For Gilbert Rozon, it is clear that Julie Snyder and Penelope McQuade deliberately tried to harm him and lower him, to make him “despicable” in the eyes of the public.
Posted at 5:00 a.m.
“It was premeditated, it was calculated, it was rehearsed,” he said during an interrogation by videoconference last September, while he was in Europe. This interrogation was conducted as part of the preparation for the lawsuit for damage to his reputation brought by Rozon against the two facilitators. He was then referring to the comments made by the two women in September 2020 during the show The week of the 4 Julies.
On the air, the hosts had discussed their experience with Gilbert Rozon. For the fallen humor mogul, their statements were intended to “harm” him, to “lower” him and “diminish him in public opinion” to make him “despicable”, can we read in the transcript of the interview, obtained by The Press Wednesday and reported earlier by Radio Canada.
The former boss of Just for Laughs, who was accused of sexual misconduct by numerous women in 2017, is demanding $ 450,000 from the hosts for damage to his reputation and for having made remarks he considers defamatory, two weeks before the start of his criminal trial. Julie Snyder and Pénélope McQuade consider, however, that the lawsuit is a tactic that falls under SLAPP, or the fact of taking legal action with the aim of censoring or intimidating others.
It was very good timing to harm me. They come back to the charge to gain publicity or to defame or to harm the trial.
Gilbert Rozon, about Julie Snyder and Pénélope McQuade
Criminally, only one complaint was upheld against Mr. Rozon, that of Annick Charrette. He was acquitted in the fall of 2020. Numerous women filed civil lawsuits, which are still ongoing.
“A little crisis”
During her show, Julie Snyder said she wanted to release her “anger”, returning to events that would have occurred many years ago in Europe. “I would just like to tell Gilbert Rozon that I couldn’t say no to him, because it happened while I was sleeping. »
“I slept in a place where there were people from Just for Laughs, artists, directors, animators, and at one point, everyone left to see the show. I fell asleep, and it happened while I was sleeping,” she added.
During interrogation, Gilbert Rozon denied the charges. He alleges that Julie Snyder would have invited herself to his Paris apartment at the end of the evening. She would have arrived “very lightly” dressed, “almost in pajamas”, said the man, who said he was “surprised” by her outfit.
When she arrived in the apartment, she was in “a little crisis”, since she had just been left by the singer and actor Patrick Bruel, relates Mr. Rozon. She would have indicated that she needed comfort. “I took her in my arms, then she was shaking,” he said.
His brother and his assistant, who were also in the apartment, then joined them in the living room, he said. “The three of us sat with her for a while. Then everyone would have gone to bed in separate bedrooms, he adds.
Following the charges, Pierre-Karl Péladeau allegedly told Mr. Rozon that his ex-wife, Julie Snyder, likes to “play the victim”. “Now, today, a heroic act is to be a victim,” said Mr. Rozon.
No seduction, claims Rozon
Pénélope McQuade alleges that Gilbert Rozon would have followed her into a private toilet when she was a columnist at Hi hello ! and that she was covering the Just for Laughs festival. “Immediately after me, I feel someone coming in. I see the light close and I hear the door lock. And that someone I saw was Gilbert Rozon,” she reported to the Homework in 2017. She says she managed to get out before things got any further.
On the air, on Julie Snyder’s show, the host returned to her story. “In what I experienced, it was not a violent attack. So I managed to get out of it,” she said.
During the second day of interrogation, Rozon strongly denied these accusations. Rather, he says he entered a private toilet at Just for Laughs and saw Pénélope McQuade there “who was leaning over the sink”. He remembers being “uncomfortable” and immediately closing the door. “It’s the only memory I have of having met her in a delicate situation,” he said, adding that he had never “tried to seduce this woman”.
“A ladies’ man”
During the interrogation, Gilbert Rozon confided that when he was younger, he was “a ladies’ man”. “I really like the fairer sex, I have always been surrounded in my offices by women, a lot of women,” he said.
I liked women, indeed, but not to the point that it was an addiction.
Gilbert Rozon
Asked about the #metoo movement, he said he observed that “love was free and different” in the 1960s or 1970s. a woman’s bodice,” he said, adding that with “the countless” anonymous denunciations on Facebook or Twitter, “we are not far from the Middle Ages and pillorying people.”
With Isabelle Ducas and Katia Gagnon, The Press