Franck Gastambide is one of the most popular actors of his generation. But, this Friday, February 25, with the release of Tirelessly on Netflix, it is in a register other than that of the comedy in which he made himself known that he will reveal himself to his many admirers. As he has already done in the past by evoking his status of High Intellectual Potential.
Touched by this form of disability, Franck Gastambide returned to the context in which he learned this news. At the time, in 2018, he was going to shoot an episode of Meeting in unknown land, presented by Frédéric Lopez. But the iconic host decided to let him go at the last moment, marking his departure from the show. This abandonment, the one who would be separated from Sabrina Ouazani experienced it very badly: “It’s not easy, I had this feeling of diving into the void, which is not a normal feeling. It was extremely excessive the reaction that I had.“
That’s when he learns to be HPI: “The psychologists said to me: ‘You may not know it but you are part of this family“. However, Franck Gastambide does not like what the image of these words sends back to others. Contrary to what one might think because of the name of the syndrome, being High Intellectual Potential does not mean being smarter than others : “I never talk about it because the word is a bit misleading, ‘High Intellectual Potential’, it means that we may be more intelligent but that’s not so. I suffer from hypersensitivity“.
Franck Gastambide explains that all his emotions are increased tenfold in certain crucial moments of his life: “There are things that affect me that shouldn’t affect me so much, there are things that hurt me that shouldn’t hurt me so much. So it’s a difficult handicap“. On discovering that he had it, Franck Gastambide decided to free speech to help others tame this handicap, far from being insurmountable: “I know there are lots of people who are and don’t know it. When we know it, we can take advantage of it and above all we understand more who we are, we understand more why we are like that“. A speech more than Valid.