Series I3P wear one new light on a psychiatric infirmary in the heart of the Paris police headquarters. Its existence is a scoop?
It was first the imagination of the author, Jean-Christophe Grangé, who made this link between the police and the hospital. The two structures are in permanent contact, confronted with people who have to get out of complex situations. Both police and doctors must seek deep within themselves this ability to save lives.
You play Professor Mathias Bernardt, both a doctor and a bit of a cop. What did you like in this role?
He is not alone, surrounded by a team with whom he shares his passion. This collective also involves a permanent conversation with the patients. This series mixes both the action, but also the exchange with the visitors. We learn a lot from those we interview. One of them, quoting Gilbert Keith Chesterton, says: “The madman is not the man who has lost his mind. The madman is the one who has lost everything except his mind.”
Did you complete an internship in a psychiatric unit to get into the role?
No, but I regularly spend my time in a day hospital, in Antony, with educators, doctors, autistic people. I took the patients to museums, to shows, to the cinema, … in the middle of people. Thanks to these young autistic people, I was able to continue to be in life and in art.
“It is the uncertainty that is the beauty of life.”
Do you understand that one day, one can switch to a psychiatric ward?
I totally understand that, because you can quickly make someone guilty of what they didn’t do. One has not committed any crime when one becomes poor. People who have answers to everything scare me. Myself, I sometimes have doubts. I don’t even know why I’m alive, I don’t know what death is, what love is. It is indefinable. As if the irrational frightened us and we wanted to reassure ourselves. But reassuring is terrible, it weakens us. Promise that we will love each other all our life, we do not know. It is uncertainty that is the beauty of life.
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Notoriety, fame, money, … all this can make you lose your mind?
I have no mirror or photo of me at my home, rather pictures of Angela Davis, Martin Scorsese. I don’t listen to my music at home. My home is an artists’ residence. When I intervene in psychiatric structures, I go there to work, to help, not to play the artist. I grew up in a modest environment. I kept this heritage: I know where I come from, I don’t really know where I’m going…
Not the big head?
Because “I is another”, as Rimbaud says. He’s right: why talk about yourself, when it’s the other who gives you this joy of living, of participating? I fight to put on great shows and people have been renewing my contract for 40 years.
People who have answers to everything scare me. Myself, I sometimes have doubts. Photo by Mika Cotello. Story Televis.
“With J.-Louis Trintignant, we talked about the beauty of life”
You are one of the rare singers to have also established yourself as an actor. What is your method?
It was Claude Chabrol, one of my masters, who gave me legitimacy by offering me my first role in Hell. I then toured with Jean-Louis Trintignant who remained a friend until his last day. On the day of his funeral, poems were said. Every time we saw each other, we only talked about poetry, especially not about our troubles. We were talking about the beauty of life.
You only play composition roles.
Chabrol had told me never to play the singer in a film. I had the chance to rub shoulders with and learn from contact with talented people, actors and filmmakers. I don’t want to be the star, just to be in a big story. You always have to go with your truth. The public is never wrong in its choice.
Singing, playing, it’s still comedy…
It’s different. In a film, a series or in the theatre, there is music, that of the voice in particular. Romy Schneider, Monica Vitti,…: lots of women made me want to play comedy. There are also actors, filmmakers who are free, with their vision accessible to all. It’s people like Sergio Leone, John Ford… and Chabrol, of course. He was huge, surreal, brave and so close to you!
Art has always been your light.
I left school when I was 16. If it hadn’t been for cinema and poetry, I would never have presented the prizes at La Sorbonne for the best French students in philosophy and letters.
Despite their modest condition, my parents had as spiritual nourishment Prévert, Boris Vian, Néruda, Victor Hugo,… Solitary, I was fed all day in this artistic footbridge.
In an anxiety-provoking society, shrinks have never had so many patients.
It’s that we don’t look at people and their problems. When there was the digital transition, people lost control, because we didn’t listen to them, look them in the face. As Souchon says: “We are taken for idiots as soon as we are born.” People want to work, but demand respect. The French are very patient. Society is misrepresented when the population is presented as people who complain and do nothing. In the suburbs as elsewhere, the population wants to work and live together.
The recognized artist, the star, the star, has a special status…
I am lucky to live from an extraordinary job. I’ve been fighting since I was 16. I do this job to love people. I don’t always know how to say “I love you”, but to love, I know how to do.
I3P, by Jeremy Minui. Thursday October 20, on TF1, at 9 p.m. With Marc Lavoine, Barbara Schulz, Claire Tran, Walid Ben Mabrouk, Mikaël Chirinian,…
Adult Never (Universal). New album. Includes duos with Grand Corps Malade and Virginie Ledoyen. Tour: Bordeaux, November 16; Lyons, November 24; Paris, December 2, at the Palais des Congrès; Tours, December 9; Versailles, March 16, 2023;… All the dates on the usual platforms.
Olivier Bohin
Television – Marc Lavoine, head doctor in a psychiatry unit for TF1: “The other gives you joy”