“collapsed”, the actor Benjamin Lavernhe, who played him in a biopic, evokes his “stunation”

Benjamin Lavernhe, who donned the cassock of Abbé Pierre for a biopic in 2023, expresses in the show Nice Gesture on France 2, his astonishment and his feeling of betrayal.

“Obviously, we feel a great betrayal.” The actor Benjamin Lavernhe, who played Abbé Pierre with great conviction in a biopic by Fréderic Tellier released in 2023, expresses in the show Nice Gestureon November 10, his astonishment at the revelations on the numerous accusations of sexual assault against the religious.

“It’s terrible. I’m thinking of the victims, there are 25 testimonies, but it’s terrible,” he says.

“Obviously, we feel a great betrayal, a great sadness, astonishment. I look for words, but it’s difficult to find them. Fear, because somewhere he was a friend. I I felt like I knew him a little bit. Not so well.”

“It’s always a shock”

“How could this guy who was able to do such extraordinary things behave so badly, and beyond! The duality of the human being, the ambivalence, it’s always a shock. And of course that Frédéric Tellier and all the teams, we are devastated and especially the power of secrecy to say to ourselves that we missed this and that we didn’t see it, well that’s what’s the most terrible. .

In September 2024, after the first accusations of sexual assault against Abbé Pierre, the film team Abbé Pierre, a life of struggle had already expressed the shock felt and the feeling of betrayal.

“These crimes, which shed a completely new light on the destiny of Abbé Pierre, were obviously unknown to us at the time we made this film, just as they were unknown to the French,” the film team said in a press release.

“No one told us ‘be careful’”

According to an investigation carried out by the Radio France investigation unit, a victim of Abbé Pierre had nevertheless testified as early as May 2023 to Emmaüs France, involved in the feature film. It was six months before the film came out.

“We had no alert,” Wassim Beji, producer of the film, told Radio France, adding. “We were not informed of anything. I have the feeling of having been duped, deeply betrayed by Abbot Pierre.”

The director Frédéric Tellier also assured that he knew nothing or suspected anything of the actions of Abbé Pierre.

“No one told us ‘be careful, you should say this or that or meet this or that person’. I spent intimate, sincere moments with these people, eye to eye. We never had the beginning of an ounce of suspicion,” he told Radio France.

Today accused by more than 20 women of sexual violence, Abbé Pierre, who died in 2007, was for half a century the tireless defender of the deprived, the homeless and the without rights, which gave him earned the support and admiration of the French, of whom he was one of the most beloved personalities.