This is TF1’s event TV movie. On Monday, September 12, the first channel broadcasts the TV movie Le Mystère Daval, relating the media affair around the murder of Alexia Daval murdered in 2017 by her husband Jonathann. Five years after this terrible tragedy, this unit is inspired in particular by the book The Alexia Daval affair – the real story, by journalists Laurent Briot and Christophe Dubois, to adapt it to the screen thanks to Christophe Lamotte.
Behind this terrible feminicide which marked millions of French people, it is the destiny of a woman who will be brought to television. To embody the missing jogger, Maud Baecker was chosen to take on this role. Well known to fans of Tomorrow belongs to us on TF1, the one who just celebrated her 34th birthday today revealed why she agreed to take part in the project.
“From an artistic point of view, it was a challenge for me to take up. But, above all, the fate of this young woman, who was my age, touched me a lot. And then this affair, by its nature even, its media coverage, its national impact and its twists, left no one indifferent”, explains the actress in the pages of Télé 7 Jours. Admitting nevertheless to feel a certain pressure by interpreting this role. “It’s quite disturbing and very delicate to embody a real character, with such a tragic destiny”.
Always with our colleagues, the actress confides that she fears the reaction of Alexia’s family during the broadcast of the TV movie. “But we have tried to be as close as possible to reality,” says the 30-year-old. “There is no bias or extrapolation. The idea was to show as rigorously as possible the course of this investigation”.
Faced with the dramatic context of this news item, Maud Baecker was able to count on the support of the actors on the set. “It was extremely emotionally trying. But luckily, I had a wonderful team of actors around me,” she recalls for Télé 7 Jours.
Among them, familiar faces for the actress like Liam Baty, who plays the mysterious husband and murderer of Alexia Daval. “He is breathtaking in the skin of Jonathann Daval”, she assures us in front of our colleagues. Like her, the actor was also revealed in the series Tomorrow belongs to us. “But we never had the opportunity to play one-on-one,” she told the magazine.
In addition, in the casting, Thierry Neuvic (Commander Da Costa) and Vanessa Guide (Magali Paulin) have already played in the past with Maud Baecker. But, the latter was marked by her meeting with another star of fiction.
At the heart of this news item, Isabelle and Jean-Pierre Fouillot, the parents of Alexia Daval, were exposed in spite of themselves in the media at the time of the disappearance of their daughter. To embody them, the choice fell on Jérôme Anger and Michèle Bernier. An actress for whom Maud Baecker is grateful. “I also have a lot of admiration for Michèle Bernier: she is wonderful in the role of Alexia’s mother,” admits the actress.
Since the end of filming, which took place in December 2021 in the Lyon region, the famous actress and mother of Charlotte Gaccio has returned to her experience. “I have just finished. It was a very intense, very impressive role and film to do”, she explained to the microphone of RTL, in the program We redo the TV in January 2022. The opportunity for the sexagenarian to pour out on the preparation of his role.
“I worked like an actress works a fiction”, assures Michèle Bernier before detailing. “I didn’t watch any interview with the parents, I didn’t read their book, I remained extremely distant. It was not easy”. And, for good reason, the journalist Éric Dussart imagines her shaken after such a shoot. What the actress retorted. “At times I was playing the TV movie and then I was going to play Living tomorrow (his one-woman-show, editor’s note) the next day. There were a little weird airlocks, an emotional shock”, according to his remarks relayed by Télé-Loisirs .
