What is Katherine Levac proud of? Of his children? Yes of course. But Katherine Levac is also proud to have learned to say no, she who has long struggled to decline an invitation. But never mind, the comedian has agreed to be the first episode of this new podcast series.
In the life of a cultural journalist, there are artists with whom affinities develop, even without looking for it. Katherine Levac is one of them, since that promo day in 2018, during which we met in the strange setting of a suite at Hotel 10 in Montreal. A “very Notting Hill “, points out the comedian, who knows his classics.
There is also the time when Katherine Levac, just a few weeks after giving birth and a few days before going to Everybody talks about it, gave me a phone interview while she was shopping for the dress she would wear in front of Guy A. “My worst interview ever,” she judges far too harshly. She was thinking, she admits today, of giving an interview to a celebrity magazine and realized, halfway through, that the guy on the phone was employed by a serious newspaper.
PHOTO MARCO CAMPANOZZI, THE PRESS
Katherine Levac
It was of course necessary to return to his animation of the Les Olivier gala, acclaimed by critics, but to which certain colleagues of a certain age reproached, with varying degrees of quarrel, his mockery and that of his guests on the subject of humor Quebec from another era.
Could the ceremony have been more age inclusive? The truth is that Katherine Levac, 33, considers herself an “old humorist” and that it was important to her to roll out the carpet to her juniors. The veterans of laughter she contacted, she adds, were all “at the chalet in the North” on Sunday and did not want to leave to “come and present a category podcast “.
Better measure your ambitions
But above all, I retain from this interview the healthy detachment that Katherine Levac now displays in relation to her profession, a salutary attitude with which she envisages the running-in of her new show, The man of my lifeand with which she also considered hosting the Les Olivier gala.
“I took it to heart, instead of taking it seriously,” she says. But because we live in a society that fetishizes anxiety, where those who tyrannize those around them with their anxieties are valued more than those who breathe through their noses, this calm will have worried some around her.
Katherine Levac” pledge better” his ambitions since the arrival of his twins. She imagined herself to be comfortable relying entirely on the services of a nanny, but realized after they arrived that she wanted to spend time with them. A beautiful problem. She broaches the subject of tour-family reconciliation without being asked any questions on the subject: “It’s our duty to talk about what we experience as mothers and creators and to say how much it ‘East tough. »
PHOTO MARCO CAMPANOZZI, THE PRESS
Katherine Levac in interview with Dominic Tardif
Fathers, even those who do not entirely delegate the care of their infants to their partner, have a head start when it comes to returning to work, she observes with resigned bitterness in the face of this biological injustice incumbent on motherhood. woman who has borne a child (and who is breastfeeding). “My organs came out of me,” she says, which no dad can boast about.
Tell the truth
Katherine Levac will participate this summer, during Zoofest, in the Womansplaining Show, a feminist cabaret co-hosted by Anne-Sarah Charbonneau and Noémie Leduc-Roy. You have to see the sparkle in the eyes of these two newcomers when they show their admiration for Katherine – they obviously can’t get over sharing a microphone with her – to understand that if Katherine Levac is perhaps not not an “old comedian”, her trajectory already represents something to which other women can aspire.
And if she has already taken an unhealthy pride in being one of the rare women in humor – she was the only one among her cohort at the National School of Humor in 2013 -, Katherine Levac now knows that a victory does not is never really one if it is not collective.
What is the job of a comedian? “We are here to tell the truth,” she replies. A precept to which she seems to have held throughout this interview.
Three quotes from our interview
About his relationship to certain media
“The click war is very violent at the moment, it is super intense and me, it pushes me to close myself because of that, I will open up less on TV sets. There, you see, we talk for a long time, we have a conversation, but after that, in an interview on a talk show, someone is going to say: “We heard you say in a podcast…” But let’s see ! We had three hours. Now, in 45 seconds, do you want me to tell you about my love-hate relationship with my body? are you crazy? »
About work-family balance
“When I think of the women who have toughed in humor, [je constate] that it’s really difficult as a mother to do everything, to have the knife between her teeth. Before, I had ambitions of so many tickets, but now I realize that the more tickets you sell showsyou don’t have to do them anymore shows for which you sold tickets. »
About his opening number at the Oliviers
“It was my 10-year career and I was like, ‘I’m going to talk about where I’m at here.’ But me, what stressed me the most in the Oliviers, it was more business of dresses and breasts typed, that was my real stress, much more than talking to Paul Arcand about the place of comedians in 2023. I said to myself: “I am going to talk about the real things that live in me.” It looks banal, it looks silly, it looks like jokes of totons, but it was not only that. »