producer reveals to us that she has warned the relatives of Renée Le Roux (died in 2016) and Maurice Agnelet (died in 2021) “because, compared to the documentary, the fiction talks more about a mother’s struggle. As a result, the series is certainly harder to watch for the Agnelet family, especially since one of her sons always thinks that his father was innocent“.
More than a TV adaptation of a famous news item, Everything for Agnes is also a women’s story. The portrait of two generations which initially touched Judith Naudet-Baulieu: “I wanted to understand how a mother and a daughter who adore each other can stop understanding each other. There, it resulted in a terrible tragedy. But basically, Renée Le Roux was a woman of her time while her daughter Agnès was from the 1968 generation. In the 1970s, she wanted to enjoy life, she had several lovers, and this story is also the clash of two eras and two generations. And I believe that Maurice Agnelet saw in the fact that the two women no longer understood each other that there was something to be exploited. He saw that Renée Le Roux’s Achilles heel was her daughter.”
Everything for Agnès, in 4 episodes, to be seen on Mondays January 8 and 15, 2024 on France 2.
