Ten days, three celebrity pairs, a team of investigators and a hunt across the whole of France… Here are the ingredients once again brought together by Amazon Prime Video for the second season of Celebrity Hunted. “I love games and watching the first season, I imagined myself in their place,” laughs the singer Jenifer, in tandem with Jarry. She says that when she was approached, the production of the program was surprised that she accepted. Alongside McFly and Carlito, Michou and Inoxtag and Fadily Camara and Hakim Jemili, accustomed to this kind of program, especially on YouTube, the winner of the first season of the star Academy looks like a UFO of the cast…
In front of them, eight investigators, each of whom has his own specialty, gathered in a HQ, are responsible for following their trail and – if possible – intercepting the “fugitive” stars. “Some candidates gave us a hard time. I am thinking of Michou and Inoxtag who played as if they were gambling with their lives”, recalls Norah Lakheal, former intelligence agent designated as HQ commander for this “game of cat and mouse”. To catch the fugitives, she and her team had means similar to those of the police. Certain elements are however reproduced by the production during the filming, such as the video surveillance images which Endemol, which produces the programme, could not access.
During their run, the investigators will dissect the data left in their path but also online by the four pairs. This gives the show an educational side, alerting on the availability of our data once online. 20 minutes spoke with the candidates, Sajida Zouarhi, expert computer engineer, and Paul Charcot, artistic producer of the show, and explains why Celebrity Hunted is not just empty entertainment.
A team similar to a real police headquarters
When asked to participate in the Amazon Prime Video program, Sajida Zouarhi, who has been speaking at data privacy conferences since 2015, didn’t hesitate for long. Although “hunting down fugitives is not [son] work”, she believes that ” Celebrity Hunted is a good platform because instead of always going to IT events with people who agree with [elle], [elle] can reach a target that is not necessarily used to being interested in data confidentiality”. In the program, she tests on the lookout for the slightest trace that the candidates could have left behind on the Internet.
“We tried to create a complementary team of investigators, based on real teams in police headquarters,” explains Paul Charcot.
He specifies that the eight professionals in charge of finding celebrities across France only met on the first day of filming, they had to get used to each other over the eleven days of filming.
“I told my daron not to make a mistake”
This parameter offers a head start to the pairs who were able to prepare and limit the information available to hunters.
“My daron, I told him:” If we call you, know that I’m in pursuit so don’t make a mistake, “says Inoxtag. For his part, Michou decided to remain” vague “with his relatives “I told them that I was going to shoot without giving more details, they must have asked themselves a thousand questions!”
A real parenthesis outside the media world in which these stars evolve. “We didn’t have our phones or access to anything so we really found ourselves talking about everything and nothing,” confirms Jenifer.
“Be careful what you leave on the internet”
This parenthesis in incognito mode for pairs offers entertainment rich in twists and turns. “We have set up a real game system”, rejoices the artistic producer, revealing that 250 people have been mobilized to bring together the conditions for a “real experience” for the participants. “We have fun, there is tension, it’s a bit like a giant escape game over the whole of France so it’s great as conditions”, confirms Sajida Zouarhi.
But participants’ precautions are often not enough to protect them. This hacker is happy that Celebrity Hunted highlights the accessibility of our online data, sometimes at our expense. Because “today people no longer own their information because it is disseminated on platforms that use it, monetize it, sell it to third parties without the consent or awareness of the people, specifies Sajida Zouarhi. Behind the eccentric strategies of the pairs, there is a message which is to say: be careful what you leave on the Internet…”
Thanks to this information, she manages to weave the thread of the life of the stars with means accessible to anyone with a computer. “We are able to trace information such as people’s favorite vacation spots, close family, children…” During the experience, she admits that she was sometimes “embarrassed” by the information collected. “We were reaching levels where the line between reality and play was starting to blur. »
A second burst of episodes on December 9
Yes, the Amazon Prime Video program is big-budget entertainment, but “the initial message of this show is to say that we are all being watched”, slice Paul Charcot. He specifies in passing that the investigators used “only 10%” of the information made available to them during the game.
If Jarry believes that his participation was “a bubble to be able to disappear outside the networks”, the experience is in any case proof that the slightest element posted on a social network can be found and used against you.
At the head of the HQ, Nora Lakheal also hopes that Celebrity Hunted “will decide young people to move towards a police career”. In any case, they can discover the reconstruction of the backstage of an investigation in the program, the first three episodes of which are available on Amazon Prime Video. The platform will complete this second season of the program with three new episodes from December 9.