Fanny Herrero accepted Deadline’s French TV Disruptor Award this week at the Unifrance Rendez-Vous gathering in Normandy, France. It’s the biggest market of the year focused on French TV programming and it was fitting the creator of French hit series Call My Agent! was on hand to receive the award. Herrero’s credits also include Standing Up, A French Village and Kaboul Kitchen. In a sit-down with Deadline she talked about her TV work, the Call My Agent! movie and her Olympic moment. Check out her interview in full, below.
There’s a movie coming and Call My Agent! is international hit, but people took convincing at the start, including the talent the producers needed as guest stars. “The scripts were good, the production was good, [but] no-one would play in it!,” Herrero recalled. “The actors, at that time, were not really used to coming to television when it comes to, you know, actors who come from cinema.”
She paid tribute to the France TV execs that backed the show, although they also needed winning over. “I think they felt like we were in some sort of revolution. And it was, well, no, we’re just trying to make a good, modern comedy. They were really scared about whether it was going to be easy for people to identify with those people in Paris, in some sort of cultural and privileged elite. In the end, we made it happen.”
What might have been an inside-baseball show about the film and TV business went much broader in Herrero’s hands. “We had to feel for the characters, the agents and the assistants, they had to be like us, like normal people in some sort of a crazy world.
“My writing is not too cynical, it’s not too dark. I think I have something, naturally, that is more open, joyful, and optimistic. That probably helped to give a sense of a world that is not too closed.”
With versions of the show up and running in several territories and more in the works, Call My Agent! has become an international format.
“For me, this show is so French, with all our French actors, and also people say French comedy doesn’t travel, but we did it. It is still a surprise when people from different countries tell me about the show,” she said.
Herrero is not hands-on with the international versions. “A good remake has to be different from the original, it has to be culturally rich, true, and authentic, so they have to transform it and make it their own way. The cinema, the industry, is such a good window to watch a society and to treat important questions about how we live together.”
After working on Call My Agent! for seven years, Herrero was not on the final season. Amid creative differences and burnout, she left the series. “I felt both very fragile and vulnerable and very strong. There were two options, either we all take a break… because I need to recover and feel creative again. Or I just go. And the decision was not easy to make, but I made it.”
The agents are back for the upcoming movie, which is about to enter production. In between her work on the series ending and the movie starting, there was the small matter of the Olympics.
Herrero was on the writing team with Thomas Jolly that crafted the unforgettable Opening Ceremony for the 2024 Games. “I am still not really over it,” Herrero said. “I still think about it, and sometimes I still watch the images of what we did, because it’s something that really is going to leave a trace, you know. Something big happened.”
On the day itself, there were crippling nerves: “I was shaking. Suddenly I was like, how are people going to react? Are we crazy? Are we going to bring them with us? The stakes were so high. Maybe we didn’t really realize it during the whole process, because realizing it would have been so scary. But then on the day, it was real.”
Accepting her Deadline French TV Disruptor Award in front of a packed room of industry folk who were attending the Unifrance Rendez-Vous market, Herrero spoke about her Olympic experience and used it to call for boldness.
“We were so deeply convinced that we wanted to share with the world some values that were dear to our hearts. Those values were love, diversity, togetherness, fantasy, imagination, art – and a sense of community and not division,” she said.
“Boldness and audacity lie in the conviction that what we want to tell really matters, and it is essential. Boldness and audacity are a protection for creativity against fear. This is what guides me and I hope it guides you too, because we really need that strength of conviction.”
