In Boulogne-Billancourt, behind a wooden door, a soundproof booth. Inside, a cartoon character runs at high speed for real, or almost. It is in fact Emmylou Homs, the actress who lends her voice to Little Dragon, the hero of the fourth season of Football 2 Street. Mouth closed, she mimics the gestures of the little boy who appears on the screen and swings her arms back and forth. “For it to be realistic, we have to reproduce it. While remaining in line with the microphone, of course, ”she smiles after her session.
For about a year, the actress slipped into the skin of Little Dragon and a few other secondary characters. She and he found each other right away: instinctively, Emmylou Homs tried to stick to the identity of her character, which she discovered during the tests. “I watched the scenes and then I said to myself that we were going to try that, describes it. I play the role of several little boys in different series but there is something that makes it never the same thing. »
No time jump
Outside the dubbing booth, producer Giorgio Welter is amazed by the speed of execution of the actress. In one take, she records a video that will serve as an introduction to the animated series. 26 22-minute episodes are available this Friday on Okoo, France Télévisions’ youth platform, along with the three previous seasons released between 2005 and 2010. where did the third season end?
In these new episodes, we will therefore not see Tag, who had found his father imprisoned, or Gabriel, admitted to the most prestigious of high schools, the TekNo brothers who left for a training center or Éloïse who followed her father to New York. . On the other hand, Petit Dragon is there, eager to create a new team of outsiders for the Street Football World Cup.
In the Blues team, the mascot who dreams of being a captain is accompanied by Bianca, a very shy orphan, Kani, a pre-teen whose parents have left to live in the countryside, Frank who has never played football and Assâad, a boy who lost his family crossing the Mediterranean. “He is a refugee, explains Giorgio Welter. It’s kind of our link to real life. »
Black M in the credits
By discovering the first episode, those nostalgic for the original version should not be disappointed. Gone is the 3D animation that we saw in the reboot Foot 2 Street Extreme in 2014, we immediately go back ten years thanks to the same range of colors and similar textures. “We have modernized, we no longer have the thick black line around the characters, but there is a very strong family resemblance”, specifies the producer.
When the project was set up almost twenty years ago, the animated series was based on a very free adaptation of The Company of the Celestines by Italian author Stefano Benni. The story retranscribes the adventures of a group of children escaped from an orphanage to participate in the world street football championship. Today, the framework is almost the same and the Riffler Institute reopens its doors with new faces.
A rather smart choice, France Télévisions decided to put the entire series online, just to bring back good memories to children and teenagers who have grown up. The current generation, too young to know the cartoon and its iconic credits interpreted by Akhenaten at the time, will thus be able to spend even more time in this universe. And then decide if she prefers the new season, whose credits are performed by Black M.