In
Writers talk about money
filmed at the Théâtre de l'Atelier, in Paris, and offered by TMC this Monday, October 31 (9:15 p.m.), he summons Émile Zola, Karl Marx, Emil Cioran, Charles Péguy, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Marguerite Duras, Pascal Bruckner, Victor Hugo, Jean de La Fontaine, Sacha Guitry and…
The Marseillais
!
The actor answers us from Marseille, where he played this same solo performance the day before, in front of 2,000 notaries.
Confidences of a lover of literature, addicted to television and his smartphone.
To discover
Miss France 2023: discover all the photos of the 30 candidates
TV MAGAZINE.- Why accept only now that we capture one of your shows and why this one?
Fabrice LUCHINI.
- The idea of filmed theater remains a strange thing.
The arguments against are obvious.
It's a carnal experience, a body on a stage with a voice.
The voice which, as Louis Jouvet says, is the most important thing.
And all the imperfections of the voice.
A concrete experience.
I ended up letting myself be convinced by the producer Sébastien Degenne (
Bonne Pioche
).
I launched myself with this show, which I must have played a thousand times, but which I had not resumed for two years.
I am confronted there with great authors, like Péguy, but I lightened it a little, in particular with this sketch on the Société Générale which makes a lot of laughs.
It's incredible, the identification with the anguish at the idea that our small economies could melt… The analysis of our contemporaries via reality TV shows also makes things more playful and makes the show work.
"I'm addicted to television and that cell phone crap!"
»
Are you still fascinated by the small screen?
Yes.
I'm like the people of our time, I have the same flaws.
I'm addicted to television and that cell phone crap!
It's really an amazing tool: it allows us to listen to all of Jean-Luc Godard's speeches or, if our brain lets go, to drink only clashes, anger and become more and more binary... It is also a very serious invention!
Courtesy, delicacy, respect, curiosity, inner richness are threatened.
There are no more looks.
The biggest disaster after the war is the laptop!
And I weigh my words.
To fight against this, I force myself to create a new show every two years.
At the same time, stroke of luck, it allows me, between Molière, Marx and La Fontaine,
You admit that you love news and reality TV shows: is it a guilty pleasure or do you find the excuse of a sociological approach?
Unfortunately, I don't have this nobility of ethnological gaze... My priority is my love for great writers, but, after three hours of trying to find the rhythm, the color, the mystery of major authors, I allow myself to go very far by looking for example
Bring in the accused.
There are also two-three gigantic shows, like
Married at First Sight
.
I do not take myself for Claude Lévi-Strauss, but it is obvious that it helps to understand the time in which we live.
“I'm lucky to do less and less promotion.
I have an Instagram account which is enough to fill my shows.
»
Do you also watch “serious” shows?
There are still some places of great dignity on TV.
I will put first a program of popularization, remarkable of behavior,
Secrets of History
, presented by Stéphane Bern.
The appointment of Caroline Roux,
C dans l'air
, is also remarkable.
It's a place where people don't shout at each other, they don't defend their church.
The JDD
guy
very good.
Bruno Jeudy, very good.
Vanessa Schneider, very good.
Thomas Snégaroff too, with
C politique
on Sundays on France 5. I have not yet watched
What time!
Léa Salamé's new talk show on France 2.
Are there any shows you wouldn't go to promote?
I have the chance to do less and less promotion.
I have an Instagram account which is enough to fill my shows.
There is no more Ardisson.
He's not a very nice character, but he has talent.
Ruquier has them too.
I knew Polac, Pivot.
I could have fallen into a trap.
I was called a lot, I had a certain hysteria, I was perhaps a good client – keep well “maybe”.
I was doomed to do a number.
When you do a number, you are far from your true personality.
Like at a dinner where everyone is a little in representation.
The gong saved me, there really aren't these types of shows anymore.
It allowed me effortlessly to gradually decline the invitations.
How do you view
La Grande Librairie
Augustin Trapenard
version
?
He is wonderful when he listens.
And that is the quality of a good journalist.
But Trapenard is a modern man, he swears by Bourdieu and that's not my thing at all!
I am from another line.
I am impressed by the very serious side of our time.
It seems that the spirit of Cocteau or that of Guitry no longer exists.
“I don't despise money like some great artists.
For me, it's childhood.
Its value was excessive.
Every worthy person had to earn a living.
»
What does money mean to you?
I don't despise him, like some great artists.
For me, money is childhood.
My father arrived from Italy in poverty, my mother was on public assistance.
Everyone now wants to give certificates of misery, but me it's true!
Every evening, my father, who had a fruit and vegetable store in Goutte d'Or, in Paris, counted the money.
It was a ceremony.
Its value was excessive.
Every worthy person had to earn a living.
How did that translate?
When I started at the cinema, around 25, an assistant to Truffaut asked me to make a film for free.
I refused and insisted on being paid, even a small sum, on principle.
Likewise, in forty years of analysis, I have never had a free session.
Finally, at the theatre, when people are invited, they are less good as an audience, because they did not want to be present as much as the people who took the step of reserving their ticket months in advance and paying for it.
On the other hand, I don't do anything “for” the money.
I have the privilege of having set aside some.
You were an apprentice hairdresser after being expelled from school at 13: what is your greatest pride when you look at your career?
(Long silence.) I am proud to have lived up to my father's project.
He had only one ambition for his four children: a certain success.
I say that about my dad, because my mom didn't care.
She was an extremely simple woman, the love of my life.
But I rarely have a feeling of pride, I'm more of a depressed person.
I find people happy with them incredible.
I drooled over it.
From 1969 to 1985, before the success of
Journey to the End of the Night
and
Full Moon Nights
, movie people didn't want me.
They said: “He's a homo, he has a weird phrasing…” The theater saved me.
I can't believe it, sometimes I wonder what happened to make me come to this.
You are announced for 2023 in
Wonderman
,
the Netflix series on the life of Bernard Tapie.
What will your role be?
The writers came up with a very, very nasty character.
And, as Hitchcock said,
“When you succeed in the character of the villain, you succeed in 60% of your film!
It 's
a fairly short participation, one week, but I was very happy to shoot with Laurent Lafitte, who is remarkable in the role of Tapie.
“I'm not sure that TV would have offered me a scenario of this type: playing a socialist mayor in the midst of depression.
»
You played your own role in
Ten percent
, but it's been your only TV drama for thirty years.
Why so little?
They never offer me any!
Maybe because I'm too busy at the theater.
The commonplace wants that, TV and cinema, it is the same.
For me, a filmmaker who wants to make a film fights for months.
He decides to take an actor and will film him in a certain way, taking more time…
Alice and the Mayor
, for example.
I'm not sure that TV would have offered me a scenario of this type: playing a socialist mayor in the midst of depression.
There was an awful lot of text and I love working from that to make it look like it's not.
Is TV too “small” for you?
My ambition is to confront myself with “big pieces” to find the movements inside and make people forget that it is talkative.
And besides, it's not talkative since it's interesting!
To be talkative is to speak without saying anything...
So no TV?
Basically, I have no hierarchy.
I wouldn't be against the idea of playing for the small screen a policeman nourished by analysis who understands everything and who never fights!
Do you feel happy sometimes?
It's rare for me, but I think it's pretty much the case for everyone.
I was born into a Catholic family that said life is a piece of crap and you have to eat it all the time.
It does not encourage!
But I'm lucky to have a job that I love, it's the miracle of my life.
And then I see people, I have medication… Everyone has their own way of getting a kick out of it in the morning.
“#MeToo is a major fight but we must not go too far so as not to destroy the wonderful mystery between men and women.
»
I was granted four pages for this interview, a privileged volume usually reserved for Miss France… What does that inspire you?
I have to sit down, it upsets me what you tell me!
Even in my wildest dreams, I who have always had physical complexes, I would never have imagined being associated with these embodied beauties... I like this sentence from Céline: "I would give all of Baudelaire's work for a great dancer.
»
More seriously, what is your take on #MeToo?
The current fight is a major event of our time.
We all agree on the transformation of this macho patriarchy.
But we must not go too far not to destroy the marvelous mystery between men and women, these beings so different.
What is your relationship to women?
Henri Bernstein, author of
Mélo
, was obsessed with women.
We called him “Divan le terrible” and he said:
“Any actor who doesn't have women will never make a career.
At the beginning of mine, an agent said to me:
"
You will never succeed, because you are not gendered, you do not appeal to women"
.
Today, most of my clientele is female.
And I quote Marguerite Duras each time:
"Women first enjoy through their ears"
...
From theater to radio
Fabrice Luchini resumes at the Théâtre Montparnasse, in Paris, from November 1, the show
La Fontaine et le Confinement,
in which he also quotes Pascal or Baudelaire.
On November 17 and 24, and December 1 and 5, at the Théâtre de l'Atelier in Paris, he will read excerpts from Nietzsche before entering into a dialogue with a philosopher (Cynthia Fleury, François-Xavier Bellamy, Pascal Bruckner and Claude Arnaud) on his work.
In addition, on Radio Classique, in
Des livres et des notes
, a program broadcast every Saturday and Sunday at 12 p.m. and 4 p.m., the actor reads texts by writers on music.
The material for a next show?
In any case, he is working on a longer-term project devoted to Victor Hugo.
Reunion at the cinema
Fabrice Luchini will be showing on February 15 in
A Happy Man
, with Catherine Frot, directed by Tristan Séguéla, whom he found after the
Wonderman
series .
It portrays a conservative mayor on the campaign trail whose wife decides to make the transition to becoming a man.
On March 8, he will be in the credits of
Mon crime
by François Ozon, the latter having already directed him in
Potiche
and
Dans la maison
.
In this dramatic comedy with Dany Boon and Isabelle Huppert, he plays, in his words, "a stupid president of the assize court".
The actor has finally finished filming
The Empire
,
and in which he reunited with Camille Cottin after
Dix pour cent
and
Le Mystère Henri Pick
.
He embodies the devil himself!
