"Bright Minds"
Commander Raphaëlle Coste is a strong and decide woman who is in charge of a police station, while Astrid is a clever criminologist with Asperger's syndrome that has joined forces with Coste to solve criminal investigations. That is the key for the global success of "Bright Minds", a JLA Productions crime series starring by Lola Dewaere and Sara Mortensen that has four seasons. "Creating an autistic character it was a responsibility, we didn't to caricature the autistic world", commented Showrunner Alexandre de Seguins to Señal News in Unifrance Rendez-Vous Paris 2023. "We chose two women for the leading characters because they're very few autistic characters that are women and that was interesting. I wanted to sort of complementary friendship between a neurotypical woman and an autistic woman. It was important to have a duo of women and not one man and one woman, which would have drifted away from friendship," he explained.
Sara Mortensen plays Astrid in an extraordinary way. She said her built the character along with the showrunner Alex, and she's also seen a lot of documentaries and met with autistic people. "I've been observing a lot, just to be like a sponge and be able to create someone that would not betray the autistic people, and that would talk to someone like you and me in a way you can identify yourself to this character", she expressed. "We have a bunch of autistic people reading the scripts and working before me, and then we work together. It can take hours and days to reread and rewrite, it's really a dialogue and what's exciting is I've built Astrid, but I never know how she's going to react. I just pay great attention to what she's doing, what's happening on the set, what's happening on the crime scene, I'm always aware of everything and listening to every noise and looking at every detail to be able to react as Astrid", she confessed.
On the other hand, Lola Dewaere highlighted the connection between the two women lead characters, not only their professional relationship but also their friendship. "It was interesting to bring something different with my character that is more ordinary than Astrid but creates a different relation", she commented. "It's also interesting to see the differences between the two characters, they have completely different personalities and bodies, and those differences were what was interesting to me," she affirmed.
GLOBAL HIT
"Bright Minds" was already sold to Cosmo TV and Atresmedia in Spain; Discovery Italy; RSI for Italian-speaking Switzerland territories; VRT for Flemish-speaking Belgium territories, Walter Presents for Ireland, the UK, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Australia, United States, FOX in Portugal, LRT in Lithuania; NBCUniversal Networks & Direct-To-Consumer for 13 Ulica in Poland; DIVA in Albania, Bosnia Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Northern Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia and Slovenia; AMI-télé in Canada and AXN Channel for Latin America.
The showrunner explained this worldwide success and affirmed that it's for the characters and for the friendship that is universal. "It's friendship that goes beyond the borders between two women that could not be more different", he stated. "They're not opposed, they are complementary, the weaknesses of one woman are the strengths of the other one and vice versa and it's also very important to have them both on an equal footing, because they both need each other, we pay close attention to having this balance when writing and when acting, it's not the neurotypical woman who needs to take care of the very fragile, autistic woman. It's not that at all", he clarified.
The four season of the series (8x52’) is editing, and the showrunner and protagonists didn't discard a fifth season. "We're waiting all hoping for our fifth one but we don't know. They're working on scripts, but we don't know if it will have a new season," anticipated Sara Mortensen.