The meteoric rise of comedian Mégan Brouillard: “Everyone is punched in my family. My mother is a clown

In the spring of 2020, Mégan Brouillard thought she was going on a provincial tour with her fellow graduates from the National School of Humor. But a certain pandemic put his dream on ice. Not knowing what to do, the Drummondville resident returned to live in her parents’ basement and started making videos on TikTok. This is where everything “exploded”. Barely four years later, here she is presenting her first solo show, Quackgrass. The Journal met the 25-year-old comedian with a keen sense of wit and who has made a sensational entrance into the industry.

We seem to have seen her on every platform for several years. When she is not a contributor to the show Good evening good evening!, she participates in Veronica and the Fantastic or even writes columns on hockey on RDS. But where does Mégan Brouillard come from? We wanted to know.

• Also read: “Chiendent”: comedian Mégan Brouillard wants to sort out the weeds in her first solo show

• Also read: Mégan Brouillard: the comedian who is a hockey and Canadian fan

Originally from Drummondville, Mégan Brouillard was born in July 1999. In her family, “humor is important to survive” and from a young age, Mégan learned the sense of repartee by observing those close to her.

“Everyone is punched in my family,” she said in an interview with The Journal. My mother is a clown, that doesn’t make sense! His anecdotes are rehearsed. I hear them eight times. She tells them to me, to my father, to my aunts.

His grandfather, Clément Brouillard, was also a fun guy. Until the end of his life, even on his hospital bed, he wanted to make the audience laugh. “He had trouble breathing and speaking, but he couldn’t stop making jokes,” says Mégan, smiling.

His first jokes in front of an audience

At school, Mégan naturally wanted to make her friends laugh in class. “I was making jokes, that’s for sure. But I tried not to disturb. Because my mother is a teacher, I didn’t want to disturb the teachers. Except that everything appears in my face. My mother’s colleagues who taught me once told her that when I found something boring, they saw it immediately!”

In fifth grade, Mégan was “lucky” to have her mother as a teacher. “She was really more rough with me than with others. Everyone had the right to do something. I was like: why am I not allowed to color with my friends?

It was that year that Mégan had her first experience in humor. Having to transcribe a well-known comedy act, she then presented it in front of the whole class. A little seed had been planted.

A few years later, she decided to enroll in Secondary School. She was going to make it to the regional finals with a humorous number about the fact that she didn’t know what to do for a career when she grew up. “The guidance counselor made us pay 13 piasters to give us a thorough test. It gave me results to spank the walls! It said that I could manage people’s schedules at McDonald’s or be a volunteer!”

She decided to do it again at Cégeps with a comedy number about being 18 years old. She finished in second place in the regional final and won the people’s choice prize, because her mother had managed to convince several people to vote for her online! “They did not need to be present at the competition to vote. My mother found this loophole in the regulations!” said Megan, laughing.

The Village d’Antan and the School of Humor

In her native Drummondville, Mégan worked for several years at the local performance hall, the Maison des arts Desjardins. “I saw everything there for four or five years,” she said. I found it so educational to see humor, music, theater. I watched how the artists used the room, created an atmosphere, connected with the audience.

In those same years, she also played the village idiot in the Village Québécois d’Antan. “It was like improvising all day long! evokes Mégan. It really helped me gain confidence and confidence to present myself in front of strangers, to create my stage persona. It also helped me deal with crowdwork [l’interaction avec le public]»

Even if the profession of comedian seemed inaccessible to him at the time [«je ne voyais pas le chemin…»]Mégan Brouillard still decided to try her luck at the auditions for the National School of Humor. At the age of 18, she went to Montreal with her mother to meet school officials.

On site, she presented the same number as at Cégeps en spectacle, telling herself that she would definitely be refused. “It was part of the plan. I wanted to gain experience by seeing how the auditions worked so I could come back stronger next time.”

Against all expectations, she was accepted. In the fall of 2018, Mégan Brouillard moved to the “big city” and began her two-year training.

“I had a lot of fun at school [de l’humour]she said. I was upper middle class, I would say. I worked really hard. I understood that I didn’t have time to drink, because it slowed me down. On the weekend, I also had to return to Drummondville to work at the Maison des Arts.”

The pandemic destroys his dream

During her training, Mégan thought a lot about the end of the second year, which was to culminate with a tour of around thirty dates for all the graduates throughout Quebec. It is often at this time that the best students are noticed by managers and producers and can thus launch their careers.

But in March 2020, his dream instantly collapsed with the arrival of COVID-19. “It was difficult to see that there would be no tour, but it was even worse to see that it was perhaps the end of the existence of this profession,” she remembers. We didn’t know what was coming. There were no more shows.”

At the time, Mégan lived in a semi-basement in Rosemont with a roommate. The apartment had already caused them a lot of problems: a dead rat in a bathroom vent, another in the sink, a stray cat that came to urinate on the couches. When the whole world went on pause, she decided to return to her parents in Drummondville.

Unemployed, Mégan had to live in the family home with a mother who taught remotely, an engineer father who also worked from home, a brother who repaired his car in the garage and another who was studying to be a police officer. “It was a bungalow, scream! she says, laughing. But it was still better than in my basement in Rosemont with the dead rats.”

At the start of the pandemic, Mégan relieved herself of boredom by learning to sew Patagonia thrillers. “I also made myself some pants with an old cutlery and I tried to make bobettes,” she says. I was a prisoner! While sewing, I realized that I just needed to create something.”

The ÉNH graduate tour in theaters was canceled, but the students were able to do some shows virtually, notably on the Espace Yoop and the Wifi Comédie Club. “It was so terrible,” remembers Mégan. Humor is not fiddling. You can’t practice at home to know what is good or not. You don’t know when you’re being humorous if you’re all alone. […] When we did the show, we saw people on Zoom, but there was a two-minute delay in the image and the laughter. We couldn’t talk over the laughter, so we lost the rhythm. It was a nightmare!”

She made her American League

Having briefly heard about the new trendy social network, TikTok, Mégan decided to fill her many free times during the pandemic by posting short videos there. Quickly, the likes piled up. “It really helped my comedic effectiveness. […] I spent my days looking for TikTok ideas. Some people told me it was brilliant to have done that, but it was survival. I never thought further than in the present moment I was in.”

When the comedy evenings resumed their activities, young Mégan was able to be invited, with her new popularity on social networks. “It’s thanks to that [TikTok] that I did everything,” she admits.

As her first solo show approaches, Mégan knows there are some people who think she’s risen through the ranks too quickly. But she rather believes that she did not skip a step. “I think I did my classes, I went to practices and I took my shots on goal,” says this hockey enthusiast. I think I made it, my American League.

“I did some, evenings in bars. The number of times I went to Quebec for 90 piastres, when that didn’t cover my gas, just to do a comedy evening there and it gave half a UDA point [Union des artistes]. I’ve done shows in the bottom of a bear’s asshole, affairs paid like piss everywhere! […] It was quick, but it’s a mixture of work, luck and surroundings.”

And talent, we conclude.