About Anthony marks a pivotal moment for Cathleen Rouleau: a first series as an author and above all, a first leading role as an actress. One would think that after having carried out a project at arm’s length to get out of a difficult period, the comedian would like to take advantage of the spotlight to boost his career, but no. After 10 minutes of conversation, she even launches a sentence that we rarely hear in an interview: “I don’t want to talk about myself. »
Cathleen Rouleau does not want to pour out because she wants to promote the “opening message” ofAbout Anthony, a semi-autobiographical comedy-drama that chronicles the daily life of Julie, an actress who falls in love with Marc (Claude Legault), a show producer who is raising his severely handicapped son. Club illico’s offering is directly inspired by the career of Cathleen Rouleau, who forms a couple with businessman Sylvain Parent-Bédard, president and founder of Agence ComediHa! and father of Antoine, a teenager with multiple disabilities, autism, intellectual disability, non-verbal and epileptic.
The 10-episode series shows how the young woman manages her new chaotic daily life, almost entirely articulated around Antoine (who plays himself on screen), and how she finds her place within a woven in-laws family. made up of a hyper-curious youngest son (Édouard-B. Larocque), a grandmother with ADHD of the verbomotor type (Micheline Bernard), two uncles from the antipodes (Sylvain Marcel and Hugues Frenette) and an ex- spouse perfect in every way (Fanny Mallette).
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Antoine Parent-Bedard in About Anthony
“I know it’s my face that we see, but that’s not what you have to remember, says Cathleen Rouleau between two bites of salad. I want to touch people. I want them to see Antoine, to see the story of a family. I want them to be turned upside down, knocked down, shaken. I want them to be transformed. »
Disabled people exist, cuddle! We need to talk about it more. They must be able to live with us. As a society, we are not organized to support vulnerable people. Not enough, at least.
Cathleen Roll
broken momentum
Although she prefers to direct the discussion towards Antoine, Cathleen Rouleau agrees to open up, with generosity, it should be specified, about herself. About Anthony evokes it a few times through the character of Julie during the first episodes: things were not always easy for the comedian, especially when she left Montreal – and her longtime boyfriend – to Quebec and Sylvain Parent-Bédard.
A graduate of the Cégep de Saint-Laurent in dramatic art, Cathleen Rouleau has played in half a dozen television commercials, landed roles in a few fiction series and obtained contracts as a columnist and host, but the momentum she felt since leaving the National School of Humor in 2006 broke. And quietly, the phone stopped ringing. “Every year, I did Le Grand Rire, the galas… I did a lot of stage in Montreal… But when I started going out with Sylvain [Parent-Bédard], everything strangely stopped. It was hard, all that. »
PHOTO IVANOH DEMERS, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Cathleen Rouleau in 2011
Cathleen Rouleau says she then slowly “detached herself from the middle”. Disillusioned, but determined to take charge of her destiny, the jack-of-all-trades then pursued, in 2018 and 2019, a training in screenwriting, during which she embarked on the writing ofAbout Anthonyafter throwing away his previous project, a series called The Show Must Go On. “It was about me and my career issues. But it was not important. I thought there wasn’t a lot of material. And then, who cares about someone who is trying to break through. »
The creation of’About Anthony came “more naturally”. “I had stories in front of my eyes every day. Sometimes it’s absurd, it’s funny, it’s touching… I had to talk about it. »
not bitter
Cathleen Rouleau insists: she feels no bitterness towards the comedy industry. The look she poses there is only less “innocent” than before. “I arrived in humor with a lot of naivety, she admits. I was very “everyone is beautiful, everyone is nice”. And indeed, humor is a beautiful big family, but it’s also a beautiful big hungry family. We all need to eat, to live. But we are quickly forgotten. Things are going fast, fast, fast. As soon as we disappear a little bit, someone else takes our place.
“I no longer wanted to play this game of social networks, videos… I didn’t want to dive into the arena to say: ‘Look at me! Look at me!” she continues. I wanted to work, but I didn’t want to do anything on the internet so that I would be noticed and, in the end, someone would hire me. I wanted to massage my project, knit it, refine it. I wanted to build something. »
True from false
Cathleen Rouleau still finds it hard to believe thatAbout Anthony has rallied such big names, from the director Podz (19-2, Mafia Inc.) to actors. She also names her script-editor, Benoit Pelletier, from whom the soap opera’s “sensitivity” emanates. “It’s Formula 1. When you’re nobody and you see all these people mobilizing around your project, you go: ‘Wow!’ »
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Cathleen Rouleau and Claude Legault in About Anthony
To keep a part of mystery, Cathleen Rouleau refuses to dissect each scene ofAbout Anthony separating the true from the false. She reveals, however, that an employee at the counters of a Quebec fair actually turned away his family for 30 minutes because he refused to consent to the fact that Antoine was really handicapped without being able to consult official papers. “They ended up letting us in, saying: ‘It’s good for today, but next time…’ And Sylvain replied: ‘There won’t be, next time!’ »
And like Julie with Marc in the first episode, Cathleen Rouleau had no idea who Sylvain Parent-Bédard was the first time she met him. “I was at a gala after party at the Grand Rire de Québec, he sits next to me, we talk about the show, about humor… After an hour and a half of conversation, I ask: “What are you doing? just in the festival?” And he answers: “The festival belongs to me.” »
The first season ofAbout Anthony is offered on Club illico.