The story of Le Splendid began in the 1970s when Christian Clavier, Gérard Jugnot, Thierry Lhermitte and their friends had the idea of creating their own café-theatre after being kicked out of the place they were renting. From there, they embarked on a whole new adventure by purchasing an old banana ripening plant. In order to finance the work, the band accepted small roles in the cinema as well as in advertisements. They then left their mark thanks to the unforgettable saga of Tanned.
Forty years after the start of this adventure, the troupe continues to deliver anecdotes and secrets that fans did not know at the time, whether about cult scenes or the story behind Marie-Anne Chazel’s fake breasts.
A forced eviction?
See also: Thierry Lhermitte discusses Josiane Balasko
At the time, the Splendid actors made a pact: part of their fees received from their small jobs were put back into the pot dedicated to financing the work. Gérard Jugnot was one of the luckiest since he received a lot of requests and offers. Which was not the case for Valérie Mairesse. Along came a proposal that changed his life. “It turns out that while we were doing the work, Agnès Varda presented me with the screenplay for One Sings, The Other Not,” she remembered in One day, one destiny this Friday July 7, 2023.
However, Valérie Mairesse hesitated for a long time before accepting, as she revealed to Laurent Delahousse: “At the beginning, I told him: ‘Well no, I can’t do cinema, because we haven’t finished the work on a theater that we’re doing and then we’re going to put on a play. ‘ She put the script in my hands, she told me: ‘You’re going to read this script and then when you’ve read it, you’ll tell me if you still want to go and do stupid things with your friends.’
To replace her during her filming, Valérie Mairesse calls on Josiane Balasko. But this decision will cause him to lose his place within the Splendid. “I’m a girl so people don’t tell me: ‘Come back later’, they tell me: ‘If you go to make your film, you don’t come back’”, she said sorry. Finally, Bruno Moynot will recover the shares of Valérie Mairesse when she leaves.
J.G.