In Quebec, he is best known as the creator of the format of Everybody talks about it. But in France, Thierry Ardisson is considered a sacred monster in the TV industry. As provocative as he was innovative, he revolutionized the talk show formula with his immodesty, not hesitating to kiss Bruce Willis on the mouth or ask a former prime minister if “sucking is cheating”. Those were the times. The one before political correctness, the one where television did not compete with the Internet. By diving back into it, Thierry Ardisson is inevitably tempted by nostalgia.
“I have to say that I had the best time to do TV. We had money, we had freedom… And above all there were people who had something to say. I still interviewed Serge Gainsbourg and Jean D’Ormesson! There is no longer that today. If I did another show like Everybody talks about it, It’s terrible to say, but I wouldn’t know who to invite,” he confesses.
Not that today’s personalities are less interesting or less intelligent, he wants to clarify. “It’s because they talk a lot less than before. Everything has become controlled by press officers,” laments Thierry Ardisson while vaping.
The 75-year-old host has stopped smoking, but he has not yet fallen into line. “The man in black”, as he is nicknamed across the Atlantic because he is always dressed in dark, has lost none of his outspokenness. He was also absolutely frank when he met The duty last January, while he was in Montreal for the recording of the special program celebrating the 20th anniversary of Everybody talks about it in Quebec.
The show will air on Sunday. The opportunity to note that the talk show hosted by Guy A. Lepage has moved away from the format invented by Thierry Ardisson. Radio-Canada’s big Sunday event is now live. The king’s fool has more or less disappeared. Also no more stupid dinners. The Quebec version has been greatly softened, which was already watered down compared to the Everybody talks about it French.
“It has actually become a social program, much more focused on current events. As Guy, whom I really like, explained to me: you can’t do a biographical interview with Stéphane Rousseau, like I did, when you’ve invited him five times. Obviously, the show had to adapt, and I find that interesting, because I tell myself that it is perhaps also this tangent that would have taken Everybody talks about it in France if the show still existed”, indicates the one who hosted Everybody talks about it from 1998 to 2006, before the show was canceled from public service because he hosted another on a competing channel.
“A whore and an archbishop”
The essence of the original format still remains in the Quebec version: bringing together on the same stage people who a priori have nothing to do with each other. “A whore and an archbishop”, as Thierry Ardisson likes to repeat. “In American talk shows, like David Letterman’s, the guest is alone in front of the interviewer. What I did was I created a show where the guests stayed after their interview. It gave rise to lots of bizarre moments, as people who lived in completely opposite realities found themselves crossing paths. Without knowing it, I invented a formula. »
“Weird moments”, there were several during the eight seasons of the French version of Everybody talks about it. Like when Thierry Ardisson completely destabilized Matt Damon and Brad Pitt by offering them girls and drugs. Or this time when actress Milla Jovovich lost the map, throwing her glass of water before leaving the set, because Thierry Ardisson had reminded her that her father had spent eight years in prison. The writer Frédéric Beigbeder did not have time to go to the set, he who was lying in his vomit in his dressing room because he had drunk so much.
“Alcohol disinhibits. That’s the secret to getting the guests to open up… Behind the scenes, I left them vodka, champagne, whatever they wanted… And as they waited a long time, they were often completely wasted when they arrived on set », says the host and producer, laughing.
Morality has never driven this confident baby boomer, nourished by the libertarian ideals of May 68. Good TV is not virtuous. That being said, Thierry Ardisson does not believe he has contributed to lowering the level, quite the contrary. “I have always thought that public television should be a bulwark against the decline in cultural standards. But the culture must still be digestible. So yes, I could interview a bimbo with big tits, but there was Umberto Eco or Bret Easton Ellis after that. So lots of people who had never heard of them and who would never have been inclined to listen to one of their interviews were able to discover them thanks to me”, claims the one who grew up in a modest family and who grew up intellectually thanks to television as a child.
Other times, other manners
The archives of Everybody talks about it can be viewed on Thierry Ardisson’s YouTube channel. There are also excerpts from other flagship shows that he hosted, such as Last Paris, Hello Earthlings And 93, Faubourg Saint-Honoréwhere different personalities came to have dinner in his Parisian apartment. But no trace yet of his latest broadcast, Hotel of timein which he interviews deceased personalities, like Dalida and Coluche, who come back to life thanks to artificial intelligence.
Thierry Ardisson, who comes from the world of advertising, has always had a sense of aesthetics. Looking at his archives, we are surprised that some of his shows have aged so well in form. What about the bottom?
“There are things that have aged well, others not so much. The attitude towards women, the way we complimented them on their physique, that would no longer be acceptable today. It was very macho. When I do interviews today, it’s something I pay attention to,” admits Thierry Ardisson.
The host was widely criticized by feminists in 2011, when the head of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, was arrested after being accused of rape by a chambermaid. A few years before, the journalist Tristane Banon had recounted during the recording of 93, Faubourg Saint-Honoré having been attacked by the former socialist minister. The reaction of Thierry Ardisson and the guests was to laugh about it. “We would react differently today,” he agrees.
The world has changed, Thierry Ardisson too. And not everything is to be thrown away in the current era. Thierry Ardisson is excited by the creative freedom that YouTube offers. As for television, there is currently a slump, but it is still too early to write its epitaph, he believes.
“It is on YouTube that new animators will emerge, those who innovate. But at some point, you can’t just make shows in your bedroom with a crappy camera. It takes money to produce larger shows. And unfortunately, it’s still difficult to monetize content on YouTube. As long as that is the case, there will always be a place for TV,” he predicts.