Little sister of Meeting in unknown landpresented by Frédéric Lopez for almost 15 years then by Raphaël de Casabianca, Our unknown lands takes celebrities immersed in French territories. Although exotic, these trips are still very far from those of the international version, where the guests fly away to meet local populations, often remote, in countries far from France. The last episodes broadcast took Vianney to the Afars of Ethiopia and the rapper Oli, half of the Bigflo and Oli duo, to the Vézos of Madagascar.
Since 2018, the postcard-style version of France has already taken six guests such as Malik Bentalha, Nicole Ferroni or even Barbara Pravi to the Cévennes, to the island of Ouessant off the coast of Brittany or to Corsica… Claudio Capéo is therefore the seventh with a trip to the Vercors broadcast this October 25 at 9:10 p.m. on France 2. If the program is an undeniable spotlight for the regions of our country, it struggles to compete with the total change of scenery of the immersions among the local populations in hundreds of thousands of kilometers from France.
So why do some guests go to the other side of the world while others do not leave the borders of France? 20 minutes tries to answer.
“A bubble” for participants
” Our unknown lands is not a tourist program”, immediately defends Raphaël de Casabianca, who has accompanied celebrities in France as elsewhere since 2018. “Going to meet the territories of France on television makes a lot of sense. »
But the French version of Meeting in unknown land is above all “a bubble” for the artists who participate in it. “These are personalities whose time no longer belongs to them. They are in a spiral where they are asked to do a lot of things… ”So accepting the invitation of the show, whether in France or abroad, is to offer yourself a parenthesis in your life and career. . The first rule to which the invited celebrities comply is to leave their mobile phone before starting the trip.
The one who has become in four years the new face of the program explains that each expedition, in or outside the French borders, is prepared without knowing which celebrity will take part in it. “It’s already happened that at the last moment, someone we had planned for a trip told us that he couldn’t leave in the end,” he reveals.
“It’s the loneliness that worries me the most”
Raphaël de Casabianca says that after six episodes of Our unknown landsand a seventh broadcast on Tuesday, the personalities are now “also up for leaving either in France or abroad”.
The destination ? This is not what stressed Claudio Capéo the most during filming. “It was the loneliness that worried me the most”, points out the singer revealed in The Voice. “In my head, I was going to be in a place, all alone, to fend for myself, to eat earthworms, to sleep under the stars and to be cold, to live like the distant peoples on the other side of the world. »
It is ultimately a journey centered on the human but not exempt from all comforts in which the 37-year-old singer and accordionist took part at the beginning of the year 2022. “You get on the train, you are told to get off in Grenoble but you don’t know where you’re going, he says. I was thinking of the Ardèche but in the end I arrived in the Vercors. »
One to three weeks of filming
The main difference between Our unknown lands and Meeting in unknown land remains the duration of the shoot. While it is dispatched in a week when it is organized in France, it generally lasts three weeks when Raphaël de Casabianca goes to meet a foreign people accompanied by a celebrity.
“To have a three-week slot to free up for Meeting in unknown landit’s very difficult, ”says the host whose next big trip, with Jarry to Greenland, will be broadcast soon.
The production of the show must sometimes plan to negotiate several years in advance with the guests so that they free up a slot of almost a month in their often busy schedule. “For Vianney, we waited a year and a half to be able to leave,” recalls the host. He further specifies that the departures of certain guests for the next Meeting in unknown land are already scheduled for two years from now.
” It’s easier “
But inevitably when they see the summary of their adventures in the show, the celebrities compare themselves. When he landed in the Vercors, Claudio Capéo says he first had a hint of disappointment. “At the time I said to myself: ‘Ah all the same, I only deserve the Vercors'”, he laughs.
Was he disappointed with his destination? “Honestly, not at all. I don’t know if I will have gone to the other side of the world because three weeks without news from the family, without a phone call… It’s complicated! In the end, he felt that shooting for a week a few hours from his home in Alsace was “simpler”. “I was lucky not to be away for too long,” he rejoices.
A difficult farewell for the sensitive
But participate in Meeting in unknown land is also emotionally taxing. It is for this reason that Frédéric Lopez announced that he was taking a step aside in the presentation of the show in September 2018. He then spoke of “deep experiences” which are “testing and do not leave you unscathed”. “Over the years, leaving behind these women and men, who gave themselves up with so much generosity, became more and more painful. I felt the need to stop having heartbreaking goodbyes. »
To avoid these farewells, some celebrities prefer to opt for Our unknown lands. This is the case of Ahmed Sylla, who left for the Pyrenees in the fourth episode of Our unknown lands. “We had offered to go to Meeting in unknown land but he had refused because he said he was too sensitive, ”reveals Raphaël de Casabianca.
Because in France, saying goodbye is much less heartbreaking since the people encountered during the immersion offered by the show are never far from where the artists live. They can then review them easily. This is less the case when they go to meet remote populations who sometimes have no means of communication with the outside world.
An “equation” between a place and encounters
If the show’s teams don’t leave France to shoot Our unknown lands, the experience is no less exotic. “Once you are in the Vercors, of course you are still in France, but above all you are in the Vercors”, insists Claudio Capeo, recalling his experience in this region. “It’s something that is different, you have landscapes, you have an atmosphere, you have a climate that is very changeable…”
In the end, the trip “only with a backpack and a few nuts in the pocket” which pleased the artist. He saw his habits “shaken up and down” and experienced “completely different things” than what he had experienced before. “And then it shows that France is beautiful, you shouldn’t miss it! »
According to Raphaël de Casabianca, even if France seems less unlimited in terms of destinations, Our unknown lands still has a bright future ahead of it. “We can go to one region but if we go to another part of this region, it will be very different,” he says. He explains for example that if the production of the show has already set up its cameras on the island of Ouessant in Brittany, they could still do it in Finistère or Côtes-d’Armor and that the experience be completely different. . “It’s always an equation between the people you meet, their stories and the place you visit,” he concludes.