They are still recovering from it. Maxime Biaggi (Maxime Ricoveri-Leschi), 27, and Grimkujow (Mathis Noinin), 23, have just ended three years of late show on the Internet. It was last November 15 in front of 12,000 spectators at Paris-Bercy — tickets were sold in just fourteen minutes. On stage, seated in two armchairs, the guests of honor Éric and Ramzy couldn’t believe it: “In three years, getting to this point, making your last at Bercy, it’s very emotional for us. » The end of an adventure punctuated by a show broadcast every two weeks. Their speech is rare. The two hosts, their producers and authors, still groggy from the experience, meet us to look back on the rise of a unique show of its kind.
We have to go back to 2021, when Maxime Biaggi, Stéphane Cochara and Thibault Braccio work for “Millenium”. This e-sports news site is hosted by Webedia, an agency where content creators are also supported. Still in office, the three friends manage to negotiate to obtain a small studio “in a cellar”and produce their own show. Zen — “nose” upside down, in reference to that of the host — appears on the streaming platform Twitch on October 25, 2021, filmed live. An entertainment show with well-known faces on screen, particularly on social networks: Maxime Biaggi and Yass. Uncomfortable with this exercise, the latter was replaced by Grimkujow from the second broadcast. The team bluntly describes this first season as a “laboratory”: a talk-show in a moving form with news, guests of all kinds, games, unexpected moments. “We felt there was potential with this show. During the year, we decided to found our own production company, co-produce it with Webedia and work on it full time”explains Thibault Braccio.
« Flops »
If the audiences take off slightly over the months, it is from the second season that Zen takes a decisive turn. The artistic direction is more assertive, the presenters are dressed for each broadcast in shirts and suit jackets, in a new studio. “We were clearly inspired by late show Americans, with the office, the city in the background, only one guest who stays the whole time »specifies Stéphane Cochara who defends a clearer editorial line. “People could find points of reference, regular meetings”adds Grimkujow.
Happenings appear, these unexpected, crazy sketches, linked to the guest, driving the success of the show. There are numerous references to Internet culture and current events. Recurring characters are introduced, played by Elian Ventre, Theorus, and even Benjamin Haddad, who regularly plays the caricature of a “sniper”, a columnist with extremely vulgar humor. And a unique tone asserts itself: a subtle mixture of serious interviews, the absurd and deliberate flops, “flops”.
A part of improvisation
Everything is mostly written, rehearsed and aims to surprise the guest and present them from a new angle. What remains is the improvisational part of the two animators. “It’s Maxime’s humor, very second-rate and in comedy, mixed with that of Grim, more chilling and provocative, it’s the mixture of the two personalities which gave this, naturally. We never gave instructions on humor as producers,” Stéphane Cochara tells us. This results in deliberately awkward and sometimes misunderstood scenes. “Some didn’t understand why the show wasn’t funny, others told us we were geniusesremembers Maxime Biaggi with a smirk. But it also forged his identity. »
First guest of this new version, in September 2022: the rapper Bigflo. “It’s the show we were really seen with. There was something a little magical, with a guest who played the game 1000%. It’s the show that laid all the foundations for the future”confides Thibault Braccio. Bigflo is questioned about his journey, confronted with his own bad buzzand invited to play games obviously made with low-end accessories. “In addition, we had an air conditioning problem, it was very hot in the studio. There was something a little intoxicating, which created a state of humor, an exceptional tone. » This is the first episode to pass the million views mark on YouTube rebroadcast, which will become an important channel.
“It’s another audience. We realized that Twitch was our launch pad but it’s not where people are most present. Ultimately, Youtube’s impact is too strong, you can get a million views quite easily.observes Maxime Biaggi. The “Zen” YouTube channel now has more than 200 million views. Guests, happenings, highlights are increasingly cut out and published on TikTok and Instagram. “We were the first to put vertical extracts from a Twitch show on the networks, to do it seriously, points out Stéphane Cochara. And what has also helped us a lot are people who come across excerpts from our show without it being the “Zen” account that published them. » Viral videos, several million cumulative views in total. The statistics are exploding, including live. “Zen” gains credibility allowing it to bring on board the biggest content creators, from McFly & Carlito to Inoxtag, including Léna Situations, Mister V and Cyprien.
End of season, June 2023. Squeezie, the YouTuber with 19 million subscribers, is invited for a live broadcast from the Zénith de Paris. 6,000 spectators have bought their tickets, the room is full. The live recorded an audience record on Twitch, with 187,000 viewers and more than 4 million views on the Youtube replay. During the evening, the team already announced that the third will be the very last season of Zen, so as not to exhaust the concept. Preparing the show is also particularly time-consuming, according to the partners, who want to develop more personal projects – cinema, for example, for Maxime Biaggi.
The team thinking that it had covered the Internet personalities, it was decided for the return in September to broaden the spectrum of guests. “ We thought we could have Timothée Chalamet”, Grimkujow testifies ironically. “In fact, we said to ourselves that we had a fairly innovative and popular concept, remembers Stéphane Cochara precisely. There are lots of actors and actresses we wanted to invite, we tried. But we faced the realities of the agenda and the system to have big headliners, which often blocked us. We discovered all that. » It must be said that the production of the show required mobilizing the guest several days before the live broadcast, in particular to shoot scenes from a short film broadcast each time at the end of the show. A constraint that is often incompatible with the promotional schedule of the most sought-after actors.
Criticisms from a hard core of fans
In an even more modern setting for their final season, Maxime Biaggi and Grimkujow still manage to interview Fabrice Eboué, Ahmed Sylla, Soso Maness, Malik Bentalha, etc. If the personalities have largely lent themselves to the game, criticism from a hard core of fans of the show persists, sealed off from guests who do not come from Twitch. Messages are posted on social networks each time the host of the day is announced. “We were the kings of the world at the start of the second season, and by the third it felt like people [nous] totally rejected. We were told that we were “sold out”, even when we invited Youtubers”describes Grimkujow bitterly. The whole team, shaken by this public disapproval, went through numerous questions despite still average audiences. Maxime adds: “We only saw these 200 people who criticized. We thought we were hated. »
“‘Zen’ was almost more of a TV show in terms of resources”
But to end the adventure, the group of friends sees things big, and wants to do the very last show in public, at the Accor Arena in Bercy. “We thought we wouldn’t fill it, but everyone around us told us that we would”remembers Thibault Braccio. After the many obstacles to obtain the rental of the room and organize the event, Éric and Ramzy were announced as guests, and all the places were sold in less than a quarter of an hour. Unheard of for a late show. “There, in the end, people were happy, we were spared criticism,” points out Maxime Biaggi. Two and a half hours of interview and show prepared for several weeks.
The show cost more than a million euros, financed largely by commercial operations and partnerships with brands, like the rest of the year. “We carried out an exercise which, in the Internet ecosystem, is normally not really viable. It’s colossal in terms of the resources deployed”analyzes Stéphane Cochara. “It was the late show the most ambitious on the Internet, which is an ecosystem very different from that of television: on Twitch, we are not paid when we broadcast, whereas France Télévision bought us the broadcasting rights for its platform. “Zen” was almost more of a TV show in terms of resources. » On the other hand, other important shows on Twitch, like “Popcorn” or “Backseat”, are talk-showsbased on interviews, discussions and debates, much less expensive to produce.
On France 2 for the first time
France Télévision, through a partnership, therefore co-broadcast this latest broadcast live on the France.tv platform. The show was broadcast on France 2 the next day, just after “Quelle Époque”. 120,000 viewers were behind the station during the first part, according to Médiamétrie, which did not measure the entire show. If the public group regularly supports events broadcast on Twitch, this is the very first time that one of these shows has been broadcast on television, which is part of a strategy to support young talents. ““Zen” has become an extremely successful Twitch event in terms of audience. It is also a very particular offer in the Internet environment: a humor program which integrates a part talk-show but also a show part. In the last broadcast, we saw the full extent of this dimension”assures Alexandre Dureux, deputy director of programs at France Télévisions in charge of content for young audiences, who regrets the termination of “Zen”.
This broadcast sounds like a little revenge for television which has never managed to install a late show in this way. Latest attempt to date, that of Alain Chabat on TF1 at the end of 2022, which ended with a disappointing audience record. “It was often said that “roasting” the guest, making fun of them, doesn’t work in Franceobserves Vincent Bilem, doctoral student in information and communication sciences at Sorbonne Nouvelle University, working in particular on Twitch. With “Zen”, it is finally the letters of nobility of late show in France, and so it’s not on television. » This tone of the show, permanently on the border between the absurd and the serious, is “consubstantial with the Internet and this is surely what made the success of the show: accepting failure, embracing the fact that it doesn’t work, rather than wanting to succeed in their jokes at all costs, as they wanted to do during long time late shows French style. » The researcher also notes that “ This is the first time that a show has taken on memes and Internet culture while making fun of it. It was a Twitch moment. »
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