“It was a big gamble to find JoeyStarr today.” Katell Quillévéré has long searched for someone who could embody the rapper who came out of adolescence, in The world of tomorrowthe series on the beginnings of hip hop in France and NTM, co-produced with Hélier Cisterne.
The casting lasted a year. It was Melvin Boomer, a young dancer from Vincennes seen on Instagram, who was finally chosen from hundreds of young people. A dancer and not an actor, his first reflex was to reject the role. Before accepting, encouraged by his father.
But it was not so easy to get into JoeyStarr’s skin.
• How you prepared for the role
Professional dancer Melvin Boomer “has completely married JoeyStarr’s dance style,” explains director Katell Quillévéré in the making-off of his series.
The naturally calm young man must transform into an already overexcited JoeyStarr. “I began to want to look like him, surrender to the Parisian. I was nervous all the time, on the lookout for the smallest detail to cut off my friends.”
“He had rap lessons, he had acting lessons, coaching, to understand how he worked emotionally”, emphasizes Katell Quillévéré in the making-of.
Quickdraw, hairstyle, clothes, nothing was left to chance, to make the characters as believable as possible. To blend in with the character, Melvin also had to adopt the verlan-infused language of the time. “It was quite complicated to put back this language that is no longer in force,” he explained on the set of Dailyon October 11.
With Anthony Bajon, who plays Kool Shen, they were showered with archive footage, but above all they actively surrounded themselves with those they embody.
• His meeting with JoeyStarr
“It sucks”, he hit JoeyStarr, after asking Melvin Boomer to rap his text “there like that, live in front of him”, he recalls in the Parisian. Melvin met JoeyStarr before filming the series. “I went to his house to ask him all my questions,” he explains behind the scenes.
If he was an active contributor to the series, dishing out an avalanche of time advice, JoeyStarr wasn’t easy to access. “He had to be tamed,” explains Melvin Boomer to TV7Days, “we broke the ice watching one of my dance videos”. “It was from that moment that I met not only Joey Starr, but also Didier Morville. [le vrai nom du rappeur]”.
“He is someone who has had so many injuries that he has put on a shell. And that shell is in the joke, in this daily aggression. To understand the anger that animates JoeyStarr, the young dancer went so far as to “remove [ses] protections to feel the blows of the belt” that his father hit him, as he explained to Télérama.
He describes “a person who has a huge heart” and who is “super caring.” “She immediately took me under her wing.”
• With Anthony Bajon, a real bond
To recreate the bond between JoeyStarr and Kool Shen on screen, the two actors worked hard and supported each other during filming.
“We rehearsed the stage together. The same for dance, the same for hip-hop”, says Melvin Boomer in the making-of. “We were all alone and rehearsed.”
To cement their relationship, Melvin Boomer invited Anthony Bajon and Victor Bonnel (who plays DJ Détonateur S), to sleep over at his house the day before filming to “import a lot of videos”, share a room to “create some friendship, What they have”. experienced”.
“Melvin has a lot of ideas like that all the time. It creates cohesion. We create a real bond thanks to that,” Anthony Bajon evokes in the making-of of the series.
Source: BFM TV
