After playing Vivaldo, his first youth role, in the Canadian radio series The ingenious Don Quixote more than four decades ago, Normand Brathwaite is today Captain Goulache in Dragilion, the new daily children’s show from Télé-Québec. Prisoner of a bad fate in a fantastic universe, the character he plays must therefore count on the children Oli, Emma, Fabio and Rachel to free him. Except here… Captain Goulache is a ghost who wanders around his old property now known as the Skeleton Museum.
“I wanted a Captain Goulache a little bit like Pee-wee Herman,” explains Normand Brathwaite, reached by telephone. And since he plays a ghost and the host and actor admits to having never seen one, he chose to give free rein to his imagination, to do everything provided that the result on the screen is not linear . “Pee-wee Herman was very funny, but he always had a weird side. You wondered which door he was going to go through even if you didn’t feel threatened,” he adds. It is therefore in this spirit that Normand Brathwaite had fun making his Captain Goulache appear and disappear according to a “very, very, very poetic” text.
“When I was asked to do Dragilion, I found it interesting that my ghost was only seen by children. » Ready to take up the challenge, Normand Brathwaite was not impressed by the rumor going around that filming with very young people would be complicated. “You get attached to the little ones kids. They know their text,” he emphasizes. And to continue, his voice full of mischief: “If you ask them in an interview what it’s like to play with Normand Brathwaite, they will tell you “it’s funny because when he makes a mistake in his text, he says it”. And they don’t have the right to swear! »
Melancholic?
After a summer spent filming the first season of Dragilion with the emerging actors, Normand Brathwaite evokes a great kindness within the team. “They’re soft sets, obviously, because they’re kids,” he points out. He also remembers the directing trio, formed by Simon Barrette, Laurent Beauchemin and Karine Ouellette, and their gift for directing the small troupe. “I learned a lot from watching them. Sometimes you don’t have time to put flowers into your sentences, but you don’t talk to a child the way you talk to a more experienced actor. »
While we’re talking about memories, what about those that go back to the 1980s and the period Pop Pumpkin And Short circuit for Normand Brathwaite? “Everyone was there: Denis Bouchard, Robert Lepage, etc. The song Metal Tears came out of there. We had a lot, a lot of fun to do that! » But don’t talk to him about nostalgia. The past is in the past, after all… or rather, until drag artist Barbada stepped in and asked him, much to his surprise, to revive the hit at the start of the year in his musical show aimed at 6-8 year olds on ICI TOU.TV.
“What was special about Barbada was that I came from a very straight, well serious, without knowing what awaited me,” he confides. Two beats, three moves, it didn’t take much for Normand Brathwaite to “get a grip” and offer a television moment that will immediately go down in posterity. According to him, Barbada — and why not Dragilion ? — brings back into fashion this “madness in children’s shows that we had lost”.
Far from improvising as a specialist in children’s programs, Normand Brathwaite regrets that we, at a given moment, moved from programs “which were on the verge of being surreal, very commedia dell’arte” to somewhat youthful content. too didactic. Quietly, however, the flame of extravagance seems to be rekindled. “We see the characters come back with costumes, we start to have a minimum of special effects which are really interesting, etc. I like this magical side, it’s fun! »
“If you look at a child sitting on a fence looking at the clouds, the last thing you want to do is disturb them. Children have a special world,” he finally sighs in a dreamy tone. As for a potential sequel to Dragilion ? ” I would like that ! » thinks the actor. “I can’t wait to know if it comes back, because then I’m going to keep my summer [2024] to do that,” he promises. Sworn, spat?