A children’s party at TNM | The “fear” of the great return

For sixteen years, life and his numerous projects kept François Arnaud away from the theater. This famine is coming to an end.

François Arnaud arrives alone and exactly on time at the premises of The Press. He has a firm handshake, a tanned complexion and charisma to warm our cold winters. He just got off a flight from Los Angeles, where he now lives six months a year.

“François is in high demand, it’s a miracle to have him performing for a month at the TNM,” Michel Marc Bouchard told us when he learned that we were going to speak to him.

The author is happy. He wanted Arnaud to play in one of his plays since… 2008, the year he met him on the set of Great Heatfilm directed by Sophie Lorain.

“After shooting the film, Michel Marc asked me to read the first pages of Tom on the farmsays François Arnaud. Later, we did workshops at his home. But in the fall of 2010, I signed my contract for The Borgias. I had to withdraw from the project a few weeks before the premiere. It was heartbreaking! “, he remembers. (Alexandre Landry replaced Arnaud in the production, directed by Claude Poissant, at the Théâtre d’Aujourd’hui.)

This probably explains why Arnaud has stayed away from the theater for 16 years.

In addition to his performance at TNM this winter, the actor is starring in the detective series Mr. Bigproduced by Sophie Lorain and Alexis Durand-Brault, which will be broadcast on Club illico in March.

Michel Marc Bouchard was waiting to have “the right play and the right role” to offer it to his friend. He believes that the character of David is THE role. In A children’s partyArnaud plays a handsome, sophisticated man, father of two young daughters with his husband, Nicolas (Iannicko N’Doua). At first glance, David lives perfect happiness with his family and his work as an orthodontist, whose motto is: “A smile is the guarantee of success”!

In the preface to the book, which will be published by Leméac on January 15, Bouchard writes that a majority of young homosexuals are condemned to excellence, considering that their state is a defect and that this envelope of perfection hides “their perversion”… “ David has no self-esteem, Arnaud emphasizes. He carries a deep narcissistic wound. He constructed an image and an opinion of himself, based on lies and artifice. He fears he’s just a beautiful empty shell. »

A late “coming out”

At the end ofA children’s partyDavid will notice the failure of his “perfect and heteronormative” life, at the same time as the destruction of his artificial happiness. Which will trigger a serious depression, pushing him to commit a tragic gesture, as only Bouchard has the gift of imagining since The Feluettes.

In the play, David has a tirade against “gays who are constantly gay.” All day long, all year round; and who show everyone that they are gay, especially gay, and only gay…” We use this door to address François Arnaud’s “coming out” as bisexual, in 2020. An announcement that he considered essential to make ( even if he hates talking about his private life in public), because he is not ashamed of his sexual orientation.

“Xavier Dolan makes films with homosexual characters, but he has never sent these films to LGBTQ+ festivals. As an actor, I want to break the boxes, not lock myself in a box.

“Moreover,” Arnaud continues, “I didn’t choose this job to talk about myself. I’m very shy. I prefer to do it through my characters. The only reason I wanted to be famous one day is to have more offers and more opportunities in my career. That’s the only thing about fame that interests me. »

The dizziness before the premiere

But let’s get back to our subject: theater. At the Conservatory, François Arnaud dreamed of playing in classics. Racine, Musset, Marivaux… However, before today, he had only played secondary roles, in three or four productions, between 2007 and 2009.

“What I missed the most was not so much the stage as the process of creation in the theater. The freedom of a rehearsal room. I can take the time to try things, to think and to discuss with a very cultured director like Florent Siaud. I can talk with performers like Iannicko and Sylvie Drapeau; a professional actress who is always in search of the truth. » (Drapeau plays the couple’s friend, the one who organizes the children’s party.)

François Arnaud therefore returns to the theater through the front door. To defend a complex score. Demanding.

“Honestly, it scares me,” he confides. I have nightmares about it. The other night, I dreamed that I was on stage, at the general, and someone had forgotten to tell me that the show became… a musical ! I had to sing my text! I woke up at 4 a.m. with a little cold sweat…”

“I have rarely missed Los Angeles so much”

François Arnaud lives in Los Angeles more than six months a year for his work. He rents a house with a garden in the Silver Lake district, very close to Pasadena and Altadena, two cities completely ravaged by the fires burning in Los Angeles. He is beyond upset by the current tragedy. “I am completely devastated! It’s a nameless horror, a nightmare! » The actor has friends who have lost everything. A friend who was eight months pregnant didn’t even have time to take her passport as she fled her burning house. “For now, my house and my neighborhood are OK,” he said. I have friends there who give me news. Eaton’s fire is not far from my house. Several businesses that I go to daily have been wiped out. I often walk my dog ​​in the Altadena hills; a middle-class neighborhood, very diverse, completely destroyed.” François Arnaud finds it hard to see what is happening in his adopted city, while he is in Quebec: “It’s difficult to watch these images from a distance, because I feel helpless. I wish I could do something, help the people there. But I’m here, and it’s probably better this way. I’m in Montreal and I can concentrate on theater. When I arrive at TNM, I pick up, I think of something else. Now I just have to hope for rain soon [à Los Angeles]. And wish that the North wind [Santa Ana] don’t start again. »