“There are girls I dress who never knew me as a comedian,” laughs Marie-Lise Pilote, who almost completely disappeared after the end of her fourth tour. She has since dedicated herself to her women’s workwear line, Pilote & Filles, the largest of its kind in America. “They tell me things like: I was watching covers ofGirls’ stories the other night. Could you be in there? »
It is therefore by choice that the comedian has been erased. At the time of concluding his last trip to Quebec, which began in 2012, the interpreter of the Wicked and the Daughter of the Islands was increasingly tired of working evenings and weekends. Despite her young age, she then already had more than 30 years of career in the body. “I was longer known than not known,” she says before bursting into her luminous laugh.
“In my first week at Cégep de Jonquière, she recalled recently over tea, I met Dominique Lévesque. He said to me: “Come and see the improvisation” and I didn’t even know what the word “improvisation” meant. The following week, I won the first star. »
She would soon become one of the most popular comedians of the 1990s, performing two tours with Blood Group, four solo, in addition to playing the lead role in a successful film (The ideal man1996), to entertain on the radio and attract millions of viewers thanks to My house Rona at VAT.
PHOTO PIERRE CÔTÉ, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Blood group in 1989
Anyone compiling a list of the five most influential women in the history of Quebec humor could hardly not include Marie-Lise Pilote. And yet, its legacy seems too often obliterated, just like much of the humor of the 1990s, which certainly had its facilities and its blind spots, but without which Quebec laughter would never have become the abundant industry that we knows.
“I think I’ve always been afraid of becoming a has-been,” confides Marie-Lise, 58, recalling one evening at the Capitole de Québec Jean-Guy Moreau, a star impersonator of a certain era, who then set out to win back the public. “He had just come off stage and he had such great sadness in his face. He found it hard. I remember telling myself that I didn’t want to go through this. I have always preferred to leave before being left. »
A particular job
Which doesn’t mean that Marie-Lise Pilote didn’t find her divorce from light difficult, that she didn’t necessarily want to be so radical and immediate. “When I stopped doing shows, I had the impression of disappearing, she regrets, although without self-pity. I imagined that I would continue to be called for something else, as I was called for the 13 years between my third and my fourth show. But no. And it was hard. »
It’s really a special job, because you are always confronted with your past. You turn on the TV, you see shows you’ve done, people you’ve played with. Let’s say it brings you back an ego pretty much when the phone stops ringing.
Marie-Lise Pilote
For comedian Josiane Aubuchon, 36, Marie-Lise Pilote is nothing less than a pioneer. “There is a great chapter in the history of women in humor that belongs to her,” thinks the one who met her when she was part of the comic collective Les Femmelettes. “And I could really understand when Marie-Lise told us that in her time, it was intimidating to go and present your number in front of a gang of boys who stand between them. She wanted to surround herself with women, but there were none. »
PHOTO BY RÉMI LEMÉE, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Marie-Lise Pilote in 2003
Marie-Lise confirms this. “In the middle of humor, I unfortunately did not experience female complicity, and I missed it. When she founded Pilotes & Filles, 14 years ago, she heard the echoes of her own experience in what plumbers and electricians told her.
I understood their language and I knew what they were going through, because I too had experienced it. You don’t have to be sexually harassed or told nonsense every day for it not to be obvious. Never recognizing yourself in the people you work with is hard in the long run.
Marie-Lise Pilote
not bitter
“But I don’t want you to think I’m bitter,” drops Marie-Lise Pilote, which would have been difficult to see her smile, the very image of serenity. “I try more and more to be in gratitude, because it tastes good,” she sums up. And in sharing too, through a project such as the Pilote & Filles scholarship, which rewards female students enrolled in training leading to the exercise of a traditionally male profession.
PHOTO OLIVIER JEAN, THE PRESS
Marie-Lise Pilote
Every morning, the entrepreneur calls her 87-year-old mother in a different accent. “And every time, she starts laughing. I know it’s a good start to the day and when I hang up, I’m like, “Ah, I did someone good.” “His nasty, she? She is now a witch character, which she brings to life for her boyfriend’s grandchildren, who are also in a way her own. “There are years when we define ourselves a lot by work, she says, then one day you realize that there is not only that in life. »
The day after our meeting, Marie-Lise Pilote sent me a long e-mail, in which I read less the fear of having been misunderstood than the desire to tell me as clearly as possible that her joy today is that she creates on a daily basis – running her business, in her country yard, in the kitchen – as well as this feeling of being useful to her loved ones and the women who wear her clothes.
She specifies that the “maybe” that she had offered to the inevitable question of a possible return to the boards is in fact a rather firm “no”. “I think that if I enjoyed playing on stage so much, it was to be totally in the present moment, she writes. Today, I realize that I took full advantage of these moments and that it is up to me to continue playing to be totally present. »