For La Famille Rose, “hunger justifies the means!”

Shirine Boutella and Arthur Dupont are the happy parents of a nice little family of cannibals. And obviously, the filming was delicious! Encounter.

Bernard and Diane are an ordinary couple. He likes to cook. She educates their two children, Lou and Noé, at home. But behind this adorable facade lies the terrible reality of a cannibalistic family! The Pink Family – arriving on OCS this October 21 – subtly oscillates between black comedy and genre series, following these Man-eaters, who manage the constraints of daily life between two deadly hunts. At Séries Mania, where the series was in the official selection, Shirine Boutella and Arthur Dupont delightedly told us about the joys of uninhibited cannibalism. Encounter.

FIRST: We are told that The Rose Family is “Homo canibalis”. It’s what ?
Arthur Dupont: It is a branch of the human race, like Homo erectus. It disappeared because it was exterminated by Neanderthals… but in the series, it is said that a small fragment of this branch survived: it is our Rose Family.

How would you describe this Famille Rose and their daily life?
Arthur Dupont: It’s a cannibalistic family… but normal. A family with marital problems, educational difficulties, disagreements on how to see things…
Shirine Boutella: They are atypical all the same: they live in a camper van, do school at home, and are a little removed from society. Problems arise with their teenage daughter, who wants to discover the outside world and whom they can no longer isolate. Everything goes to hell when they break down in a village and have to feed themselves, because they are sick…

It’s a slightly different genre series compared to your previous roles. What attracted you to this project?
Shirine Boutella: I loved the originality of the script. When we read the script, we are amazed. Their life is the hunt for Sapiens, and all that that implies in terms of organization. Personally, I really wanted new challenges, to take on excessive characters. Diane is the absolute dream: a dangerous, authoritarian, cold-blooded mother… and at the same time touching and adorable with her husband and children. She is neither a monster nor an angel.
Arthur Dupont: It’s a genre series, a little gory, with blood. But at the same time, my character is a loving father, who fears seeing his daughter grow up too quickly and who doesn’t want her to fall into overt cannibalism. He seeks to remain in a poetry of life, and refuses to give in to barbaric pragmatism. He likes to cook, season meat, do things well, gently. He needs a justification to kill people, and tries to turn death into love by creating family moments around the meal.

What was it like filming the cannibal’s kitchen?
Arthur Dupont: So the meat we see on the screen is veal! Sometimes liver. The strangest thing is that in these kitchen scenes, there were prosthetics – a leg, an eye or something else – which ended up on the work surface… That’s a bit sickening (laughs).
Shirine Boutella: In reality, they were dishes prepared by a caterer, with Louise, our props designer. And we had a blast! As we knew there would be all this meat, we planned to be able to eat it on the tray afterwards…

The series is very graphic. Have you ever found it too gory?
Arthur Dupont: No, on the contrary, it was very enjoyable to play. There is a second degree form: the guy whistles while cooking human meat (laughs). You really have to take it like that.
Shirine Boutella: When you film that, you laugh! We laugh more than we are disgusted. It’s too much, with the blood, the guts… The gore is actually funny, like a slightly crude joke. It’s not violent, especially since we have empathy for the Roses after a while.

Exactly: in your opinion, are the Roses a good family or are they bad?
Arthur Dupont: That’s the whole question the series asks. Their nature is what it is. They can’t survive without cannibalism… should we judge them for that?
Shirine Boutella: Why would they be mean? Because they kill people? We kill many animals for food… This raises the question of the relationship with food. For them, it is a necessity. They cannot eat anything other than human meat. Vegetables don’t digest. Hunger justifies the means.

La Famille Rose, in 6 episodes, to watch on OCS / My Canal from October 21, 2025.