Adventure Line Productions (ALP), the Fort Boyard production company will indeed have to pay nearly 10,000 euros in compensation to Francis Lalanne and give him back his famous Narcisse Lalanne hat (which prevented candidates from coming to steal the boyars from Father Fouras ) following his dismissal in 2020. This is what the industrial tribunal of Rochefort (Charente-Maritime) decided on Thursday. The acrobat, now an activist (yellow vests movement, etc.), sued the production company of the Fort Boyard and Koh-Lanta programs in order to have the contracts he signed from 2016 to 2019 reclassified as permanent contracts, broken abusively according to him by the producers of ALP.
Two unusual complaints
According to the deliberations made public on Thursday followingnoon, the Rochefort court “requalifies the fixed-term standard employment contract as an open-ended employment contract” and condemns ALP to pay the sums of 3,247 euros in notice compensation, 1,200 euros in severance pay and 5,000 euros in damages. The Fort Boyard production company will also have to return the singer’s hat, which was part of the panoply of the character of “Narcisse Lalanne”, but will be able to keep the long wooden pipe that the acrobat also claimed. It will therefore remain in the hands of Father Fouras! “Jurisprudence moralizes the work of artists on these filming locations, such as Fort Boyard or Koh Lanta, where they are treated a bit like slaves by making them sign contracts without respecting the labor code too much”, reacted to the ‘AFP Me Emmanuel Ludot, who defended Francis Lalanne, absent during the deliberations.
It was this same lawyer who had obtained the requalification of the contracts of Mister Boo, the “muscle man” character of Fort Boyard. Result? 17,000 euros in compensation for unfair dismissal. The case is currently on appeal before the court of Poitiers.
