A lovely moment of television that turns into a disaster. While singer Pierre Garnier, winner of the “Star Academy”, performed his new song “Nous on sais” live during the show broadcast on TMC “Quotidien” this Monday evening, a controversy arose around the fate reserved for the black singers who accompanied him.
Gospel singers who accompanied the artist during his performance on the set and their entourage testified on social networks, at the end of the show, of mistreatment on the part of the production of the show, on background of racism. The production company, which reacted to Le Parisien, apologized, but denied any accusation of “apartheid”.
One of the testimonies published on the social network This same message mentions the grouping of black singers “in a small room” while “the majority of white singers (remained) on the set”.
Bangumi apologizes
The room in question in which these choristers were grouped is described by a second testimony as “cold and windowless”. They would have stayed there for several hours. “The colored choristers were only released (from this piece) to sing the 2:50 minutes with Pierre,” we can still read on X.
Messages which did not fail to provoke a reaction from the production of “Quotidien”, which said it was “very saddened” by the testimonies published on social networks. “Our guests had this feeling and we cannot brush that aside,” Bangumi insists to Le Parisien. The company “apologizes” to those affected.
Some of the accusations of “apartheid” are, however, denied by Bangumi. “How can people imagine for a second that guests were herded into a room because they were black? », Indignant the production, which assures us: “The singers were treated like all our musical guests. » “The choristers were installed in the dressing room that we usually make available to our musical guests (…) There are in fact no windows because our studios are located in the basement, so none of our dressing rooms ‘has a window,’ the production continued.
“There is no quota”
“We couldn’t put all the singers in the audience. Some of them did not want it,” we explain again from Bangumi, who justifies the distribution of bracelets to those who did not stay on the set “because, for security reasons , you need a badge or bracelet to move around backstage.” The latter were chosen at random according to the same source, which claims not to count “black and white people”. “There is no quota in our audience,” insists the company.
The production still admits a “lack of communication between the production, the company which manages the public and the record company”. “We must not have explained to them very well how their day was going to go. If they felt it, it was because there was clearly a fault,” we concede on the Bangumi side.