As a child, she already played Loana at recess. Today, Marie Colomb embodies this celebrity, more “complex” than her “bimbo” label, in “Culte”, a highly anticipated series taken from “Loft Story”, the matrix of French reality TV.
The actress was six years old when “Loft Story”, broadcast on M6 and inspired by an existing program in the Netherlands, upset the PAF in 2001. The frolics in the swimming pool between Loana and Jean-Edouard, two of the candidates , had notably caused a scandal and ignited the hearings.
The transposition of this program into a series, starting Friday on the Prime Video platform, via six episodes of less than an hour each, is one of the most talked about productions this fall.
Trash TV for some, cathode revolution for others, the original “Loft” made stars of strangers, especially one, Loana Petrucciani (47 years old today), known only by her first name. For better and for worse.
Once out of this “Loft” cut off from the world and scrutinized by the cameras, victorious in the public votes (in the company of a candidate who quickly fell back into anonymity), the platinum blonde experienced the fashion shows, and later , depressive episodes and suicide attempts.
“A friend reminded me that in primary school, we played ‘Loft’ and she said to me ‘you played Loana’. I have no memory of it. But, so, obviously, I knew what it was about a minimum at that age”, Marie Colomb tells AFP, seen in “Laëtitia”, a series inspired by the 2011 murder of Laëtitia Perrais.
“I was little at the time of +Loft+. That shows the importance that this show had at the time and everything that it determined subsequently as well.”
– “Quite contemptuous look” –
What appealed to her in “Culte” was that the creators and screenwriters Nicolas Slomka and Matthieu Rumani “tried, really, to represent Loana in a complex way, far from the narrow image that we often had of ‘She”. “Silicone bimbo” boomeranged back to her subject in the 2000s, before #MeToo.
Marie Colomb explores “different facets”. He is the richest character in “Cult”, who abandons the other candidates from the first “Loft” and above all follows in the footsteps of those who made this television product.
One of the major roles played by Anaïde Rozam (seen in “Les Olympiades” by Jacques Audiard) is inspired by Alexia Laroche-Joubert, a behind-the-scenes mastermind at the time. Today co-producer of “Cult”, she has left great freedom to the authors, who are not always kind to her fictional double.
Thrown out to pasture for the cameras by the sharks of the television industry, Loana had to endure “the rather contemptuous look at her social class, with the image of ‘the bad mother who abandoned her child’, etc.”, summarizes Marie Colomb .
– “Pression” –
“We had to try to explain that it’s a little more complex than that, that it takes courage to overcome obstacles,” emphasizes Marie Colomb. “She’s a girl who started working at a very young age, who I don’t think has had many sweet moments.”
A go-go dancer in clubs before “Loft”, Loana said she was beaten by her father. She always goes through ups and downs. His time on the set of “Touche pas à mon poste”, in the spring, to talk about a rape he suffered, turned into a nightmare. The show was reprimanded by Arcom, the audiovisual regulator, for failing to take into account its “obvious situation of deep distress”.
Marie Colomb wanted to meet Loana, but “it couldn’t happen”. “On the other hand, she saw my casting. She was able to speak with the director Louis Farge, she participated in the project, discussed with the authors.”
The actress recognizes “a pressure”: “For me, it’s fiction, it’s my work. For her, it’s her life.”
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