Arrested in Australia for drug trafficking at the end of a cruise widely documented on their social networks, Quebecers Isabelle Lagacé and Mélina Roberge caught the attention of the media around the world in 2016. Six years later, and after a stay in prison, they once again find themselves in the spotlight, but this time to each tell their side of the story.
“It’s easy to say [que j’étais] escort, pornstar Where whatever. But no. […] If I had had a sugar daddyI would not have accepted a cruise to move powder”, indicates Isabelle Lagacé in the new documentary series Cocaine, prison & likes: the true story of Isabelle.
Her story, almost everyone knows her, so much was written about her in the summer of 2016. The young woman was then leading the good life aboard the sea-princess, a luxury cruise ship that has called at the four corners of the world for 49 nights. The dream turned into a nightmare when she and her traveling sidekick, Mélina Roberge, were handcuffed at the end of the journey in Sydney. In their cabin, more than 30 kilos of cocaine were found. The double was hidden in that of another Quebecer on board, André Tamine, 64, who was also arrested.
A high-profile trial followed, during which the two Quebecers pleaded guilty and received a sentence of more than seven years in prison in Australia.
At the time, the world’s media raved about this movie-worthy story. But between the detailed investigations, the craziest rumors also circulated in the magazines people.
It is precisely to “set the record straight” that Isabelle Lagacé agreed to give herself up to the camera for the first time. “I wanted to tell what really pushed me to make these choices,” she said during a press briefing.
The documentary, of three episodes, thus plunges back into the whole saga, but also into the past of the Quebecer, in order to understand what led her to agree to become a “mule” for an international drug trafficking network.
“I was clearly in depression with all the past events. Toxic relationships, financial problems… I was tired of my job, I didn’t know where I was going. I just wanted to rebuild my life and have a way out. I had the impression that this amount of money was going to help me get back on my feet and change my life, ”she explains on the screen.
We learn in particular in the first episode that it was a client of the bar where she worked as a waitress on the South Shore who made her this “hard to refuse” offer: an all-expenses-paid cruise worth $20,000. and $100,000 to smuggle drugs aboard his cabin.
“My story, I had told it to no one. So diving back into that was therapy in itself, she says. If we can [avec cette série documentaire] touch a few people who could find themselves in the same situation as me and at the same time help them, so much the better. »
A book
At the start of the project, there was talk of including Mélina Roberge’s point of view in the documentary series, but she declined the proposal. The 29-year-old told the To have to that she already had in mind to tell her own story in a book.
His biography, Without filter — written with the journalist from Montreal Journal Claudia Berthiaume —, was published in September. She tells how her luxury tastes and her obsession with becoming rich and popular led her to be a drug courier during this famous cruise. She also looks back on the weeks spent on the sea-princesshis arrest and his stay in various prisons in Australia.
“The book allowed me to tell my story only with words. It allows people to focus only on what I have to say without being distracted by an image that they can inevitably judge,” says Mélina Roberge.
Her motivations are similar to those of Isabelle Lagacé: to rectify the misreported facts, but also to warn other women who would be in her situation not to embark on this slippery slope.
A fiction
In addition to a documentary series and an autobiographical book, the tribulations of the two young women have also inspired the creation of a fiction. Sugarfrom Amazon Studios, is a Canadian-Mexican co-production directed by Vic Sarin, starring Canadian actress Jasmine Sky Sarin and American Katherine McNamara.
For this film, neither Mélina Roberge nor Isabelle Lagacé were consulted. On the show Everybody talks about it Sunday, the latter did not even wish to give her opinion on the fiction, contenting herself with saying that it was “far from reality”.