Bell Center | There is a lot of love in the jokes of Pierre-Yves Roy-Desmarais

Mick Jagger took control of Pierre-Yves Roy-Desmarais. At least that’s what he told us in a sports brasserie adjoining the Bell Centre, where the tour will conclude next Thursday that has raised him to the rank of the most popular Quebec comedians, a status he is still trying to tame.

Pierre-Yves Roy-Desmarais found the best joke. Which ? He won’t tell us right away. Pierre-Yves Roy-Desmarais has found the best joke : this is the title of the 255^e and final performance of his tour Jokes Hat Mom Magic Pianoof which he will offer a deluxe version at the Bell Center next week.

But the further the conversation goes, the clearer it becomes that the best joke consists of the very idea of ​​presenting a show at the Bell Centre.

We are almost there, seated as we are at La Cage adjoining the home of the Bleu-blanc-rouge, in front of a pint of one of these beers drawing a strange pride from its unalterable coldness. We would have liked to walk through the doors of the arena itself, but a former star of the series Degrassi was there that day. The comedian looks like a big shot: “Listen, we can go there later if you want, I just have to text it, Drake. »

Pierre-Yves Roy-Desmarais is of course not the first comedian to utter this sentence – “Imagine if we did that at the Bell Centre! ” – just for Laughs. The project of transposing into such a vast enclosure an art form that can amply be satisfied with a microphone and a stool borders, a priori, on a ridicule similar to that of a Cirque du Soleil production in a pocket theater.

But Pierre-Yves Roy-Desmarais, whose performances resemble long sessions of CrossFit, punctuated with jokes, is in the current Quebec comic ecosystem the one whose gestures on fast forward, the intensity of a sprinter and the facies of plasticine justify the most such amphitheater.

“The more the months passed, the more the show became like a sports performance, he agrees. At first, I played him a lot in naivety, in the wonder of being there, but the character has gained a lot of confidence: I kick the air, I think I’m good, I make fun of the public. It’s like Mick Jagger has taken over the show. »

If he likes to play the arrogant so much, it’s because Piouaille really has nothing kid kodak on whose skin the flashes have the effect of a balm. During his first moments aboard the show-business bus, the twenty-something was more spontaneously offended by the princely attitude of some of his colleagues (in the broad sense) “who think that everything is their due, who take it for granted that everyone knows them, who claim respect from us Muggles”.

“And today, it just makes me laugh,” he observes. Arrogance couldn’t be further from me going to the convenience store to buy milk. I’m happy to do a show at the Bell Center, but there’s a part of me that finds it really funny to think I’m a kingpin. »

Accessible and refined

Pierre-Yves Roy-Desmarais is a popular humorist; writing this sentence seems as relevant as telling you that the sky is blue. “But my relationship to the popular word, I’m working on that. It still has something a little pejorative in my eyes, ”says the one who won three statuettes at the most recent Gala Les Olivier, including the Olivier of the year, and who is preparing, we remind him, to play at the Bell Center, not exactly a confidential room.

This is because, although today he is one of the most prominent funny people of his generation, Pierre-Yves Roy-Desmarais descends from Denis Drolet and Chick’n Swell, comedians whose success is more of a cult order than a mass phenomenon.

“I ask myself: can my humor be a popular restaurant, but where chefs like to eat, an accessible but refined experience? “, he explains before swallowing one of his words, for fear of passing for one of these Narcissus of which he likes to play the head. “Not in the sense that my humor is refined…but in the sense that I’ve always had this desire to make people laugh who made me laugh as well.” »

The people who made him laugh? During a recent visit by Claude Meunier to one of his rooms, Pierre-Yves, a fervent disciple of Paul and Paul, will have spent the whole evening, on stage, asking himself: “Do you find that good in that? That, do you find that a loser? »

“And after the show, as soon as he came out of the dressing room, after he came to say hello to me, I kept telling Sam [Boisvert, son ami qui assure sa première partie] : “Do you realize it was Claude Meunier? Do you realize it was Claude Meunier?” »

In order to appease this furtive fear that the big spotlights do not correspond to his deep nature, Pierre-Yves therefore repeats himself, thinking of Ding and Dong or at The little life, “that there is something beautiful when everyone embarks on delirium”.

With love

Last March, while picking up one of his trophies bearing the image of Olivier Guimond, Pierre-Yves Roy-Desmarais launched on the podium that it is “super important to encourage young people who want to make jokes even if it doesn’t look like a lucrative path”.

He knows that the confidence his parents have invested in him remains one of his most powerful tools. “What makes me never have a plan B is that they never doubted me,” he says. I don’t think I was the most talented around, I wasn’t the best, but I never doubted that I belonged. I have talented friends whom I would like to give this confidence to. Want to shoot a sketch? OK, call so-and-so to borrow his camera, call me, I’ll come and do the sound. Me, when I was doing that, I was never afraid of disturbing anyone. »

At the heart of an industry where artistic considerations sometimes give way to less noble economic ones, Pierre-Yves Roy-Desmarais also hopes to be able to continue to consider his career as a creator, first and foremost, rather than as the manager of an SME.

I like it, the jokes : this is the leitmotif of Pierre-Yves Roy-Desmarais’ show, which he will present next Thursday. “Ever since I was little, I have loved jokes and it is precisely because humor is a business that I try never to forget to do my jokes with love. When people make jokes with love, it makes all the difference. »

Pierre-Yves Roy-Desmarais has found the best jokeJuly 27 at 8 p.m. at the Bell Center