what you need to know about season 3 of Astrid & Raphaëlle

In the public service group’s ever-growing list of detective collections and series, Astrid & Raphaelle occupies a special place. First, because it features a rather improbable but extremely effective pair, as evidenced by this new burst of investigations. Then, because the two performers, as different as they are at first glance, have become real accomplices. On screen, but also in the city. Cross interview.

TV MAGAZINE. – Where are our two heroines?

Sara Mortensen. – For Astrid, the season ended quite abruptly with a ban on practicing in the crime squad. For her, it is all the more upsetting that beyond returning to her life before, in the dark offices of criminal documentation, without her director, without her tutor, her being sidelined marks the end of her collaboration with Raphaëlle to which she is now deeply attached.

Lola Dewaere. – Inevitably, Raphaëlle will do everything possible for her reintegration. Astrid and Raphaëlle, it’s a duo in its own right. I believe that at the stage where we are in their relationship, their complicity and the quality of collaboration, they can no longer do without each other…

A true friendship also seems to have been born…

SM – A friendship built around Astrid’s particular personality and her need for a structured daily life, rituals, regularity. But she learns. The unexpected, all things considered, makes her panic less.

“Autism spectrum disorder is not a disease”

Sara Mortensen

Doesn’t Astrid also discover love?

SM – What she is experiencing is quite complicated, totally out of her realm of possibilities, but centimeter by centimeter, she agrees to let herself be won over by an emotion that could well come under the feeling of love. There will even be a first kiss. For her who does not support physical contact and had never asked the question, as much to tell you that it is a challenge.

LD – This is where my character comes in and assumes his role as a coach. Even though he is absolutely incapable of managing his own life…

Was it a good script idea to break the pair, at least at the start of the season?

LD – It’s even one of the very good ideas they had. This breathes new life into the program. This forces our characters to manage each – more or less well – on their own. And that confirms their friendship as well as their efficiency. I quite like this type of twist. A bit of destruction after two seasons of construction…

SM – The genius of Game Of Thrones, is to methodically zigzag all the characters to which we attach ourselves. So of course, we’re not going to be killed. And I wouldn’t compare my show to HBO’s (laughs). The process is no less similar. We break. And we start from scratch.

Read alsoSeries Astrid and Raphaelle filming for France 2

Can we also say, given all this, that Astrid’s pathology is changing?

SM – There is no pathology. Autism spectrum disorder is not a disease. It’s a neuro-difference. The color of autism is not blue, contrary to what an American lobby had decided. The color of autism is all colors. As for Astrid, she regresses at the start of the season for obvious reasons but faces and gradually appropriates interactions such as social codes, which constitutes a substantial reality.

LD – And at the same time, his landmark now is the free electron, anything but stable, that is my character. It is both very destabilizing but also very stimulating.

SM – Astrid is gradually coming out of the nails…

LD – Raphaëlle is gradually getting into the nails…

What can we wish them both?

SM – Let them go a long way together. Outside of filming, we call each other, we discuss what’s next, the dialogues, specific situations, what to continue to show of the neuro-typical and the neuro-atypical, taking particular care to the last one whose every movement is so sensitive, the phrasing, the look, the gait… So as never to betray anything.

LD – There are a lot of us in each character.

SM – Normal, they are five months of the year in our lives.