“Everything is fine, it’s real life”: the creator tells us about the Disney Plus series

Camille de Castelnau was inspired by her personal experience to talk about childhood cancer, this terrible ordeal that can upset a family…

After collaborating on Legends Office (on Canal +), then at Funny (on Netflix), Camille de Castelnau created his first series. Everything is fine releases today on Disney Plus. A poignant family chronicle, which speaks of illness and ordinary suffering, without pathos and seeking to stick to reality. Decryption with the screenwriter.

Everything is fine is freely inspired by your own story. To what extent?
Camille de Castelnau : It’s not entirely my story, it’s that of my niece, who actually experienced this illness. But it’s very freely inspired. As well, the medical part corresponds, because I knew this leukemia very well, and the course that goes with it. I didn’t invent anything. I copied everything. For everything else, the characters, the family, we are really in a fiction. My mother never wrote a book, my sister didn’t cheat on her husband and it’s all very romanticized. On the other hand, it is true that I felt very strong emotions during this ordeal and I write to transcribe emotions above all. SO, Everything is fineit’s a mixture of very personal things and a real desire for fiction.

Did you need to share what you went through?
I didn’t tell myself that I was writing this as a form of therapy. It’s just that I’ve written a lot for other people. For Eric Rochant (on The Legends Office), for Fanny Herrero (on Funny). It was the first time I created and decided what the show was about, and at that point in my life, I couldn’t write about anything else, I couldn’t tell anything else. A year or two before, I certainly wouldn’t have been able to do it… but by the time I got started, it wasn’t that bad.

How did your family react to learning about this series project?
I asked for permission. Really, I made my sister and my niece, and the family in general, validate the series. In October 2020, at the very beginning, I sent a text asking them explaining that I was going to stray from reality in many aspects. They said yes to me with great enthusiasm and it completely disinhibited me.

Have your sister and niece seen the series? What did they think of it?
My sister was a consultant on the series. She participated in the writing of the episodes in a certain way. She came to talk to us about how she experienced this from the inside, to draw the character of the mother. We didn’t transcribe it verbatim, but we talked a lot and it was she who reminded me, for example, that her phone had crashed the day her daughter entered the transplant room… which we have included in the series.

How did you think about the character of the mother, played by Sara Giraudeau?
She is in a form of almost controlled denial. The mother of the sick child is almost a figure of Pieta. We are in a tragic myth. In summary, they are courageous mothers, always represented as saints. But I didn’t want to show that. Because we remain a complex woman, despite the illness of her child. And it needs compartmentalization. She needs, for a few hours a week, to forget all that. It’s psychological survival. She needs it to be there for her daughter. We are following the trick that they tell us on planes: in the event of depressurization of the cabin, first put on your own oxygen mask, before taking care of your child…

You tried to tell about his suffering, but not only…
We film her interiority, and at the same time, we don’t completely have access to her. There is really a very strong element of mystery that Sara also brings. We don’t quite know what she’s thinking… We could judge her but we don’t. And we finally understand it. This character of the mother and that of the sick daughter were clearly the most difficult to write. Because these are experiences in which we feel very alone. Being a parent of a sick child affects you at such a deep level of your being that you have the impression of being alone, even when you have a partner who is experiencing the same suffering. Marion’s character says it like this in the series: “We are alone, each in our own little hell“.

Everything is fine tells the story of the illness while avoiding falling into tragedy or pathos. Was that the intention from the start?
It’s not a tone that I was particularly looking for in fact. It’s a tone that is quite natural to me, in everyday life. I tend to have this eye that sees the pathetic, the trivial, the comical. It’s a way of putting distance when it’s too distressing. It’s a way of avoiding pathos. Afterwards, I can like fiction which is very dramatic, in total tragedy. But when there’s too much pathos, it takes me out of the thing. I see the seams too much, the author’s intention behind it. It becomes artificial. And besides, Eric Rochant, on The Legends Office, always told us: what would you do in real life? What would you say in real life? That was his mantra. Everything is fineit’s real life in a sense, a form of realism that speaks to me.

Would it be too hard to talk about a little girl’s illness while making a melodrama?
Yes… It would be like adding butter to a slice of butter! It’s really heavy, indigestible, it’s fatty. That would actually be vulgar. And what’s more, I wouldn’t know how to do it in a melodrama way.

You brought Virginie Efira in for her first series. She plays the aunt, which was your role in real life. Was it difficult to convince her?
She read the pilot script. It spoke to him. I think it was writing that made him want to go there. Afterwards, she doesn’t quite play my role… Let’s say that she occupies the function that I had in this story. But there are a lot of differences. Now, it’s true that this is the character who brings my point of view. Claire’s opinion, at the end of the series, when she puts forward chance as an explanation, is mine…

And then your old boss Legends Office, Eric Rochant, directed the first two episodes for you. How did your reunion go?
It was a total change of places. It was funny. We laughed about it a lot and above all we talked about it a lot. At the premiere, he said I killed the father (laughs)! On Office, I wrote for him. There, he worked on my series (producing and directing). Above all, I really needed him for the casting. It worried me to cast this family. And Eric Rochant is a casting genius. He discovered a whole bunch of actors and actresses, notably through The Legends Office. So it’s true that it was a strange situation for both of us, but we verbalized it all and we remained in a nice reciprocity.

Everything is fine, season 1 in 8 episodes, available since November 15, 2023 on Disney Plus.