On the terrace with Erika Suarez | “I am a little girl who grew up in the McGill ghetto”

This summer, our journalists spend time every week on a terrace with a personality for a friendly discussion. Suzanne Colpron met Erika Suarez, a comedian and actress on the rise.

Erika Suarez had arranged to meet us at the restaurant La Belle et La Bœuf, in LaSalle, a stone’s throw from her home. The place has a terrace, which overlooks the parking lot, but the comedian was waiting for us inside, under the metal beer barrels hanging from the ceiling, behind the red curtains that filter the light and to the sound of 1980s music. She had just ordered a cocktail in a “pretty glass.”

“When I saw the name of the drink, I Love You, I was like: wow, I like that!” she says, with a big smile, long curly black hair, fake nails painted pink, long and pointed, and tattoos all over her arms. On her left hand, she had the words tattooed Memento moriwhich means, “Remember that you must die.” And on his right hand, Local life : “Live your life to the fullest.” Two phrases that she repeats to herself every day like a mantra. Because Erika knows that life hangs by a thread. At 16, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. And at 19, she lost her twins, who died a few days after birth from a blood disease.

This does not prevent her from feeling incredibly “lucky”.

“I’m a little girl who grew up in the McGill ghetto, who comes from nothing.”

For those who don’t know her, allow me to introduce her. Erika Suarez is a queer comedian, in a relationship for eight years with a man, a cement finisher in construction, whom she met on Tinder. “I really found ‘my’ person who, against all odds, is a man,” she says with a laugh. “To everyone’s surprise, because I’ve always had a preference for women.”

In addition to performing on stage, she starred in the series After the flood and participated in the most recent season of Big Brother Celebrities.

Erika was born in Quebec to parents born elsewhere. Dad: Cuba. Mom: Portugal.

She grew up in downtown Montreal, in an apartment building near the McGill University campus, where her parents were janitors.

French, which she learned in primary school, is her fourth language, after Portuguese, Spanish and English.

In addition to a 19-year-old younger brother, she has seven half-brothers and half-sisters from her father’s previous relationships. Some she knows, others she doesn’t.

Fascination with death

As a teenager, Erika didn’t dream of going on stage. Or rather, yes, but it wasn’t an option in her family. “At home, in an immigrant house, being an actor isn’t a job! So, it’s a no,” she sums up.

So she dreamed of becoming a thanatologist. Death, strangely enough, has fascinated her since she was little. She also thought about becoming a car mechanic. But her parents told her: “No, no, no, it’s not a woman’s job.” Then, at 16, she fell ill and had to stop school.

A year later, after her treatments, a friend offered her a job in a funeral home as an attendant. “I received families, I placed flowers, I took care of the service,” she describes. “I loved it!” But after a few years, she wanted to look elsewhere. She was a financial advisor, then a trainer in the same sector. It was at that time, just before the pandemic, that she started doing comedy.

One of his colleagues told him about Aba and Preach, who were hosting a comedy night, The Ethnic Show. “They’re the ones,” she says, “who gave me my first break. I went to Preach, I said, ‘I’m Erika, maybe I’d like to try some comedy for fun.’ He said, ‘Great, come back next week with a five-minute.’ I said, ‘Yeah, no problem.’ Then I Googled what a five-minute meant!”

The following week, Erika delivered her first comedy number, a five-minute piece written largely by her buddy. “I fell in love at first laugh,” she confides. A few months later, she changed jobs: house painter. A job from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m., Monday to Friday, which allowed her to be on stage in the evening, and which she “loved.”

“It’s hard to succeed,” Erika admits, over her barely drunk “I Love You.” “You have to work. You have to play almost every night. You take a night when you’re not on the line-up. You go to the party. You find the booker. You shake his hand. You tell him: ‘I’m Erika Suarez, I want to do comedy, book me for your party.’ If he doesn’t book you, you go back the following week. That’s what I did.”

“I went to all the rooms. I went to the Bordel, to the Abreuvoir, to the Clébard. I went everywhere, I wanted to see as many people as possible.”

She sometimes stayed up all night to polish her material, she says, before returning to the construction site in the early hours of the morning. “I spent hours and hours listening to great comedians speak, give advice, listen to podcasts. I read books, lecture notes from those who had done the School of Humor.”

For the past two years, Erika has been performing all over Quebec and will be on the bill for several festivals this summer: Montreal, Quebec City, Sherbrooke. How has she been received in the region? “What I often experience is what I call ‘positive racism,’” she replies. “Often, after shows, people come up to me and say, ‘You’re not like the other immigrants, you’re really fun.’ I tell them, ‘No, no, we’re all the same! It’s just that you haven’t had that contact.’”