Line #31 Trivia/Lupin2021


1	* ActorInspiredElement:
2	** How the entire series came into fruition. Creator/OmarSy was approached by Netflix and Gaumont to build a series based around him. When asked what character he wanted to play, he chose Literature/ArseneLupin, because he viewed the GentlemanThief as a "French Franchise/JamesBond".
3	*** According to series creator George Kay, Sy is actively involved in coming up with plot points and storylines. Notably, it was his idea to have Assane impersonate Raoul's basketball coach in order to get closer to his family without them knowing it.
4	** Claire's activities in Part 3 apparently came about because Creator/LudivineSagnier wanted to do something cool.
5	** A possible one: Benjamin's surname, "Férel", is also the name of a small town in Brittany, close to where his actor Antoine Gouy grew up.
6	* ActorSharedBackground: Zigzagged. Assane Diop is French of Senegalese extraction, and so is Omar Sy. However, Sy was born in France, while Assane actually did spend his early years in Senegal. Also, Sy descends from the Fulani ethnic group (and grew up speaking the Fula language at home), while Assane's surname "Diop" suggests that his origins lie in the Wolof people.
7	* ApprovalOfGod: Maurice Leblanc's granddaughter [[https://gettotext.com/lupine-maurice-leblancs-granddaughter-delighted-with-the-success-of-the-series-embodied-by-omar-sy-femme-actuelle-le-mag/ has said]] that her grandfather would have liked the series.
8	* BillingDisplacement: Nicole Garcia (Anne Pellegrini) is the fourth name listed in the credits for the episodes she appears in--after Omar Sy, Ludivine Sagnier, and Clotilde Hesme, and before the likes of Soufiane Guerrab (Guédira) and Antoine Gouy (Benjamin)--despite having minimal screen time in the show overall. This is likely due to Garcia being a highly-regarded, César-winning actress and director in France, while Guerrab and Gouy aren't as well-known.
9	* CastTheExpert: Mathieu Lamboley, the composer of the series' soundtrack, conducts the orchestra in Chapter 10.
10	* CelebrityResemblance:
11	** Many Anglophone viewers have remarked on the facial similarity between Hervé Pierre (Hubert Pellegrini) and Creator/KevinSpacey.
12	** In his present-day incarnation, Keller is a dead-ringer for American game show host Creator/SteveHarvey (even more amusingly, his actor is called Steve in RealLife).
13	* CelebrityVoiceActor: Creator/BetsyBrandt, best-known for playing Marie Schrader in ''Series/BreakingBad'', provides the voice of Juliette in the English dub.
14	* CompletelyDifferentTitle: In an odd reversal of TheForeignSubtitle, the series was released in its native France with the subtitle "dans l'ombre d'Arsène" ("in the shadow of Arsène"), which also turns up on the title cards in Part 1. This was quietly dropped for subsequent seasons, possibly due to the show gaining an unexpectedly large international fanbase using just the name ''Lupin''.
15	* CowboyBebopAtHisComputer: Upon the series announcement along with its lead, many news outlets outright stated that Literature/ArseneLupin himself was going to undergo a RaceLift. The series is actually about a different character who lives in the 21st century and styles himself into an {{expy}} of Lupin, since he's a fan. The latter remains a fictional character InUniverse.
16	** Subverted slightly in that this ''was'' initially going to be the case (see WhatCouldHaveBeen below).
17	* DawsonCasting:
18	** Ludmilla Makowski (young Claire) and Léa Bonneau (young Juliette) are in their twenties, but play teenagers.
19	** Omar Sy, Ludivine Sagnier, Antoine Gouy and Clotilde Hesme, all of whom were around 40 at the time of filming, play Assane, Claire, Benjamin and Juliette in both the present timeline and 2006, when the characters are supposed to be in their mid to late twenties. DigitalDeAging was employed.
20	** In 1995, Anne Pellegrini is probably somewhere in her late forties. She's played by septuagenarian Nicole Garcia. Again, special effects were used to make her appear younger.
21	** Both inverted and played straight for Hubert Pellegrini, whose witness testimony papers reveal that he was born in the 1940s and is thus in his 70s during the series' present-day, and was about 50 in 1995. Hervé Pierre was in his sixties when the episodes were shot.
22	** Inverted for the present-day version of Keller. He's meant to be substantially older than Assane InUniverse, but his actor, Steve Tientcheu, was born in 1982, while Omar Sy was born in 1978. (This also makes Tientcheu a year younger than Assane, whose canonical birth occurred in May 1981.)
23	* {{Defictionalization}}: There are now re-editions of ''Arsène Lupin, Gentleman Burglar'' (the first novel in Maurice Leblanc's series) that [[https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/91Mlu6abp3L.jpg look like]] the edition of the novel that Assane owns, complete with advertisements for the Creator/{{Netflix}} series (of course) and insert photographs of the characters.
24	* FakeNationality: Assane's parents are from Senegal, but the actors who play them (Fargass Assandé and Naky Sy Savané) are both Ivorian.
25	* FriendlyFandoms: With ''Series/MoneyHeist'', although there is a mild FandomRivalry between the two over which is the better Netflix-distributed internationally successful European crime caper show. Amusingly, the ''Money Heist'' spinoff series ''Berlin'' was met with a mixed reception from ''Money Heist'' fans...largely due to its being seen as a somewhat inferior version of ''Lupin'' rather than recapturing the tone of its predecessor.
26	* FollowTheLeader: The French division of Netflix has released a whole string of original action/heist/crime-thriller shows in the wake of ''Lupin'', although none of them has, thus far, managed to come close to matching the global success of their inspiration.
27	* GeniusBonus: At the end of Chapter 10, shortly before Assane's electronic watch goes off in their apartment, Claire is helping Raoul study history for school. The man she quizzes him about, Alexandre "Marius" Jacob, was a RealLife GentlemanThief from Marseille who was one of Maurice Leblanc's primary inspirations in creating the Arsène Lupin character.
28	* InternationalCoproduction: The show is French through and through...but its creator and main writer, George Kay, is from England. Kay has admitted to having a fairly poor understanding of French--his co-writer François Uzan is responsible for translating all of the English language scripts he's written.
29	** Marcela Said, who directed episodes 4 and 5, is Chilean, and Daniel Grou, who helmed the third and fourth episodes of Part 3, is Québecois.
30	* PeripheryDemographic: Has become popular with French instructors, who often play scenes or entire episodes for their students in order to provide them with examples of spoken French in both formal and colloquial registers.
31	* PlayingAgainstType:
32	** Ludivine Sagnier initially rose to prominence as French cinema's resident [[MsFanservice frequently-naked]] GenkiGirl. As Claire, she embodies a GirlNextDoor turned single mother. Sagnier has said that part of the reason she wanted to be in the series--in addition to her desire to work with Omar Sy--was because she would [[SoMyKidsCanWatch be able to watch it with her children]].
33	** Clotilde Hesme's tall, wiry build and distinctive angular features have led her to be frequently cast as TheLadette or otherwise androgynous characters. Juliette Pellegrini, on the other hand, is a decidedly feminine {{Socialite}}.
34	* SameLanguageDub: Spanish speakers interested in watching the show dubbed over have a choice between Castilian and Latin American versions.
35	* SeparatedAtBirthCasting: Mamadou Haidara and Ludmilla Makowski, who play the '90s versions of Assane and Claire, have attracted a great deal of praise, both due to their physical resemblance to their older counterparts and the extent to which they capture their personalities and mannerisms.
36	* SeriesContinuityError:
37	** In the 1995 flashbacks, when Assane first meets Juliette, he mentions that his fourteenth birthday is around the corner, and it seems that the Arsène Lupin book gifted to him by Babakar was intended as a birthday present. The police file on the case indicates that all of this was going on in October of that year, but Assane's gravestone, which is shown in Part 3, establishes that his birthday is on May 13th.
38	** The social worker who assumes responsibility of Assane following his father's death in the Part 1 flashbacks seemingly morphs into the director of the College d'Andrésy in Part 2. Both the social worker and the principal are listed in the credits as "Monsieur Philippe Bouchard" and they have the same actor (Éric Paul). In a possible case of TheOtherDarrin for the Part 3 flashbacks, the head of the school is played by Charles Roger-Bour and is just credited as the unnamed principal.
39	** When Claire checks her phone at the beginning of episode 3.01, the date is listed as Tuesday, November 27th. The scene is explicitly set in 2021, and November 27th of that year fell on a Saturday.
40	* ShownTheirWork: "Diop" is a Wolof surname, and as such the song that Mariama sings to Assane over the phone is in the Wolof language.
41	* SleeperHit: The show became an unexpected worldwide smash in January 2021, and has turned into Netflix's third-most-popular non-English language series, after ''Series/SquidGame'' and the ''Series/MoneyHeist'' franchise. It's by far the biggest French show on the streamer (with views for its third season exceeding the viewership of every other Netflix France series released in 2023 ''combined''), and is likely the most globally-successful French series of all time.[[note]]This excludes the likes of ''Series/EmilyInParis'', i.e. American shows that are set in France.[[/note]]
42	* SpoilerCover: Netflix inexplicably decided to release an image of Assane and Benjamin working with [[spoiler:Philippe Courbet]] as part of the promotional material in advance of Part 2's debut in June 2021, spoiling one of the biggest [[TheReveal Reveals]] in that set of episodes.
43	* TieInNovel: ''Lupin: Échec à la Reine'', a 2004-set prequel in which Benjamin gets ADayInTheLimelight alongside Assane. Aside from them, Claire is the only other character from the series to appear in the story, although Hubert Pellegrini gets a brief mention at the end.
44	* TouristBump: Fans of the show flocked to Étretat after its release, to the point where the town has struggled to deal with all the extra traffic (and locals have begun complaining).
45	* TroubledProduction:
46	** The filming of the first season was halted in March 2020 due to the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic, and resumed in June. This resulted in a minor TemporaryBulkChange for Assane since, by his own admission, Omar Sy gained five kilograms (for Americans, that's around 11 pounds) during the first lockdown.
47	** When Part 3 was being filmed in a suburb of Paris, about twenty men with balaclavas attacked the set with firecrackers and stole €300,000 worth of audiovisual material and whatever money crew members had on them. Luckily, nobody was injured, and Omar Sy, who was present for the robbery, appeared at the César awards which took place that night. Production resumed a few days later.
48	* {{Typecasting}}: Omar Sy as a guy who engages in criminal activity but manages to win people over due to his positive attitude and bottomless charisma--are we talking about Assane or Driss from ''Film/{{Intouchables}}''?
49	** Also, Omar Sy in yet another [[AnImmigrantsTale immigrant's tale]].
50	* VoicedDifferentlyInTheDub: The English-language voice actor for Assane does away with a lot of Omar Sy's natural exuberance and LargeHam tendencies, so his version of the character instead comes across as more of TheStoic.
51	* WhatCouldHaveBeen:
52	** Omar Sy was originally meant to [[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-06-29/how-netflix-s-lupin-and-omar-sy-pulled-off-the-perfect-heist-show play the "real" Arsène Lupin]], but was ultimately made into an original character when George Kay came on board as showrunner.
53	** There were plans to have Assane make an appearance in the Paris-set ''Series/MoneyHeist'' spinoff series ''Berlin'', thus confirming that ''Lupin'' and ''Money Heist'' take place in a SharedUniverse. However, this fell through due to scheduling conflicts.
54	* YouMightRememberMeFrom:
55	** Omar Sy for ''Film/{{Intouchables}}'', obviously, or else Barry from ''Film/JurassicWorld''.
56	** Ludivine Sagnier played Tinkerbell in the 2003 live-action adaptation of ''Film/PeterPan''. Viewers of a different persuasion may also remember her as the ShamelessFanserviceGirl from several early-aughts Creator/FrancoisOzon films.
57	** For French audiences, Pierre Lottin (adult Bruno) is very well known as IdiotHero Wilfried in the popular ''Les Tuche'' [[CashCowFranchise comedy franchise]].

Context Trivia / Lupin2021