Jimmy, the son of Julien's first union in Rivages, is hard of hearing and communicates with sign language. Like his character, is Ewenn Weber hard of hearing?
Launched on January 6, Rivages, the series led by Fleur Geffrier, has captured the hearts of the public with the richness of its story and its endearing characters.
Among them, Jimmy (Ewenn Weber) particularly stands out. Coming from Julien's (Guillaume Labbé) first union, Jimmy is a sensitive character whose deafness deeply enriches the narrative.
Indeed, he feels things with a rare intensity, which makes him particularly receptive to the mysteries surrounding the bay. According to him, the strange phenomena he observes are signs of his little brother, who tragically disappeared at sea a few years earlier.
Behind the scenes of the creation of the character of Jimmy
Monica Rattazzi, one of the writers of the series, spoke about the creation of this character during a press briefing which took place at the La Rochelle Fiction Festival last September.
She explained, “Abigail is an oceanologist and works on sound. Obviously when we talk about sound, we are going to talk about silence at some point. We therefore needed someone who embodies this relationship with silence and the inner world. There was all this metaphorical power that fantasy also offers. And on whom to place this characteristic? It seemed obvious to us to put it on this little boy and make him experience adventures. We wanted him to have his own life force and language“.
Is Ewenn Weber, the interpreter of Jimmy, hard of hearing like his character?
The answer is yes.
To interpret Jimmy, director David Hourrègue, known in particular for his work on season 5 of Skam France, made a decisive choice: that of entrusting the role to a young deaf actor.
According to the director, “We quickly agreed on the fact that we absolutely needed a deaf interpreter so that he could understand and bring all the truth to this story.“.
The casting took a long time but the discovery of Ewenn Weber proved obvious. “When our Ewenn Weber came into the room at the end of a long casting call, he already had it all figured out. He connected to the role and was very used to holding his own“.
David Hourrègue also highlights the poignant parallel that exists in Jimmy's relationship with his parents in the series. Indeed, Abigail, whose job is centered on communication, manages to establish a fluid and natural connection with Jimmy. On the other hand, Julien is more clumsy, which sometimes reflects a difficulty in expressing his emotions. “Establishing communication, establishing the transmission of an emotion, this is the very subject of the project“, concludes the director.
For her part, Fleur Geffrier, who plays Abigail, wanted to invest fully in this relationship on screen by learning sign language for the needs of the scenario.
