Lise Dion officially bows out. His retirement, announced two years ago, did not go as planned. The heart attack she suffered on November 3, just before going on stage, forces her today to cancel the last dates of her tour, even if she is getting better. She will also speak on this subject in a documentary broadcast Monday on TVA. Five months earlier, the comedian had also confided with complete transparency to Duty.
During this interview, which took place barely two days before she suffered her illness, Lise Dion agreed to come back without tongue in cheek on her extraordinary, sometimes bumpy, journey. That of a single mother in her late thirties, waitress in a Dunkin’ Donuts, who becomes a comedy megastar. A story told a thousand times in the media like a fairy tale, even if the reality is a little more complex.
“Clemence [DesRochers] and Yvon [Deschamps] changed Quebec with their humor. I don’t have that pretension at all. The only legacy I hope to have left is to have given guts to women,” observes Lise Dion when asked what her meteoric social rise inspires in her.
” Of guts », Lise Dion had it in any case when one evening when she was working at the Dunkin’ in Brossard, she recognized among her customers Yves Rousseau, who was the host of Lundis des Ha! Ha! She then decides to tackle it head on.
“I had just taken theater classes, but it didn’t work out that well. I was told that I should try my hand at stand-up comedy, but I didn’t know how to become a stand-up comedian. I thought it took at least a CEGEP. It was Yves Rousseau who told me that I just needed to write a number, that I had to be able to do a number with my waitress anecdotes. »
From there was born the famous number with which she stood out at the Just for Laughs festival in 1991. But to conclude that she became the star she is today from that moment would be hasty. Lise Dion continued to struggle until the launch of her first solo show, in 1997. Having to provide for her two children, she took time before permanently putting away her Dunkin’ uniform to devote herself fully to humor .
Make your place, keep it
Fortunately, in her early days, she was able to count on the comedian Roméo Pérusse, who hired her on his projects when she was struggling to make ends meet. The host Jean-Pierre Coallier was also one of his pygmalions. She will never forget the precious advice he gave her at the time when she was one of the collaborators in the talk show late evening Ad Lib.
“I kept saying I was no good. One day, he leaned against me on the set and firmly put me in my place. He told me: “Lise, if you’re here, it’s because people think you’re good, so stop saying that right away.” Having Jean-Pierre Coallier tell me that was enough to give me the confidence I needed to continue,” she remembers, with gratitude.
It was Yves Rousseau who told me that I just needed to write a number, that I had to be able to do a number with my waitress anecdotes.
Not everyone has been so benevolent in the show business industry. Before becoming the woman with 1.3 million tickets sold, it was already said about her that she was too old and too fat to make it. She was also threatened with tearing up her contract if she couldn’t perform, two minutes before going on stage, when she was already consumed by stress.
“As my neighbor, who is a farmer, once told me: “showbiz is just beautiful from the sidelines”. He is absolutely right. We agree that it is not a very frank environment. We are all in competition. It’s impossible to have twenty real friends in this environment,” says Lise Dion, who has had her fair share of pettiness and betrayals in her 35-year career.
Woman in humor
Of all the nastiness she has heard since her debut, she has a particularly bitter memory of what an author said to her after her triumph at the Les Olivier Gala in 2002, when she won four statuettes for her second solo show.
“He came to congratulate me and, afterwards, he let me know that I was lucky that Patrick Huard or Louis-José were not nominated against me. I found it so insulting! What is it, because I’m a woman and I’m older, I wouldn’t have deserved to win? » said Lise Dion, angrily.
The 68-year-old comedian is delighted that today women are taking up more and more space in humor. But for years, they could be counted on the fingers of one hand. “At least I was plump, so not really Gilbert Rozon’s type,” she quips with her trademark retort.
When you think about it, her physique and her age will sometimes have been obstacles, but sometimes also assets in this still very macho environment that was humor in the early 1990s. The other comedians saw in her a friend, a mother even, rather than a girl to seduce.
“It helped me initially. When we did galas and I wasn’t known, they would come to my dressing room to ask me if they were well dressed. They didn’t see me as a threat. But when I started selling tickets, no one came to my dressing room anymore. They understood that we were in competition,” relates Lise Dion, without bitterness however.
Class Defector
Life changes completely with success. With money too. Especially when we have always lived in precariousness. “I have been short of money my whole life. The first time I went to a restaurant to eat seafood was with my ex. I was starting to be known. I must have been 39 years old. I remember asking him if there were bones in the shrimp. To tell you how much I had experienced nothing in my life! » says Lise Dion, who laughs about it in hindsight.
With money, Lise Dion had to learn to surround herself well, not to trust just anyone. And sometimes, to say no to the people around you. It goes to show that we sometimes find ourselves quite alone when we arrive at the top of the pyramid. Wealth isolates, certainly, but certainly not as much as poverty. The comedian knows something about it.
Even though the entertainment industry has sometimes proven to be ruthless, Lise Dion has never felt any nostalgia for the days when she served fruit bats with honey and strawberry fritters. “The money keeps you from sweating all the same. It gives you the freedom to be able to leave when you are no longer happy,” she said last November, at precisely a moment when she felt free to leave the stage.