Gérard Jugnot is today Bernard Montiel's guest on his show 1 hour with… broadcast on RFM and already recorded. He obviously could not avoid questions about the loss of his friend Michel Blanc. Died on October 4 of a cardiac arrest at the age of 72, he was not only a colleague of the Splendid troupe but also a traveling companion since their youth. Gérard Jugnot, moved, confided how much this loss still upsets him.
Gérard Jugnot still upset by the death of Michel Blanc
It’s a friendship that goes back a long way. Gérard Jugnot met Michel Blanc at school. “Did you make fun of the teachers back then?”Bernard Montiel asked him, as we discover in an extract revealed by our colleagues from Gala. “Yes, I met him in fourth grade, we hadn't seen each other much for a while, (…) but when we met again, like for the cover of Paris Match [en avril dernier], we laughed like idiots!“confided the 73-year-old actor currently in promotion for his new film We should have gone to Greecein theaters on November 13.
Their relationship had withstood the ups and downs of life and their separate careers, but the two actors had unfortunately drifted apart over the years. Today Gérard Jugnot still struggles to talk about his mourning: “It’s a whole part of our life that changes, because it's fifty years of friendship… What can I say… except that it's a little early…”
Tributes that leave a bitter taste
The death of Michel Blanc sparked a wave of tributes, both from the public and from his colleagues. But certain details bothered Gérard Jugnot, as he explained during his appearance on the show Telematin on France 2, on November 7. “There was just one little thing that bothered me, which was that we talked a lot about Jean-Claude Dusse who was really his creation. It was he who wrote it, who built it . He assumed it, but he did lots of other things much deeperand cultural”, “, he pointed out.
Facing Flavie Flament, he was keen to point out that his friend was not limited to comic roles: “And again, I don't like those words, it's like art films and commercial films. There are no commercial films without being art films.” Michel Blanc actually refused to be locked into one genreand he can count on his lifelong friend to preserve his cinematic legacy.
