Everything for Agnès: where was the France 2 series filmed?

“The problem with the Palais de la Méditerranée…” Producer Judith Naudet-Baulieu tells us everything.

Everything for Agnes, it is the fight of a mother for her daughter, who tragically disappeared in 1977. It is a criminal intrigue that shook France for several decades. And it is also the business of a city, Nice, of its famous Promenade des Anglais and its legendary casino, the Palais de la Méditerranée, managed at the time by Renée Le Roux.

Judith Naudet-Baulieu, producer of the France 2 series, tells us how this French-style “true crime” was created. And if a good part of the filming took place on site, the Palais de la Méditerranée had to be reconstructed. Explanations:

“The problem is that the Palais de la Méditerranée has become a Hyatt hotel. So apart from the listed historic facade, there is not much left inside the original building. In particular, they broke down the enormous 1930s staircase in the entrance hall“, confides Judith Naudet-Baulieu, to Première, before specifying that she even had to “use some special effects for the facade, because it has been somewhat modified since then and we had to, in our series, match the one from the 1970s!”

That being said, there is no question of doing everything in the studio in Paris. “It was very important for us that the series breathes Nice and the Côte d’Azur. So we shot all the exteriors, the houses of Renée or Agnès Le Roux, on location“.

But for the interior scenes in the Palais de la Méditerranée casino, “everything was filmed at the Puteaux Town Hall (in Hauts-de-Seine). We have not reproduced identically, but in this art deco town hall, we have recreated the games tables of the time. We even recreated tokens from the Palais de la Méditerranée from the 1970s, based on tokens we found on Le Bon Coin! We really immersed ourselves in the era, right down to the details. Because basically, the series tells the story of the clash of two generations of women, but also of two generations of casinos, one in its original style and the other in Vegas fashion. It was important that we have these two casinos competing in the image.”

In this unique setting, Michèle Laroque does an astonishing Renée Le Roux, in a dramatic register that we know little about. A casting not obvious on paper, imagined by the producer Simone Harari and the director Vincent Garenq. “They had an enlightenment” smiles Judith Naudet-Baulieuwhich emphasizes: “Great comedy actresses can do anything! We had to find someone who also knew how to embody the class that Renée Le Roux, a former Balenciaga model, had, a great lady of her time. Michèle has this natural class in her. She doesn’t like drama for drama’s sake, which is why she doesn’t do much of it. But here, she really has a role where she can flourish by going to places where she doesn’t often go. She knew that Vincent (Garenq) was not a tearjerker and that’s what convinced him.”