Just Between You and Me | Nathalie Simard Has Finished Underestimating Herself

In the podcast series Just between you and meartists open the doors to their memories, their thoughts and their dreams, during a non-press interview.

Nathalie Simard wants you to know that if you see her on TV and she seems happy, ” bubbly “, to use her own words, it’s for a simple reason. “I don’t just look it,” she says. “I am, happy.”

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Last December, Pierre Lapointe told us in an interview about his first meeting with Nathalie Simard, in 2023, on his show Two by two gathered togetherbroadcast on ICI Musique. The dandy then recalled the singer’s astonishing and palpable fear of “not being up to it”, which fortunately quickly sublimated into an “interstellar and cosmic” connection between the two artists who seem to have nothing in common.

Was Nathalie Simard, who has been performing professionally since she was 9, really haunted by the fear of not having what it takes? “I often underestimated myself as an artist, because I didn’t grow up being patted on the back. I often felt like a fool,” she confided about this appointment, which she showed up to with a mixture of nervousness and excitement.

“But I had that stress, yes, because I was afraid of looking like a slut! You know, the fear of ridicule!” exclaims the woman who will often mention during this nevertheless luminous interview her regret of not having been able to study for a long time, having instead been propelled too early into the not always wonderful world of showbiz.

A true human jukebox, she will spontaneously sing several songs during our hour of chat, including No need to knock by Jacques Michel, Stay friendtaken from his album At most (1990), Every Time I Look At You of Kiss and The tour of the island by Félix Leclerc, because to “cope with the difficult”, she often took refuge on the island where she grew up – her father was even friends with the author of the Little happiness.

“But you know what? The fear of ridicule, I decided to stop that.” Nodding in front of someone who talks about a subject you know nothing about, pretending that you understand it from A to Z? “I’ve done that a lot in my life and I’ve looked like an idiot sometimes. And those days are over.”

Thank you #metoo

A self-proclaimed eternal positivity – “I can even be annoying” – Nathalie Simard has recently returned to the public eye after many years during which what she calls “her allergy to unhappiness” was not always enough to chase it away.

“I always had a little glimmer of hope, because that’s all I know how to do in life,” she says of what can be called her comeback.

His participation in the reality TV show just over a year ago Get me out of here will certainly have contributed to reminding many Quebecers that Nathalie Simard is something like a member of the family and that we had excluded her for reasons for which she is certainly not responsible.

But it is perhaps more broadly the #metoo movement, as well as all the other shocks of this kind, which will have laid the foundations, for our society, of a better understanding of the life that victims must be able to find.

The #metoo movement has also given us words to talk about these realities as well as the awareness that a victim cannot be reduced to what they have experienced. Nathalie Simard prefers the term “survivor”.

“From 2004 to 2017, I was all alone in carrying this movement forward, being singled out and told that I was fucking crazy,” she recalls. “When #metoo came along, I started to breathe. Finally, I wasn’t alone anymore. For me, it was a great relief.”

Its place in the sun

The simple name of Nathalie Simard is enough in itself to awaken in a whole generation of big kids sweet memories of Professor Cric-Crac-Pot, Beding Bedang and Chibouki – Nathalie Simard was also accompanied in the studio that day by her adorable dog Théo (or Monsieur Théo, if you want to be polite).

Despite a childhood that took place under the spectre of horror, the singer says she manages to evoke without suffering this glorious period of her career as a child with a busy schedule.

If you go to hear her in concert, don’t worry: even if she still has a “little blockage”, Nathalie always draws at least a little from her youth repertoire. “I didn’t do anything wrong, so the material that rocked the childhood of tens of thousands of children is still beautiful. I worked very, very hard, so we can’t put all that aside, let this dark side take up all the space.”

Could her return disturb some people? “Maybe, but I don’t care,” replies the woman who will host the reality TV show on TVA this fall New chance for lovewhich will bring together singles aged 40 to 60. “I have the right to my place in the sun. I was in the shadows for a long time and today, I am happy and I swore to myself that I would never again do what I did not want to do.”