Mister V: “With McWalter we were looking for the balance between parody and the development of a character”
The parodic genre seemed to have disappeared from Leslie Nielsen. With McWalter, Mister V and Simon Astier reinvent it for a new generation, between absurd humor and action cinema. Encounter.
On the one hand, there is Yvick Letexier, the little thirty, better known under the pseudo YouTube of Mister V. Big cumulation of views, likes, comments and sponsored collaborations. His supersonic flow, inherited from his hero Chris Tucker, and his elastic quickdraw should have already installed him in the landscape of French comedy for a long time. But no. On the other, Simon Astier, recent forties, brother of, and author of a very cult and handcrafted series, Hero Corp. Years that his fan club, of which first is a part, watched for his first steps in the long industry. In vain. Or at least until McwalterAmazon Prime marked object, directed by Simon, played by Yvick, written by the two. An attempt to adapt the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker style (Les Zaz, inventors of comedies Is there …? and Hot shots) In the language of Francis Veber and Fabien Onteniente. Dummies had already done so in 1994 (The City of Fear), Kad and Olivier too, in 2003 (Pink pamela). Good memories, of course, but was it reasonable to put the cover back in 2025? Against all expectations, the answer could well be yes: Mcwalter is often bidden, always refreshing, not as anachronistic as that. Good news: it shines again in the fan. And it’s French, please.
First: is there a cop to save the world? In theaters, your McWalter on Prime … We thought that the Zaz way parody no longer belonged to this century, how do you explain, gentlemen, this unexpected revival?
Yvick Letexier: There is necessarily a cyclic dimension in the comic landscape. I was born in 1993 and I grew up in front of the Hot shotsTHE Is there a cop …? or the Scary Movie. These are the comedies that marked me the most, which aroused me to humor. So it’s very natural to situate me today in this register. I did not even ask myself the question to tell the truth. The humor style of the film arrived like that. Originally the producers of the flame and the torch (Jonathan Cohen, Jean-Toussaint Bernard and Benjamin Bellecour) came to seek me to offer me to adapt a large American series, whose rights they had acquired. It was, b …
Simon Astier: Wait, wait, I think it’s top secret, that.
YL: Ah ok. Well … I liked the idea a lot, but I wanted to work first on a first feature film. And even if it means being the headliner of a film, as much as it looks like me. I thought of an adaptation to a long format of Mcwaltera character that I had interpreted in several courts on Youtube. And obviously, when we put the project on rails, it was around 2022, I had no idea that the Americans were rebooting the Is there a cop …? It is a pure coincidence, even if she struck us with Simon.
Simon, you occupy two positions on the film: director and writing director. Have you arrived immediately on this project?
SA: No, not really … Yvick and his co-scriptwriters have been working on the script for at least a year. And one day, Jo (Jonathan Cohen), whom I have known for almost twenty years, told us, in Yvick and I: “Try to see if it can stick between you …”. We had this common point which was to have made our stuff in a super artisanal way. He on Youtube and I on the cable with Hero Corp, in particular. We clearly know how we have to do so that a euro spent appeared five on the screen.
It is your first feature film as a filmmaker, but those who followed your series, whether hero Corp or Visitors, know that your work has very personal music. Here, we feel that you have forgotten yourself a little more, and that you have put your know-how at the service of Yvick.
SA: Yes and it’s good to put your head out a bit. McWalter is so far the project I am most proud of. I am incredibly attached to this film. More than those in which I played, I wrote and I realized.
Where the film is fitted with your universe is that there is still a question of a reconstituted America in Europe, and populated by people who speak all French …
YL: This is the first thing I said to myself when Simon’s name was slipped to me by Jo: “Ah, it’s the guy who has always been able to film false America! »»
SA: In all my projects, there will always be objects, cars, things that represent a completely fantasized America. This imagery has a little cocoon side for me, and Yvick let me settle quietly in there.
YL: Simon also brought back subtlety and poetry, which was really lacking in our first versions.
And a certain way of playing comedy, right? When we see the McWalter broadcast on YouTube and that one, your register is super different, Yvick. Before, you grimacted a little. You played funny who plays the secret agent. While there you are in a register similar to those of there …? and Zaz humor: first degree, imperturbable, “deadly serious”, as they said …
YL: Yes, exact. I don’t have an acting training, I did a little amateur theater, but I never learned to compose a character, to understand it. On YouTube, it was very artisanal, I wrote my sketches and, during the shooting, we made three sockets with three different intentions, simply saying that we would keep the funniest in editing. The reflection stopped there.
SA: I always thought that comedy should be in the perception of situations or in the way of expressing and interacting, but that everything should be very credible, very first degree. Typically, the band of Edgar Wright or Leslie Nielsen, the interpreter of Frank Drebin in the Is there a cop …?all play comedy with incredible seriousness and it is this seriousness that makes things funny. If we remove all the gags from a story, we must be able to follow it anyway.
Is there a pilot on the plane? is built exactly that: it’s a series B from the 1950s, Zero Hourto which the ZAZs “just” added tons of gags …
YL: the very first assembly of Mcwalter What showed me Simon, that was a bit. He had fired most of the gags, to see if the story was still working. He is used to working like that obviously. I didn’t know it at all, and I was completely lost: “But where did they go by our stupid things?” Are you going to put them back? »»
SA: I had to check if the story worked as is. Over 1:40 am, there is a whole trajectory to develop: McWalter is the Star Agent of the Nus, then it becomes a pestified and then it returns to the heart of the investigation. And then he understands things about his past, etc.
YL: The long sequence of the orphanage where McWalter revisits his childhood is typically the kind of element that Simon brought to the film. And these are the kind of elements that the film needed to keep the distance, so as not to be a simple succession of sketches.
This scene is interesting to discuss: she seeks to create emotion in a genre where we absolutely do not expect. McWalter is a fictional character who is lived and that we look at such such, but you also wanted to set up traumas, a past, a sensitivity …
SA: This is why the film looks like us, I think. We didn’t want to do just a French spoof (a parody). We wanted to put affects, things that
looked like us.
YL: We were looking for a balance between parody and the development of a character, which
could follow through several films. And then there was also a pleasure of acting, I admit … I always found that this idea gave an unexpected relief to the film.
In Is there a cop …? or the Hot shotsthe origins of heroes are systematically grotesque. They have fun with the cliché that the characters represent.
YL: Yes, but we didn’t want to make a French version of these films. In addition, this scene from the orphanage, you can also look at it as a parody of the last leaps, where everything is only traumas and introspections because the air of time obliges these heroic figures to question themselves. And I find that it is more exciting to tell McWalter in this way. The regret that we can have, with this broadcast on bonus, it is that we will not know if the general public validates or not these kinds of proposals, which are not very common in the landscape …
YL: It’s our regret too. We wanted to do a preview tour, we wanted the film to be able to live a little in theaters. Just to see. And because we turned it in a very “great spectacle” spirit.
SA: After, fortunately that Prime is there to take this bet. We have been given real freedom. And a very reasonable budget.
Precisely, how much was the budget?
YL: It is around 200 million. Just below. 199, I believe.
SA: We did not ride on gold, far from it, but we would never have managed to bring this sum with a cinema distribution.
YL: And then for me, which comes from Youtube, it was very natural to go through the “platform” box first.
This is why in my opinion, the bet of which Simon is not one is one. A youtuber who is a hit on the bonus, it’s a bit in the order of things …
YL: I like the idea of making “step by step”. Afterwards, it will always be time to think about the cinema …
No one in the industry has come to get you again?
YL: No. Ah yes, yes, yes, I remember! We had written a project for cinema with my
Co -authors, Vincent and Freddy. It was with the same production box as All Inclusive, the ontenient film in which I had appeared. But this project ended up disappearing in the fog of the covid … and hey, well, thank you the covid! We were forced to work with authors who were old people of the old and with whom we did not understand each other at all. It would probably have been very bad.
You, Simon, have been working on feature film projects since at least 2012. Does that annoy you that the cinema industry does not open its doors to you completely?
YL: We offered him Oppenheimer anyway…
SA: Yeah, but no, a little zero casting. More seriously, doors were opened to me, but as soon as I put a foot in it, I quickly put another outside. I would really not have been proud of these projects, while McWalter, I think I can assume each photogram.
YL: It’s nice to hear you say that. You think you can say the same thing at the time of McWalter 7 ?
Interview: François Grelet
Digital cover photo: Julien Lienard
