Anne-Élisabeth Bossé | Open doors

On the stage of the Vieux Clocher de Magog, in mid-October, Anne-Élisabeth Bossé is holding a small notebook in her hand. She will not consult him once, during the hour and the dust that lasts her first one woman show, set to the quarter turn. It’s a spare wheel, a buoy, just in case …

Marc Cassivi
Press

“I no longer need it,” she told me in an interview, a few days later, in a café on Bernard Street in Montreal. I can swim. It is my last line of security. Anyway, I don’t even open it anymore. I don’t use it anymore. It’s like an extension of myself! ”

The actress is running her comedy show, Jealous, which she has featured two dozen times since July. “Usually, I’m in a gang. There, I am alone on stage. It is not something natural! », She said to the audience of the Vieux Clocher, after entering the scene to the sound of catchy music.

We knew her in the theater, in the cinema, on television, in particular in the series Black sequence, The Simones and The countries above. “What has really been my launching pad is Imaginary lovers by Xavier Dolan, she said. It gave me access to leading roles. »She delivered in vignettes the reflections of a young woman obsessed with her ex in this 2010 film starring in particular Monia Chokri, who directed her in My brother’s wife, noticed at the Cannes Film Festival in 2019.

Today, not only the graduate of the Conservatory of dramatic art (in 2007) obtains leading roles, but she is also omnipresent on our screens. These days, we can see her in the cinema, as a single mother workaholic in Brain Freeze, environmental zombie movie, and in A revision in anthropology teacher at CEGEP whose ex (Patrice Robitaille), professor of philosophy, failed a Muslim student because she cited the Koran in a dissertation.

She wouldn’t have been comfortable participating in A revision if changes had not been made to the scenario. She completely trusted the filmmaker Catherine Therrien, whom she knows well, to bring the necessary nuances. “There are actresses who refused the role before me, because they feared that the film would appear Islamophobic. On first reading I told myself I couldn’t do this. I did not endorse that speech. ”

Without necessarily espousing the convictions of a character, it was important for her to be able to justify and defend her choice. In the captivating series Plan B, Anne-Élisabeth Bossé plays the main role of a policewoman caught in a gear created by a feminicide.

To prepare for this demanding role, she drew heavily on her own experiences. “ Plan B, it’s all me, she said. It’s all my emotions, it’s all my heart. There is a lot of me in there. Daughter of a former police officer, the actress says she understood better the work that her father was doing, an internal investigation inspector now retired. “My father was still severe. There were rules with us. There was a certain authority. In the family home where she was raised, in Sorel-Tracy, “it was law and order,” she says.

Anxiety and insecurity

In her solo show, Anne-Élisabeth Bossé opens up a lot, in particular about her anxiety, her insecurity and her childhood wounds.

“I wanted to please very quickly in life. I got that stick in the wheel very quickly. I didn’t take advantage of the freedom and carefree childhood. I wasn’t wondering if I was going to have fun doing things, but how to do them well, to match the expectations of others. I thought no one would love me anymore otherwise. I put a lot of it on the tomato. “

At the heart of his insecurities, there is that of no longer working and that suddenly everything stops. She talks about it several times during the interview. However, she is at the top of her game, at 37 years old. An extremely talented actress, who has shown that she can play anything. An “atypical” beauty – the word is from her – which is distinguished by its original play proposals.

“When you don’t meet beauty standards, it’s going to be longer before you poke.” It’s okay to say it! “It’s a statement in the tone of her show, of a frontal honesty, built around the recurring theme of jealousy,” a fairly extensible concept, “she says. Her solo was born from a proposal by producer François Rozon, the day after a Carte Blanche evening that she hosted at the Just for Laughs Festival in 2019 (and in which her lover, comedian Guillaume Pineault participated).

Jealous was written by six hands, with comedian Suzie Bouchard and director Frédéric Blanchette, who directed it to the theater in Obsession with beauty and Consent (two recurring themes in the characters she embodies). “There are doctored realities, there are stories from other authors that I fictionalized to make them my own. But it’s a real feeling that I have, ”she says.

Anne-Élisabeth Bossé called on author Simon Cohen to tighten up the show and extend a helping hand to the general public.

Clémence DesRochers was part of the audience for one of Magog’s two shows. She visited the actress after the performance, which of course flattered her. Then she told him that her monologue was the kind of text… maybe she would have preferred to read. She laughs at this funny “compliment”. “She wanted to be nice, I’m sure, but I wondered what that said about my delivery!” It’s true that I go fast, because I love this feat, but sometimes people can miss pieces of it! ”

This spectacle, she is aware, is the “biggest risk” she has taken so far in her career. ” It was not necessary ! she said laughing. But at the same time, it was the logical progression of what I had sown. I better go where it is difficult. The challenge is great, but the satisfaction is also great. When the fire breaks, it’s so rewarding! ”

For an excerpt from her monologue, she was inspired by a conversation she had on motherhood with a listener, while she co-hosted the Rouge FM morning show.

“It changed me, doing radio for four years. When I left the Conservatory, I thought I just had to do the stage. I was always afraid that it would close doors for me, to be versatile. But ultimately, the doors communicate. I’ll be a lot less stressed about doing theater after that, if I do! ”

Questions about motherhood occupy a prominent place in Jealous. “I have the impression, when you have no children, that you are in the waiting room of life. That we are adults-children. It’s so clear when you have kids: you have a car, you go to Costco, you follow the schedule. When you’re in my situation, it looks like you’re in limbo, socially. It is true that that makes me complex. I would find it easier to have had a very clear call. I don’t even know how I feel about it yet. I would have to plug in! ”

In her show, she is ironic about these mothers who constantly tell nulliparas (women who have not given birth) that they “cannot understand”. “At the same time, I secretly think I judge girls like me! I perceive in them a form of selfishness. I hate to admit it, but it’s stronger than me. I’m like, “It doesn’t have to be someone extremely warm. She doesn’t have to be good with other people’s children either. It has to be self-centered. ” I’m not proud to think that! ”

This unvarnished franchise is a reflection of the words she delivers on stage, as close as possible to her own personality. As she talks a lot about anxiety and insecurity, she says she feels more serene than ever. “You have to believe that my therapy worked! I am finally reaping the fruits of the difficult years when I had to ask myself questions. ”

She quotes on this subject the late actress Carrie Fisher, who would have said: “ Take your broken heart, make it into art (Take your broken heart and make it into art). “I have been through tough things, which I am not ready to talk about. I have experienced difficult grief. Maybe that’s why I work so hard. It’s part of my insecurities, ”she said.

“But there are doors that have opened, the light has entered. Things are starting to heal and that’s what I taste like, 37 years old. I, who was so afraid of aging, finally taste it. I will soon drop my little notebook and swim alone in life, not afraid of a tile falling on my head. I assume myself, I belong to myself and I open the door to the world. ”

Anne-Élisabeth Bossé is running on November 12 at the Pauline-Julien room and on November 18 at the Désilets room of Marie-Victorin college. The media premiere of Jealous is scheduled for 1^er March 2022 at Théâtre Maisonneuve at Place des Arts.