The Master Crimes series, his projects with his wife Anne Le Nen, the end of his collaboration with Pierre Palmade: Muriel Robin with an open heart

Muriel Robin, de retour avec la série “Master Crimes”, multiplie les projets. – NICOLAS ROUCOU

Muriel Robin is back on the small screen from October 17 with season 2 of “Master Crimes”, the hit series on TF1. Her contrasting roles, her dark period, her fight since Jacqueline Sauvage, homophobia in cinema, her farewell to Alain Delon, her tribute to Michel Blanc: Muriel Robin confides with sincerity in an interview with Midi Libre and announces “the end” of her “collaboration” with Pierre Palmade.

Master Crimes, is back on October 17th on TF1 in prime time after the success of the first season, more than 5 million viewers. You expected such a craze ?

It was a very, very nice surprise, a great joy to make people happy and to see that they liked what we had liked.

It's great, because it allowed us to make this sequel, so bravo to the authors, to the director, bravo to everyone!

And bravo to you, since one of the driving forces behind this success is this successful duo that you form with your wife, Anne Le Nen. It was a determining factor for you, as it was for her, in choosing to take part in this adventure, the fact of working together?

It's an important element that contributed to what people say yes. We wanted it and, when it was offered to us, we were both ready, which was not always the case, because, when you are a special couple like ours, it is also exposing yourself.

Muriel Robin and Anne Le Nen, a duo in life and on stage. The two actresses multiply projects together.

How do you both work together ? Do you rehearse together ?

Everyone works on their own. Especially memory, in my case, because I have a lot of texts and it's not an everyday language, I'm not a criminologist in real life (smile), so I prepare with a tutor to learn the six episodes. We don't work on our characters together.

What we know about season 2 of Master Crimes

Master Crimes will be back for six episodes on Thursday evenings, at 9:10 p.m., starting October 17, with Muriel Robin, Anne Le Nen, Nicolas Briançon, Olivier Claverie, Victor Meutelet, Astrid Roos, Nordine Ganso and Thais Vauquieres, under the direction of Marwen Abdallah, “a dream of a man and a director”, salutes Muriel Robin.

The pitch of this season 2: ” Louise Arbus, the most talented of psycho-criminology teachers, is back! And rest assured, she hasn't calmed down. Accompanied by her students who are still as out of control as ever, our free electron with prodigious insight and an explosive temperament will help Captain Delandre solve a series of new crimes that are even more twisted, even more Machiavellian. So many criminal enigmas that will allow Arbus to challenge the knowledge of his students and the patience of Delandre!”

The series, which is not inspired or adapted from  "How to Get Away with Murder" specified, TF1 and Muriel Robin, won the award. a huge success in the first season, establishing itself as one of the great successes of the first European channel, with HPI, Panda and Brocéliande.

But, as we live together, we still rehearse scenes at home, it makes things flow.

Your character, Louise Arbus, is, in her complexity, all at once sensitive, direct, funny, demanding. Do you find yourself in her in certain aspects??

There is something childish that we have in common, because that she will go where it hurts, but with humor, empathy, it is never mean. I really like Louise because she is greedy for life. She plays a lot, she teases everyone, she seeks laughter, but with wit, not with energy and jokes.< /p>

So it really touches me that so many people came for a series in which we laugh at subtle things, the audience catches everything, a word, an eyebrow that rises… It can be just as effective as things that are more “in your face”.

So, for now, I find myself a little bit in her, but not totally, because she is very secretive and that is the opposite of me. The public knows everything about me!

I don't know what's behind it, she doesn't talk about herself too much, maybe it will be for the next season, the 3rd or the 4th. How does Louise's heart beat? We don't know and I'll be interested to find out.

I see, in any case, that you are already planning a third and a fourth season… It's already a done deal?

The third season began to be written during filming. We'll see if the audience is still there, but as long as we can say interesting things and the next season isn't a copy of the previous one, there's no reason not to go for it.

“Master Crimes” is one of TF1's hit series. Muriel Robin plays a criminology teacher.

There will come a time when we may have gone round in circles. When I'll be 92 and I'll say, “Listen, now, we're going to stop for a bit because I'd like to be able to go hiking all year long, with my dogs.” But we're not there yet. As long as we surprise ourselves, we even go there with happiness.

You will explore new themes this season, isolation, sectarianism, self-expression through art too. Have any of them particularly touched you??

The universes are very strong and clever, it's tighter and even more twisted. We're going to pull the strings on all the characters. All the sliders have gone up in season 2. There's more comedy.

But filming is already far away for me and as I live terribly in the present, in the meantime, I've had very strong emotions in real life, for example, last week, I was in Rwanda, one meter away from gorillas! It was something I'd been dreaming of for 61 years. It shook me up. In me one emotion chases the other.

His farewell to Alain Delon, his homage to Michel Blanc

The image of Muriel Robin's car entering Douchy's property was captured by photographers. The actress was one of the few personalities invited to come and say goodbye to Alain Delon, to whom she was close. The sacred monster of cinema, who passed away on August 18, was buried on August 24 on his lands in Loiret. "We couldn't be at the funeral, we had a commitment that we absolutely couldn't move, we went the day before and what I can tell you is that he was very handsome, I think he would be happy for people to say so. A beauty! A lord. “It's unforgettable, this image” , she remembers.

“I'm not really a dreamer, he made me dream since I was 8 years old , Muriel Robin confides. Afterwards, I was able to meet him, we became friends. He met Anne very quickly and they adored each other. He found a little of himself in her, they have a little of the same look, something animal. Anne had a very special and very strong relationship with him. For me, he upset me, because I always saw only the wounded little boy. So, I had a constant empathy for him, whatever he said and whatever he did. Many women wanted to be in Delon's arms, I wanted to take Alain in my arms to console him.”

Muriel Robin also shares her sadness after the sudden death of Michel Blanc. “He was  a man full of humanity and talent", she emphasizes.

Was it important for you to return to comedy, in this new register, after significant dramatic roles ?

It's almost the first time I've been in a comedy on TV and without having to deploy a huge amount of energy, without it relying on me 100%. I really liked it.

And I wanted to be rather over-feminized, undermined. They hit the nail on the head. 

Indeed, it's a bit the opposite of Jacqueline Sauvage and Marie Besnard. I was happy that they didn't give me wrinkles, a fake belly to make me fat, a wig to make me look like an old lady, with foam dresses and flat shoes…

This role of Marie Besnard, which earned you an Emmy Award, that of Jacqueline Sauvage, which also left its mark, both drawn from real life, were they sometimes heavy to bear??

No, but the role of Jacqueline Sauvage put me a little more into this scourge of domestic violence. He got me involved, I see that as something positive.

It was from that day that things started to move and they will never be the same again, even if there is still a lot to do.

“Putting an end to our collaboration” with Pierre Palmade

Muriel Robin has ended her friendship with Pierre Palmade since the accident he caused on February 10, 2023, on a departmental road in Seine-et-Marne, while under the influence of drugs. Three people were injured, including a 6-year-old child and a 27-year-old pregnant woman who lost her baby. According to information from Paris Match, reported in the press and on television, she now refuses to allow the works created with Pierre Palmade to be reprinted. What about it ? “Yes, it is, she confirms to us, but what are we talking about? Sometimes amateur companies ask us if they can play our shows. In those cases, we received a request. My answer was always yes and it was Pierre who decided. We are talking about two requests per year, companies that play in front of audiences of 100 people. In terms of money, I don't even talk about it, it's nothing. Even if it's not nothing of course for someone who has zero. But it reached my ears that people were saying that I was making him lose 5,000 euros per month. My God, if he was making that much money, he could have told me, because I would have loved to have made it too! It won't turn his life upside down, but it allowed me to end our collaboration for the future.

But that won't stop us from sometimes seeing on television some of the works they were able to create together, announces Muriel Robin. “When I'm the one performing, I bring the acting. It's not what we put on paper, it's what I did with it, with my acting, which when even a weight, explains the actress. If I had played differently, it might not have had the same success. I was the one who embodied them and brought them to life. So I feel like it “belongs to me” a little more than it does to him. I still asked myself the question, but I don't want to deprive people of that. And this reasoning seems to hold water to me. Until one morning, I get up and tell myself that I'm stopping everything. But that's not the case. From there to giving our texts to others, no, I'm not doing business with that."

I loved making these great films, but I have a little less desire for darkness. It's a different time. I had a darker, more complicated life. Now, I'm doing very well, I'm in a form of lightness, of harmony, so Louise is perfect. I wanted something lighter, sunnier.

“Success is an ointment that doesn't cure”, you said on France Info. Is that still the case ?

Yes, but I cured myself differently. I had years of success where I was on the ground, I had depressions, etc. Success does not cure. It is a magnificent ointment, but you still have to be able to enjoy it.

Muriel Robin changes register in the series “Master Crimes”. Her performance was once again praised.

The important thing is to be cured. That's my case. I left everything that was black or a little gray, a little too dark on the side of the road.

You recently pointed out in Quelle Époque, on France 2, the homophobia in the world of cinema, of which you were a victim. Did you feel supported after these remarks??

Yes, in a way, but the real support would be to move things forward. I know gay male actors, if they had said it, their career would have stopped.

I respect their choice totally obviously. But that means there is a real case. In any case, I needed to say it, personally, to say what I had been through, that I had suffered this way and that it could be heard.

I don't know if it changed things, they are perhaps evolving. We will see in the years to come if we can make a real romantic comedy by putting a woman in the arms of an actor who lives with a man.

From cinema to restoration, the projects of Muriel Robin and Anne Le Nen

Muriel Robin is, as usual, full of projects. “I'm shooting in the first feature film directed by Pierre Mazingarbe, he has a universe a bit like Dupontel, it will be an offbeat comedy. Then, we will very quickly come back to season 3 of Master Crimes. “Afterwards, Anne and I wrote a feature film called “Love is Love”. I will direct it, I hope in August, September 2025. Anne has written a three-character play that will normally be performed at Edouard-VII in September 2025. She has written a screenplay on her own that may be on a platform, it is becoming clearer. And then she prepares a one-man show, a show I know nothing about, so I can't wait to see it,” she announces .

“And then afterwards, there are the things we do together, whether it's developing a book or opening a restaurant like we did in Nice. We hope that this will become a franchise and that there will be some all over France. It's called “La cantine de Jo”, we are associated with Anne's best friend who is a restaurateur. It's very good, it's not expensive and we eat out of cardboard, so if we want to start on site, finish at home, or at the office, we do as we want", explains Muriel Robin who is multiplying projects with Anne Le Nen. "Doing things together, çit scares us less", she says.

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