Claudine Mercier was scrolling through the news feed of a popular social network when she came face to face with herself. “I saw the video of one of my old numbers appear and I was like, ‘Come on, I’m so good!’ »
Narcissist, comedian? Completely the opposite. Being good has never been a specialty of the one whose imitations of Sonia Benezra and Lise Watier belong to the pantheon of the most memorable personifications in the history of Quebec humor.
Far from the spotlight since the end of her fifth tour in June 2018, Claudine Mercier, 62, talks about her career today “as if I were talking to you about someone else’s life”.
Withdrawing from the public space, taking a step back will have been the opportunity for her to see that everything on which her fear of never being up to it rested could go away without the Earth ceasing to turn. And without happiness running away from her.
It is a profession where the gaze of others is super important and when you are no longer in it, there is something very liberating. It leaves space for something else, not to always be on the lookout for what others think, not to always seek validation.
Claudine Mercier
She embodies in Silence is turned !the play that will be released at the end of June in Saint-Jérôme, an actress and producer on the return of age, who really does not have a bad opinion of herself.
“A role of composition”, she specifies, even if the precision was not at all necessary. If she accepted this first role in the theater, it is largely in the name of her friendship for Emmanuel Reichenbach (who signs the adaptation of the text), as well as because the isolation of the pandemic will have given her more than ever the desire to see people.
PHOTO ALAIN ROBERGE, THE PRESS
Claudine Mercier
But reconnect with humor, solo? Claudine Mercier would not want to inflict such an ordeal on herself. “Over time, I realize that I don’t have the personality to do that, that I’m too insecure”, launches the one who has nevertheless sold more than 750,000 tickets in her career – her third show alone has accumulated 450 performances.
“And as you get older, everything becomes more stressful,” she says, recalling her last show, which premiered lukewarmly, and for which she only sold 40,000 tickets, the “that” being here. very relative, although Claudine couldn’t help but see in it the sign of a decline in interest.
“In retrospect, I realize that it’s difficult for an artist to find the right balance between renewing himself and not disappointing your audience. And the allure of novelty is part of life, that’s normal. Now it’s the turn of other comedians to shine. »
talk about herself
Claudine Mercier may use the pretext of “being rusty in terms of public representation”, she does not need to be asked, throughout our interview, to take the voice of one of her muses – Sonia, Lise, Ginette Reno – from to pronounce his name. An irrepressible talent who will have triumphed over all these years over her great shyness or what she calls a “lack of guts “.
PHOTO ROBERT NADON, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Claudine Mercier co-hosted the Olivier gala with Mario Jean in 2001.
Your journalist points out to him that for a woman who lacked gutsshe is certainly one of the most popular figures of Quebec humor of the 1990s and 2000s. She frowns.
It’s funny, but I never saw myself as a star. In my head, it was always someone else, the star, it was always Lise Dion or Marie-Lise Pilote.
Claudine Mercier
Claudine Mercier has never been the type to rush under the light, but rather one who is pushed towards the stage. It was her friends from Artishows, the vocal group she formed with Chantal Lamarre, Widemir Normil and FM Le Sieur, who insisted that she take part in Cégeps en spectacle in 1980 (she lost in the provincial final to Martine St- Clear).
After studying theater at UQAM, she quickly realized that she didn’t have the patience or the confidence to wait for an audition. She turned to the Just for Laughs School, under the advice of Jean-Marc Parent.
The art of imitation was already, at the time, taken from high, she remembers. “For the other comedians, it was cheesy, easy. Even when I was accepted at the School, I was told that normally, we didn’t accept an imitator, but that since I was a woman, they were going to take a chance with me. »
Am I happier?
Be a woman. In each interview, the proverbial subject of women in humor will have constantly resurfaced, not because its interlocutors cared about fairness, but because the absurd idea that women are intrinsically less funny than men still counted for a lot of followers.
My whole career, I’ve been asked why women are less funny, and when it wasn’t said directly, it was implied. And every time, I felt that the responsibility was put on my shoulders.
Claudine Mercier
If she had to develop a new one-woman-show – she presses the if – it would certainly be about the environment and the Atacama desert in Chile, in which the West pours the excesses of cheap fashion. A citizen concerned about the planet, Claudine Mercier knows that we would all benefit from shedding our load, in the name of the future, and perhaps also our own serenity.
PHOTO ANDRE PICHETTE, PRESS ARCHIVES
Claudine Mercier, on stage, in 2017
” There fast fashion, this is the perfect example of a case that complicates our lives for nothing, she laments. You spend your life wanting to be like everyone else, wanting to have lots of stuff, then you reach 60 and you say to yourself: what am I doing with all this? Does all this really make me happier? »
Silence is turned !
At the Gilles-Vigneault Theater in Saint-Jérôme
From June 23 to August 12