Everyone is talking about it | Manon weighs on the peak of the 500th

Raël and his duvet? Guy Fournier’s poop? The incandescent charisma of Jack Layton? Doc Mailloux’s racist statements?

In 20 seasons on Radio-Canada, Everybody talks about it hosted nearly 4,500 guests, who sparked a ton of controversy and filled hundreds of glasses of wine (what are we drinking, Diane?). To mark your 500^e episode, Guy A. Lepage brought together on his circular set around twenty notable faces from the show, including Justin Trudeau, Véronique Cloutier and Thierry Ardisson, who revisit key moments where they laughed, cried and moaned a lot.

This beefy special edition, which was recorded on January 15, will play on Sunday, March 10 at 8 p.m., and director Manon Brisebois will weigh in on the piton as on the first day, September 12, 2004. I saw this Wednesday anniversary episode, interspersed with memorable archives, and it’s very, very good.

First observation: Guy A. Lepage has sported every imaginable haircut in the world, phew. Second observation: Quebec society has evolved enormously in 20 years. Third tip: Everybody talks about itwhich has achieved the title of cult program, remains the high mass of Sunday evenings, even if disgruntled spirits have predicted or wished for its death since its birth.

And whistleblower alert: the host has signed his contract to pilot the 21^e season of Everybody talks about it, which will start next September. So much for the internal poutine.

Creator of this popular television format, Thierry Ardisson is the first to return to the scene of the crime with Guy A. Lepage and Dany Turcotte, who puts on his jester hat again, for one evening only, after resigning with a bang three years ago. years.

At 75, Thierry Ardisson has calmed down and no longer thrives on provocation. He even seemed quite extinct to me. Sitting in front of Guy A. Lepage, Ardisson admits that he would no longer ask former Prime Minister Michel Rocard if “sucking is cheating” and that he would no longer comment on Lara Fabian’s weight loss, which he had judged to be correct, because her breasts had not moved. His words, not mine.

Quickly in the 500^e episode, one of the most odorous controversies of the talk show rises to the surface, that of the poop of Guy Fournier, then president of the board of directors of Radio-Canada. The excerpt replays and shows us a hilarious Serge Lama: “the more he justifies himself, the deeper he sinks,” he says, laughing.

In response to the theories of Guy Fournier who believes he was trapped by Guy A. Lepage to force his resignation, the latter responds that Guy Fournier “got into the poop all by himself”.

Véronique Cloutier was the first local star to sit in one of the white armchairs of Everybody talks about it. She has been there 15 times in 20 years. The person who holds the record for appearances remains political analyst Chantal Hébert, with 18 appearances.

Over the last 20 years, “we have received beautiful humans and a few taouins,” jokes Guy A. Lepage.

The most unpleasant known guests? Actor Romain Duris, who didn’t feel like providing after-sales service for his film Molièrethe author François Weyergans, who refused to sign the rights release papers, as well as Béatrice Dalle, super arrogant and boring, according to the team.

Accompanied by the writer Dany Laferrière, former Prime Minister Pauline Marois revisits the hallucinatory passage of the guru Raël, probably the most spectacular event in the history of Everybody talks about it. The flying saucer landing occurred in the second episode of Lifetime, on Sunday, September 19, 2004.

“He was so crazy. Completely devastated,” recalls Pauline Marois, who was then bothered by members of Raël’s sect for three months. Our cartoonist Serge Chapleau had demonstrated all the ridiculousness of the character by grabbing the bun of his saint, a scene which would no longer happen in 2024, thinks Guy A. Lepage.

For more than two hours, you will also see Régis Labeaume, Ricardo Larrivee, Boucar Diouf, Janette Bertrand, Stéphane Rousseau, the D^D Joanne Liu, Fred Pellerin and Kim Thúy.

I expected more clashes between Richard Martineau and Patrick Lagacé, former co-hosts of the Francs-tireurs who have since had several epic chicanes. It remains polite and rather cold between them. Patrick Lagacé describes their relationship as “critical, but stable”, and Richard Martineau takes up more space than his colleague.

Impossible to receive Christian Bégin without talking to him about his famous declaration of October 10, 2004 about the play of Stéphane Rousseau in Barbarian invasions. “He did a decent job, nothing more,” noted Christian Bégin under the unamused gaze of Rémy Girard. This quote still follows him and Stéphane Rousseau even shows up on set to bury this file once and for all.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau talks about his separation from Sophie Grégoire, with whom he maintains “a great friendship,” and he says his three children are doing well, “but it’s tough.”

Only one person refused to participate in the 500^e of Everybody talks about it : Mario Dumont, who was strongly criticized by Chantal Hébert during a heated fight in March 2007.

Regarding the darker moments of the show, we cannot forget the second visit of Nelly Arcan, in September 2007, which traumatized the author of Whore and of Crazy. She had extracted devastating news, Shamepublished in his collection Burqa of flesh.

Guy A. Lepage had not met the writer, behind the scenes, before the recording. He had no idea of ​​the trouble Nelly Arcan was struggling with. Looking back, the host admits that the team surrounding the author “should never have let her on the set”.

For her part, Nelly Arcan emerged humiliated from this interview. “The judgment of the whole world, reflected by her defeated face, had fallen, that evening, into her neckline. It was as if, in the hollow of her corseted breasts, the oldest story of women had been lodged, that of the examination of their body, that of their shame,” she wrote with her magnificent pen, which we very bored.