When she had the genius idea of calling her show Ball, Michelle Desrochers knew she had just found a title that would leave no one indifferent. That said, this first one-woman show refers more to a ball of wool than to a vulgar way of talking about the female sex. Like a knitting ball, the 29-year-old comedian wants to be warm and comforting on stage, which does not sometimes prevent her from tackling quite charged subjects, such as self-acceptance or hypersexualization.
“ Ball, it also refers to craftsmanship, to the way in which we knit a comedy show. There is something very artisanal in the job we do,” adds Michelle Desrochers from the outset in an interview with THE Dutybefore apologizing for his slight delay to our meeting.
We will forgive her the wait without flinching, because we know to what extent Michelle Desrochers is a busy woman with the launch of her first show, one of the most anticipated of the fall. In fact, since leaving the National School of Humor in 2019, the projects have followed one another.
Columnist at the Evening is (still) youngthen to Good evening !, she participated in 2020 on the show The next stand-upbefore taking part in the second season of the reality show Big Brother Celebrities. The production also portrayed her during editing as the villain of her vintage, which could have derailed her early career.
“I didn’t suffer from it at all. When I arrived at the house and saw that I was going to be locked up with 15 nice people, I said to myself that I would have to take on the role of the mean girl, otherwise it was going to be boring. show-there ! The people who were likely to like me understood, I think. The best compliment I received when I left was: “I hated you because you were hypocrite, but you still made me laugh.” »
Obsession
The public will ultimately not have confined her to her villainous character. Michelle Desrochers is one of the headliners of the Noovo channel this fall with the quiz game Paid taxi, which she co-hosts. In short, few emerging comedians can boast of having experienced such a rise in barely four years of career.
“I’m not afraid of being a flash in the pan. I am well surrounded and I believe that it will continue,” hopes with a certain candor the one who could see herself performing on stage all her life. “But when people ask me what my main ambition is, of course it’s not professional, it’s personal. I dream of meeting Prince Charming with whom I would have children,” she says.
Ambitious, Michelle Desrochers is still a little bit ambitious. Obviously; You don’t present your first solo show before your 30s without having a crazy desire to succeed. For her, it was even an obsession: “I talk a lot about obsession in my show. My obsession with food, among other things. But I think in general, all comedians are obsessed people. There are some who are obsessed with saying the wrong thing just to provoke. There are others who are obsessed with becoming stars quickly. I was more obsessed with performing every day to improve myself. »
Aim for the summit
This desire to surpass herself comes from childhood. Michelle Desrochers grew up in Châteauguay, in a rather wealthy environment. His mother (specialist doctor) and father (manager at a renowned private college) greatly valued performance and success. “At home, we had to bring back the grades. When we arrived with a 96%, my mother didn’t hesitate to say that she had gotten a 98. We were in all the competitions. We were pushed a lot,” says the comedian, who does not give the impression of being very traumatized by it.
His parents will, all in all, accept his decision, made at university, to enroll in the baccalaureate in literature, which is not, however, the field with the most opportunities. “I wanted to become a literature teacher to make jokes in class. Looking back, I realize that it didn’t make much sense,” she admits with a laugh.
Then, during a tournament with her improvisation team in France, she felt an almost Christ-like call telling her that she was on the wrong track, that the stage was her calling. “I told myself that I had to earn my living every day with art,” recalls Michelle Desrochers, who takes a sarcastic tone when telling this anecdote, realizing the absurdity of the thing herself.
The second sex
Still, she abandoned her studies in literature to enroll at the National School of Humor. However, she does not refrain from publishing a book one day, she who remains a great reader, readily quoting Simone de Beauvoir, Marguerite Yourcenar or even Nelly Arcan. Writers who shaped her feminist beliefs.
However, she never felt the desire to give a strong political content to her first show by denouncing patriarchy with a raised fist. Already, in 2021, in this newspaper, Michelle Desrochers expressed all her disdain for left-wing humor that is too committed and falls flat.
“I still think that without intending to do so, I am an activist on stage to a certain extent. When you’re a woman in humor, and a plump one at that, you inevitably are, because what you represent bothers some people, especially men. So no, the word “feminism” is not brandished in the show, but it is present in subtext when I talk about hypersexualization or when I denounce the violence of women’s magazines,” she notes.
The weight of appearances
Michelle Desrochers talks a lot about self-acceptance in this first show. The battle of a lifetime for a hyperphagic person, who ingests mountains of food, alone, during periods of stress. Since she was young, she has suffered judgment from others because of frequent fluctuations in her weight. Today she strives to ignore sideways glances, even if she lives in an environment where she is constantly reminded of her appearance.
“When I started in comedy, I didn’t think it was still such a superficial environment. The first time I participated in a TV show, I was fitted with a girdle. But the two guy comedians I was with also had a belly. But we never thought about putting a girdle on them,” she denounces, emphasizing that there is still a long way to go to achieve equality between men and women.
At least humor perhaps allows us to get closer to it.