“I think that as I get older, I need flamboyance”: Michèle Bernier confides in Sept à Huit

She has the same injuries as us and likes to laugh about it. A love that the actress Michèle Bernier inherited from her father, Georges Bernier, comedian better known as “Professor Choron”, cheerful anarchist who co-founded the satirical newspapers Hara-Kiri et Charlie Hebdo. Since childhood, Michèle Bernier knew the cartoonists Cabu and Wolinski, murdered just ten years ago, during the attack on Charlie Hebdo.

“I was the devil’s daughter”

Professor Choron was “an anarchist of the first category”mischievously admits Michèle Bernier in the portrait devoted to her in Seven to Eight. A man “without concession”including when he created his journals. “He felt free and had a lot of trials. It was difficult”concedes the comedian, who adds that the “bans onHara-Kiri and of Charlie Hebdo“ were always “a sick man” for his father.

As a child, Michèle Bernier suffered from what her father embodied, at least “outside”. “I was a bit of a devil’s daughter. Sometimes my friends said to me: ‘My parents don’t want me to come to your house.’ They must have thought that there were naked women on the stairs, bad words written everywhere… I must have been very dangerous!”she says.

His mother, Odile Vaudelle, worked with his father in his satirical magazines. A couple who awakened their daughter’s curiosity and, not surprisingly, humor. “Humour has always been part of our life. My father always told me: ‘You know, there is no humor in any dictatorship’“remembers Michèle Bernier, who received an education without restrictions from her parents.

Experiencing two bereavements simultaneously

“When they had parties, they took me. I only liked being with them. They took me to clubs, I was six years old!”she says at the microphone of TF1. Often absent parents, who “worked a lot, selling newspapers in the street, finding money”. Yet, “I didn’t feel abandoned”underlines Michèle Bernier. “I understood that they had something to do.”

Georges Bernier died in 2005, a few years after his wife Odile Vaudelle, who committed suicide in 1985. “It paralyzed my vocal cords. I couldn’t speak anymore”recalls Michèle Bernier, to whom a psychologist explained that her brutal silence stems from having to face two bereavements at the same time. “When my mother left, it was another shock, it was violent. Suicide is always something violent, for those who stay, in any case”confides the actress, her voice choked with emotion.

“Even if it means being sad, you might as well seem cheerful!”

It was a few years before the death of her mother, in 1982, that Michèle Bernier joined The Bouvard Theateron Antenne 2, in the company of Muriel Robin, Didier Bourdon and Chantal Ladesou. There she met a person who would change her life: that of Bruno Gaccio, famous co-author of Guignols of the info, who would become the father of his two children. A relationship which Bruno Gaccio ended in 1997, when Michèle Bernier was pregnant with his son. “Today, 28 years later, things are very peaceful”she assures.

At that time, Michèle Bernier put on a play adapted from a comic book, The Midday Demon. Ironically, the plot centers on a man who leaves his wife for a younger woman. “It wasn’t easy. But I think at one point I stopped asking myself that question. I really wanted to move forward”traces the actress, who does not hesitate to propagate her motto: “Even if it means being sad, you might as well seem cheerful!”

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Now twice a grandmother, the 68-year-old comedian remains very active and will make her return to the stage, from January 29 at the Théâtre de Paris, in the play Lily et Lilyin which she plays, years after Jacqueline Maillan, twin sisters. “Being the same person and playing two characters fascinated me. I think as I get older, I need flamboyance”she says, admiring these “free women”, “who have no age”. For her, “it breathes life into life.”