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Actress Ariel Tombsley says she was “surprised to discover the staging of her comments” during the fictional documentary “The Bettencourt Affair: The Richest Woman Around Scandal,” which aired on Netflix.
In just eight days, the documentary series “The Bettencourt Affair: Scandal about the richest woman in the world” has skyrocketed in viewership on the Netflix platform. If the producers manage the main characters of this legal soap opera that made headlines in the 2010s, starting with billionaire wealth manager Patrice de Maistre, its staging is ripe for criticism.
Between scenes at the Bettencourt mansion, audio recordings of face-to-face interviews with the world’s richest woman’s butler and Patrice de Maistre, but also with journalists from Mediapart and Le Monde, the lawyer, are produced. Georges Geijman (who died last May), as well as Ariel Tombsley.
“It’s all imagination, shortcuts, biases”
The actress and singer appears from the 13th minute of the first episode and continues to be called up throughout the series, seemingly commenting on scenes replayed by the cast at home in Neuilly-sur-Seine. The artist specifically explains that it was he who facilitated the meeting between Liliane Bettencourt and photographer François-Marie Panier in the late 1980s, which immediately gave him a central role in the affair (and the documentary).
Arielle Dombasle, however, insists in a press release sent to the Paris pageant today that her interventions were “disconnected” and “placed her at the center of an affair where she was a witness among others”. “Everything is fiction, shortcuts, biases and Ariel Tombsley cannot accept finding herself an unwilling actress in this fictional mask,” the press release asserts.
Ariel Tombsley discovered her ideas with astonishment in “The Bettencourt Affair,” a fictional documentary that aired on Netflix.
Appearing in a beautiful red Japanese dress inside an empty theater, the actress accused Netflix and production company Quadbox of “violating” her most basic rights. That means his right to review the editing and “insert his ideas into the project.”
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