After playing We, Larry And District 31, the actor and father of Maurice, Clément, Sacha and Frida, slips into the costume of a police officer for a new thriller inspired by a successful book by Jean Lemieux. He tells us about this rich journey that took him from the Mauricie of Émilie Bordeleau to the Îles-de-la-Madeleine, interrupted by some detours in Poland and Japan.
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Patrick, you got a role Caleb's daughters before you even graduated from conservatory and starred in a few period series in your early days These children from elsewhere And Shehaweh. We're talking about big productions…
It was the time of heavy series. For These Children From Elsewhere we shot for a month and a half in Krakow, Poland. There were war scenes with men on horses. It was crazy on the set of Caleb's Daughters. Complete buildings were built to meet the needs of the series. People went shopping before the show aired, so the stores were empty during the broadcast! That doesn't happen anymore today.
Eric Myre
You have also worked with Robert Lepage. You played the lead role in his films The lie detector And The confessional in addition to traveling to Japan for the piece The seven arms of the Ōta River. It was a fruitful time!
It was quite an era for me. The Seven Arms of the Ōta River is a project that we have developed over several years. The team with Anne-Marie Cadieux, Marie Brassard and the entire technical team was like a family to me. We've been touring for years. When we got home we continued to hold each other together. It was also a time when we had no choice but to learn to let go. We started from scratch. Robert had an idea for a scenography, with projections, a photo booth and the like, but as far as the dialogue was concerned we had to improvise it and we built on that. It was truly a collective creation.
It must be stimulating to participate in the creation of a constantly evolving work!
Maybe one evening Robert came with a text that we needed to translate into Japanese and that I needed to learn for a future performance. Even for “The Polygraph,” I remember having improvised dialogues in the morning with Marie Brassard that we had to shoot in the afternoon. If you are unhappy in such a situation, it is better to walk away. For it to be good, you have to give yourself completely.
Her father was a businessman and car dealer. How did you come to want to become an actor?
I wanted to get into an artistic field. Since I loved drawing, I thought I would go into fashion. At CEGEP I found myself in an alternative school with couches but no desks; We set our grades and so on. It should be a humanistic way of working. It was part of Dawson. It was called the “New School.” In my head I thought it would be like school on Fame, but it wasn't quite like that. (laughs) Since I didn't really know what to do, I enrolled at LaSalle College and took theater classes. I performed a Sam Shepard play with some friends. It was a great experience. Then I got the error.
Are you still drawing?
A little, for fun. For a long time, I made my oldest's Halloween costumes. I took sewing classes in high school but didn't have access to a sewing machine for years. And when I found one a few years ago, I still knew how to do it. I made a dress for my daughter. In my free time I use my machine. I love fashion. It's not a world I'm familiar with, but when it's beautiful it's truly an art form.
For several actors, the conservatory was an intense time from a human perspective. What did this experience bring you?
It gave me a framework. I was passionate, but there was a lot I didn't know. I didn't even know what an agent was. When I was in Caleb's Daughters, I met Lucie Robitaille through her sister. She took me into her agency. Today, young people are more aware of what to expect. Learning the profession also allowed me to open up emotionally. This is something I still see today, with my family, my children. I take my brother in my arms, I kiss him. We didn't do that with my father. It also made me curious about other people. My job has given me this openness.
You've already mentioned the difficulty associated with the unpredictability of your job. Does that still worry you?
Sure, I would like to work more, but I'm less afraid of not working today. I even thought about quitting my job. I returned to university to study secondary school French teaching. It's definitely a job that comes with a lot of frustrations, but today I'm happy with it. I tell myself, “If it ends tomorrow, it was still something really important in my life…” I love doing this and I'm happy to say it's the career I chose.
Eric Myre
Several actors' children decide to follow in their parents' footsteps. Have you warned your children about this?
Never. So far, none of my children have expressed a desire to become an actor. It also has to be said that I'm not really the type to talk about my job at home. I don't force them to see me in the theater or see what I do on TV. If they are interested, it will come from them. I don't want them exposed to too much of this “light”. In my case it is a small light compared to personalities that are very well known, but there are still people who recognize me. The danger for children is that they have a certain attention not for what they are, but because they stand in the light of their known mother or father. It is important that every child has their own light.
A reluctant police officer
In the new series Surprising Detective: The Girl with Stone Eyes, directed by Yannick Savard and starring Patrick Hivon in the title role, Patrick Goyette plays a police officer who is in no hurry to start the investigation that will solve the murder of a young woman , the daughter of the mayor of Cap-aux-Meules, whose body was found on the Îles-de-la-Madeleine. “Around Surprenant there is a team of police officers, including the characters played by Catherine Brunet, Nicolas Fontaine, Mikhaïl Ahooja and myself. My character is the oldest in the group. He is the one who tries to convince Surprenant not to interfere too much because there is another investigator, played by Patrice Godin, who comes from outside to lead the investigation. Having already worked with director Yannick Savard, notably on the series “Nous”, the actor wanted to add some depth to his character to explain the reluctance that the police officer seems to have in the face of this cruel affair. “In fact, I wanted to address him as a man who arrives in the islands with some baggage. He has professional experience, he has seen things. When he becomes aware of the magnitude of the situation, he knows what emotional consequences it can have. Not wanting to get involved in this affair is a kind of self-protection for him. I see him as someone who chose to pursue his career in the Magdalen Islands because, in his opinion, it was a land that had not yet been tainted. I decided to play it like that.”
Surprising Detective: The Girl with the Stone Eyes is available on Club illico.
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