Witches | No babies were harmed during filming

Comments from scandalized viewers pile up on the soap opera’s Facebook page Witches since Tuesday night’s episode aired, where the kidnapped redhead baby was screaming, crying loudly and being told to “shut the fuck up” by his captor.

Here’s a sample: I’m worried about this baby! The little one is really scared! It’s abuse, the baby doesn’t understand anything that’s happening!

And here are other testimonies from outraged people: traumatizing a baby to make TV, what is that? It’s cruelty, it’s a case of DPJ! This is totally unhealthy!

These scenes of Witchesburied by the cries of the terrified baby, were uncomfortable to watch, it’s true. Locked up in a chalet for several months, the nurse Marie-Ève ​​Letendre (Marie-Claude Guérin) and the poor red-haired baby were subjected to the regime of terror of the psychopathic postman Fred Simard (Maxime Genois), who held them prisoner by threatening to kill them. .

In the TVA series, baby Clovis, renamed William by crazy Fred, was obviously disturbed. And he was bawling non-stop.

“I think he’s tough,” raged bearded Fred, armed with a hunting rifle. “Shut up,” Fred then spat at the baby, in a state of crisis. “It’s not true that he’s going to do it again, tell him to shut his eyes,” Fred shouted to Marie-Ève, who was handcuffed to the banister.

Fanny Lagacé was heartbroken when she read the messages on Facebook which almost accused her of mistreating her baby for the purposes of a television show. Because Fanny Lagacé is the mother of Jacob Langlois, 18 months old, who plays the redheaded baby of Witches since the first episode of the soap opera, broadcast in September 2023 on TVA.

And, no, his little Jacob Langlois was not mistreated under the leadership of director Sarah Pellerin. “Production organized everything so that my baby was well. In the majority of violent scenes, my baby is separated from the actors. He’s not in the same room as them,” recalls Fanny Lagacé, who was present last spring when these very harsh sequences were recorded in a chalet located in Varennes, on the South Shore.

It should be noted that the Union of Artists (UDA) very strictly supervises the work of actors under 2 years old. Thus, a baby does not turn for more than 20 consecutive minutes and always follows with a 15-minute break. In total, the working day of a toddler under 2 years old never exceeds four hours. And as for the other actors, the baby has a dressing room to rest.

“If the baby isn’t doing well, we stop filming. Maybe that day Jacob was having more separation anxiety, just like when I dropped him off at daycare. It was Jacob’s first day of filming in six months. My baby is a normal baby who cries when he’s not happy. He was not confronted with violence. We organize ourselves so that it remains fun and that it remains a game for him,” explains Jacob’s mother, Fanny Lagacé.

Obviously, recordings of the red baby’s cries were added during the editing stage, which made this episode Witches even more intense and poignant. Little Jacob does not appear physically in all the shots and, very often, the production replaces him with a doll.

“In the worst moments of violence in this episode, the baby was not there,” confides a source who was on set during these difficult scenes, but who is not authorized by TVA to speak publicly.

The angry reactions about the redheaded baby Witchs resemble those, just as epidermal, generated by the episodes of tortured dogs in With a beating heart, last fall.

It’s not so much that viewers confuse reality and fiction, like at the time when Donalda received jars of molasses on Radio-Canada, but that they can’t bear to witness the suffering of vulnerable beings. and defenseless.

In this anxiety-inducing episode loaded with Witchesthe postman-kidnapper Fred Simard did not beat the red-headed baby. He never shook it or stirred it. On the other hand, he shouted at her, which caused the baby to cry louder, which further enraged the kidnapper, and the noise level continued to increase for several minutes.

It was this escalation of noise and tension, behind closed doors, which quickly became cacophonous and intolerable. Imagine: a screaming baby, alone in his playpen, and with no one consoling him, it hits us in the gut, even in a fictional situation.

This popular discontent is also part of the very rough life story of this red-haired baby, who was abandoned at birth and left at the foot of the falls in the fictional village of Sainte-Piété. After his adoption, the red baby was stolen from his cradle, then locked in a cabin deep in the woods.

I mean, poor little heart! Let him go, he didn’t ask for anything! He’s a cute and charming little guy who doesn’t deserve such punishment! (Editor’s note: It’s fiction, let’s calm down, Hugo.)