Florence Longpré has brought “Empathy” to Series Mania.
“The whole show is built around it,” she tells Variety.
“If you haven’t experienced mental issues, it’s difficult to understand what these people are going through. I try to put myself in their shoes. What does it feel like when it’s fucked up in your head, when you’re panicking? How can medication and therapy help? Or maybe they don’t?”
She confesses: “When I was very young, I suffered from depression. When you finally leave this dark place, it’s like an explosion of light. You have a second chance at life. You rediscover so many things and so many emotions.”
In “Empathy,” which she created, Longpré plays Suzanne – a former criminologist turned psychiatrist, trying her best to help her patients. But for the longest time, she can’t help herself.
“It’s so much fun to see a messy woman [on screen]. In so many shows, women wake up in the morning and they are magnificent. It pisses me off,” she laughs.
“Do you remember ‘Fleabag,’ when she takes off her shirt during an interview, forgetting she’s not wearing anything underneath? It can happen! I live for these kinds of moments.”
The first French-Canadian series to be selected in Series Mania’s International Competition, “Empathy” was produced by Trio Orange and released on Canada by Bell Media’s SVOD service Crave.
It’s sold by Trio Orange International. Thomas Ngijol, Josée Deschênes, Benoît Brière and Brigitte Lafleur also star. Trio Orange also presented a new show at Forum. “Who Almost Killed Melody” at Coming Next from Quebec, described as “a whodunit in a daycare.”
Previously, Longpré delivered Netflix’s “Can You Hear Me?” and “Audrey’s Back,” where she played a young woman emerging from a 16-year-long coma. But playing her – messy – heroine in “Empathy” wasn’t always easy.
“To be honest, I questioned this decision. It’s so difficult to write a story; it took maybe two years to write the series, with the help of a psychiatrist who was helping me with the research. Then you’re on set and there’re all these decisions to make. Luckily, I’ve been working with [director] Guillaume Lonergan for 10 years now. He says it’s good to always have writers on set – he can go inside my head every time he needs to.”
Suzanne’s personal struggles – and her professionalism at work – is something “many people can recognize,” argues Longpré.
“She’s very academic. She knows a lot about everything, but she hasn’t experienced a lot. Also, Suzanne has no friends and no life. She has time to be good at what she does,” she reveals. “One psychiatrist told me you always need to keep a balance in your head. Susanne finds strength and balance in her work. In her personal life, she loses it.”
Despite the seriousness of her topics, Longpré went for a lighter approach. For oneiric scenes featuring ballet dancers – “they express this need for balance and, let’s face it, it was so much fun to have them on set” – and for pop tunes, including Sia’s bop “Chandelier.”
“Mental issues are not the sexiest subject for a show. It’s a difficult time for us in Canada to write a series. We have financial problems – we have a lot of problems. So we need to have fun. I wanted this show to be enjoyable: for the people who were making it and for those who are watching it,” she states.
“Our position in Canada is weird because we are French-speaking, so it’s very important for us to reach other countries that are French-speaking as well. The interest is there, but the budgets are low. Still, I think we made some good lemonade with all these lemons.”
She wanted to show her characters, patients and carers, in a compassionate, but also honest way.
“Sometimes, you won’t be as empathetic after finding out what they did [before ending up in the institute]. Some of them committed awful crimes, so it will make you uncomfortable. But I needed to show how they got there. I think it can be a cool – and weird – emotional rollercoaster for viewers. I love weird stories about weird people.”
She adds: “I hope that after seeing the show, people will send me tons of messages, wanting to share their stories. We all know that sometimes, there’s no balance. It can be so hard. We should be proud of ourselves for just being alive.”
