Put an end to controversy and rumour. This is surely what Pierre Lescure decided to do this Saturday, January 21 with our colleagues from “Parisien”. Claire Chazal having obviously not digested her forced departure from France 2 and the cessation of her program “Passage des Arts”, for lack of audience, the columnist of “C à vous”, and former president of the Cannes Film Festival, has preferred to break the silence. Because it is he who will officiate on Sunday evening in the hut held for three seasons by his colleague. Last December, the former presenter of the JT of TF1 expressed himself thus in “Télérama”: It is brutal. And it’s a great feeling of injustice. I absolutely did not see the blow coming (…) I dispute the argument of the audiences, because they are in the average of the past season. The management had renewed the program at the start of the school year, until June 2023, in full knowledge of the facts.
#Unpublished Sunday at 11:05 p.m. on @france2tv : “Beau geste”Your new cinema program presented by @pierrelescureInterviews with actors/directors of the moment, cinema news, behind the scenes of filming… Discover unseen images! Produced by @Black_Dprodpic.twitter.com/ywpo6ZIW86
— Mediawan France (@MediawanFr) January 17, 2023
“I don’t want to stop at all, I confirm”
However, since then, the battle has raged between the host and France Télévisions. Feeling between a rock and a hard place, Pierre Lescure preferred, while obviously praising his new program, to be very clear about this conflict. In the Ile-de-France daily, he declares: “I understand that she is bitter but her campaign is still a bit excessive. At first, I didn’t even know if my show would be on France 2, France 3 or France 5… I found it a little inflated that it became a great national cause in her eyes when she said neither hello nor thank you to Laurent Goumarre, whom she herself had replaced at the time (early 2016)” , he said frankly. And especially referring to “Entrée Libre” which the ex-companion of PPDA had inherited in January 2016 on France 5. Even more sympathetic, the 66-year-old journalist also deplored the fact of having been replaced by an elderly man 77, eleven years older than her. To which Pierre Lescure replies: “I am as old as I am, I am eleven years older than him. I have no desire to stop at all, I confirm. (…) I am in good health,” he asserts, a philosopher.
For the time being, we will still be able to discover, this Sunday, January 22, at 11 p.m. on France 2, a brand new program devoted to cinema, a concept which, according to the France Télévisions website, “ aims to go where the pulse of the seventh art beats, in France and abroad. Meetings with the actors, shootings and cinema news…”. In the absence of a “Passage des Arts”, a real pass of arms…
See also: Sophie Davant “second choice” for France 2 and “Deal concluded”?
VF