Benjamin Charbit: “Our Zorro is a reverse reflection of OSS 117”

Known as a screenwriter for Pierre Salvadori (En liberté!) or Bertrand Bonello (La Bête), Benjamin Charbit debriefs his comic and psychoanalytical Zorro, tailor-made for Jean Dujardin.

First: Jean Dujardin often said that he dreamed of playing Zorro. But did he have a very precise idea of ​​what his version of the character might look like?

Benjamin Charbit: I don't really know because we didn't talk about it beforehand. It was his brother, Marc Dujardin, who came to find us, Noé Debré and me, so that we could design a Zorro for Jean, without him being associated with the project at first. Marc's intuition was that it could be a political version of Zorro, featuring two political figures: a technocratic and somewhat struggling Don Diego and a more populist Zorro, who provides easy answers to complicated problems, with violence and his sword. That was the initial intuition.

And it spoke to you…

Yes! I immediately wanted to put my obsessions into it. I had a sort of flash of the pilot: a vaudeville where the husband and the lover are the same person. I wanted to pay homage to Lubitsch and Billy Wilder, with a flavor of situation comedy. So it became a political action vaudeville! That's how we could summarize the DNA of the series. That's also the beauty of these somewhat multifaceted projects, where a producer's desire meets an author's desire: it creates a richer object than when you're all alone at your table.

Before that, what did Zorro represent for you?

I didn't have any preconceived ideas. I was given a magnificent toy, at the same time as a huge responsibility, because we must not disappoint Zorro fans. We had to respect the basic elements of the character: he is a vigilante who fights for the right cause, for the widow and the orphan; he is a sunny hero, unlike many American superheroes today; he is a hero who fights but is not violent; he is cunning – “zorro” means fox in Spanish – and intelligent. I tried to determine what the quintessence of the character was, even if it meant having fun with it, but without trying to break the statue.

And as a spectator, which Zorros have been important to you?

I of course liked the series with Guy Williams, which I watched colorized on Channel 3 when I was a child. I had Zorro's cape… I rediscovered the character in Martin Campbell's films with Antonio Banderas, very successful films, very mainstream, without any seriousness. Zorro is huge! However, I am not a fan from the start for whom there would be something untouchable in the character.

Have you reviewed and reread everything?

Yes, I really dove into the archaeology of Zorro, starting with the first books published in the 1910s. There are comics, films with Douglas Fairbanks, a first black and white series in the 1930s… There are also the Zorro a little bit “rogue”as The Gay Blade (The Great Zorro1981, with George Hamilton), unlicensed Zorros. And this super interesting book by Isabel Allende, which imagines the mythology of Zorro's birth.

What did you conclude from this archaeology?

In fact, it took me to another archaeology, which is that of the time. I was interested in the history of New Spain, in the years 1800-1820, it made me want to anchor the plot in a realistic way, to take seriously what this territory was, all the political tensions that existed at the time. I realized that the different Zorros served different ideological projects, particularly among the Americans. Basically, their Zorro serves to tell that the conquest of the West and the Mexican-American War are good, because the Americans defeated a corrupt Spanish power to bring justice. The American Zorro serves an ideological project. And I wanted to give him another historical perspective.

Our review of Zorro

Your Don Diego is a bit politically lost…

Yes, politically, Don Diego is entangled: he would like to be progressive but he is not really. He does not realize that he has many privileges and that he enjoys them. But he believes in the ideas of the Enlightenment. I wondered how Zorro could be French, so I imagined a kind of backstory in which Don Diego would have come to France around the 1790s, would have come into contact with the ideas of the Enlightenment and would have returned to the United States wanting to impose this universalism. This is my political idea of ​​Don Diego. Zorro, on the other hand, is more naive, he has a drive for justice and a drive for pleasure, he brings short-term solutions, he wants to relieve pain.

Writing a political role for Jean Dujardin requires thinking about who Jean Dujardin is politically?

It's a question I asked myself, but in the end, as Jean is quite modest about his commitments, I wouldn't be able to say who he is politically, even after having known him for months.

It's a question the French love to ask, from the opening ceremony of the Rugby World Cup to the legacy of OSS 117…

Maybe the series will take the opposite view of what people think they know about him. Concerning OSS in any case, we clearly wanted a counterpoint. Diego is a kind of reverse reflection of OSS 117. As intelligent and kind as the other is stupid and paternalistic.

The series is part of this trend of deconstructions of the great pop figures of the 20th century, such as James Bond or Batman, but without the gloomy side that often goes with it…

I didn't want a dark, violent Zorro, like Batman, that didn't interest me. Psychoanalysis, yes, but on a comic side. As an author, we sometimes put little subtitles to what we do, and this series, I nicknamed it Zorro, diary. We dive into his psyche, it's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. And that pleased Jean. I wanted him to say to himself while reading: I'm going to have fun in all the scenes. If only because he had two characters to play.

This fifty-year-old Zorro, on the comeback, is he aimed at all audiences? Will the youngest need the help of those nostalgic for the Disney series to find their way around?

I do indeed have the impression that there is a generation, 15-25 year olds, for whom Zorro is very distant. Because there is a gap: they have not seen the series and the films with Banderas are probably not cult enough. In our series, we reinvent the characters, from Bernardo to the sergeant. So they may need an explanation of the text. But we still tried to make a series that stands on its own two legs.

Is it complicated to get the rights to Zorro?

What you need to know is that the character of Zorro is in the public domain. The only thing protected by rights is the costume! I was very free editorially, I think the rights holder had some concerns at the beginning but he was convinced by the texts. Afterwards, it was a matter of negotiation, and I know that Marc Dujardin fought. There was a right of inspection, but we did not receive any notes or requests for rewrites. Maybe if I had damaged Zorro too much, there would have been a problem. We still go quite far in the series but I wanted to keep the character intact, so that there would be other Zorros after ours.

Who did what between Noé Debré and you? Politics to him and vaudeville to you?

The project took a long time to develop, it started six years ago, there were stories of rights lost, then regained… After a while, I took over the project on my own, I moved forward alone, I was the showrunner, I selected the directors, did the scouting, provided the artistic direction, etc. I told myself that if I stayed away from the set, I would no longer progress as a screenwriter. So it became my project. Noé, whom I have known for ten years and whom I adore, has, as we know thanks to Parliamenta disconcerting ease in thinking about politics. He brought a lot to that place, while I amused myself with vaudeville and references to classic American cinema. Not to mention Rappeneau and The Delusions of Grandeur.

So the series serves to assert your identity as an author, your signature?

Absolutely. This Zorro, for me, is a kind of aesthetic manifesto. I put a lot of attempts, theories, a mix of genres, a way of moving very quickly from comedy to a sequence of first-degree emotion… A lot of things that I want to see and that I believe in.

Zorrocreated by Benjamin Charbit and Noé Debré, with Jean Dujardin, Audrey Dana, Grégory Gadebois… Available on Paramount +. In December on France 2.