France: New updates regarding the national selection “Eurovision : C’est vous qui décidez!”
The Franch national broadcaster, France 2, has revealed more details on the French national selection “Eurovision : C’est vous qui décidez!” the show to select the nation’s Eurovision 2021 representative.
According to the new France 2 schedule of shows for the season coming , during the period from December 26th to January 1st, a new tv show is introduced named “Pastille Eurovision” to be broadcast on during the week. Each show, which is of short duration, is connected to a name of an artist, giving a hint of the way the national selection acts and entries will be presented.
The first dates with the repsective five acts coming up are :
- Monday, 28th December : Casanova
- Tuesday, 29th December : Philippine
- Wednesday, 30th December : LMX
- Thursday, 31st December : Ali
- Friday, 1st January : Barbara Pravi
Taking a closer look on these first names, Philipinne was a past Voice 2016 participated who was eliminated during the first live show, while Casanova finished third in the 2018 season having as mentor Mika. Ali is a rapper while Barbara Pravi has co-written with Igit the two French JESC 2019 and 2020 entries “Bim Bam Toi” and “J’imagine” that this year brought to France its first JESC victory.
The Hosts
Le Parisien, has reported that Stéphane Bern and Laurence Boccolini will co-present the Frech national selection for Eurovision 2021. The first host, Stéphane Bern, is no stranger of course to the French Eurovision community as he was the commentator for France 2 in the 2010 Eurovision final and from 2015 continuously.
Laurence Boccolini, may be making her debut appearance in the French Eurovision family but is well known among the French spectators. Besides hosting TV games, among which hosting the French edition of “The Weakest Link”, she participated and won the first season of France’s Masked Singer.After the game ‘Money Drop’ in 2017, she co-hosted with Christophe Dechavanne on the set in South Africa the reality “I am a celebrity, get me out of there”. This summer she decided to change direction on TV. Thus in September, she appeared on France 2 animating the old game played by Patrick Sabatier Password in the morning. Then, since November 2, she is at the head of “One word can hide another”, on the same square.
France in Eurovision
France has been part of the Eurovision Family since its first participation back in 1956. Since then the country scored five victories. Last time was in 1977, with Marie Myriam and her song L’oiseau et l’enfant. The last two years, however, seems to be an increasing interest for the contest .
Destination Eurovision was used for the first time as the country’s national selection mechanism in 2018, consisted of two recorded semi final shows and a live grand final. Destination Eurovision was the first national fina to take place since 2014. National final 2018 winners were the duo Madame Monsieur who represented France in Lisbon with their entry “Mercy” and finished 13th.
In 2019 Bilal Hassani won the second edition of Destination Eurovision 2019 and flew the flag in Tel Aviv with his entry Roi which came 16th in the Grand final.
In 2020 France Televisions decided to go internal by selecting Tom Leeb to represent the country in Rotterdam last May. Unfortunately his ESC 2020 journey never reached its destination as the covid-19 outbreak caused the cancellation of this year’s edition.
News Source: ESCXtra/Le Parisien
Image: RTL.fr
