Capture d’écran X
Paul de Saint Sernin presents this original show offered on Netflix, where the “roast” is really coming to France.
• Monsieur Octopus, Pablo Mira, Kheiron, Sarah Lélé, Emy and Waly Dia come to “roast” the 1998 and 2018 world champions.
• Roasting is a popular practice in the United States that relies on very spicy jokes directed at a consenting celebrity.
Like Amazon Prime with LOLÂ : qui rit sortNetflix has chosen to capitalize on French humor by launching this Wednesday, June 3 In the saucea humorous show hosted by Paul de Saint Sernin. With the ambition to make roasts in France. An arduous and almost unprecedented task.
D’une durée d’1 h 30, In the sauce brings together several sharp pens of French humor such as Monsieur Poulpe, Pablo Mira, Kheiron, Sarah Lélélé, Emy or Waly Dia for “ se payer » French stars. In this case, the show decided to opt for athletes, all world football champions from the French team from 1998 and 2018.
The goal of the comedians: to “roast” which can be translated as “roast” these football celebrities. A humorous principle imported from the United States that France has often tried to adapt on its soil, but always with great timidity. Paul de Saint Sernin even speaks to The Team d’un « sea serpent for ten years in the PAF».
Commonly used during broadcasts, ceremonies, gala dinners or other receptions with stars, the idea of the roast is to clash with your interlocutor with their consent. All the salt of the practice rests on the fact that the person who attacks the targeted person generally knows them well and therefore knows how to press where it hurts. She knows that she is going to be grilled (literally) and therefore accepts these nasty jokes with a good dose of self-deprecation. There is, however, one golden rule: jokes must be as funny as they are mean.
A pure American product
The exercise is difficult to adapt to France, where irony and the second degree are comic sources which often take precedence over self-deprecation. American humor, for its part, is oriented towards the 1st degree, as the analysis for French Morning the French comedian expatriated in New York, Michael Sehn.
If the American public values sincerity in humor, in France we rather value leaving doubt. “The Americans swallow everything we tell them. I tell jokes bigger than me and they don’t understand. They are very first degree. The more stupid things you say, the more they believe you.”also entrusts French Morning Pascal Escriou, another French comedian exiled in New York. The American public therefore loves the frank and direct side of roasting, where the contract between the winnower and the winnower is clearly established.
Since the broadcast Celebrity Roast by Dean Martin in the 1970s, the roast has become a staple at the White House correspondents’ dinner, where this exercise is a tradition. Presenter Stephen Colbert particularly distinguished himself in 2006 against American President George W. Bush.
In the United States, the Comedy Central channel even had the show between 2003 and 2019 Comedy Central Roast, a cult program. In the chair of the “ roasté » have been noted successes of Justin Bieber, Donald Trump (in 2011), Pamela Anderson, Bruce Willis, Alec Baldwin or James Franco.
“If you lose one idol, there, walk like that!”
While there is no shortage of attempts to adapt French-style roasts, few have met with real success. Unless there is a twist to make it more accessible to the French public. This is the case of YouTubers McFly and Carlito who, in 2023 and 2024, tried to launch theAuto-roast. « Like a Secret Santa, each participant draws a name on which they must write a roast (with the author Florent Bernard, co-creator of the Floodcast and a fine connoisseur of American humor, editor’s note), which they will then discover on the teleprompter in front of an audience and which they will have to read in the first person. It’s sort of a self-clash.”summed up the duo.
A recipe which, in their eyes, lessens the potential susceptibility of certain guests, since the roasted person does not know who wrote the jokes about him. McFly and Carlito released two videos with this concept, accumulating over 7 million views per episode. However, the concept never reappeared on their YouTube channel.
We can also cite the French adaptation of Drag Race, because roasting is a common practice in the drag scene. The French version on France Télévisions therefore took up the concept to include it as a test of the show.
Other examples that may be related to roast sequences in France, the presence of the comedian Paul de Saint Sernin (the same one) in What an era on France 2, where he multiplies the jokes on the guest(s), in the right lineage of Laurent Baffie, “sniper » Thierry Ardisson’s broadcasts on French television.
For this first test on Netflix, it was therefore natural to find Paul de Saint Sernin at the presentation. In The Teamhe also revealed his observations to produce, according to him, a roast that works: “For a roast to work, you have to winnow someone who is very, very, very loved! (…) If you trash a guy at your level or below, it doesn’t work, we won’t identify, we won’t laugh, we’ll even find it mean. If you winnow an idol, it works!
