Actress Julie Trépanier took her first steps in theater in Vancouver. Five years after her return to Québec, she took part in two major projects that started in quick succession, the series “Mégantic” and “Désobéir: Chantale Daigle’s choice”.
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It’s quite a launch pad for the ones we also saw in Classé Secret as well as the Fourchette web series. Perfectly bilingual, the 34-year-old takes photos in both languages, but is happy “to have taken the risk of coming home”.
In Mégantic, she plays Annick, a woman who escaped certain death during the train tragedy that killed 47 people in this Estrie community on July 6, 2013.
Annick must deal with the guilt and support her friend Corine (Catherine Paquin-Béchard), who is deeply affected by this immense tragedy.
Julie Trépanier was “overwhelmed by the story and narrative framework of [son] character” in this series inspired by real events.
“What I love about my character on Mégantic is that Annick has the power to be there for others, for her friend Corine. The power to keep your cool, to stay afloat, to ask for forgiveness… But what touched me the most was that despite everything, she still loves Corine.
Julie Trépanier, who has incredible screen presence, didn’t approach Annick thinking she was a brave woman. “I don’t know a woman who isn’t strong. I don’t know any woman who doesn’t have to be strong. Strength manifests itself in many ways.”
Director Alexis Durand-Brault seems to have enjoyed working with her on Mégantic, after which he called her back to cast her as unionist and feminist activist Lise Moisan in Disobeir: Chantale Daigle’s choice.
The actress was confident on both sets, a feeling she partially attributes to this “extremely intuitive director.”
“‘Mégantic’ was a big first role for me. Alexis pushed me like my character is having a panic attack. He told me to move on and he was really with me in that.
For “Disobeir: Chantale Daigle’s choice” she was able to go back in time to 1989 when she was just 1 year old. “I’m playing Lise Moisan in this other hugely meaningful project. Mrs Moisan, with whom I was not able to speak, started the magazine “La vie en rose”. She is an organizer, a woman in the field, able to mobilize. It’s amazing what women around Chantale Daigle have done to support her.”
Rachel Graton plays her character’s blonde, and the other women who help Chantale Daigle (Éléonore Loiselle) in her fight before the Supreme Court for abortion rights are portrayed by Émilie Bibeau, Marie-Claude St-Laurent and Andréanne Theberge.
“We had some great scenes at the movement’s headquarters, there were only female actors and extras, they were all dressed as they were then, there were rotary phones, typists, people were smoking. It was really the “fun”” said Julie Trépanier.
“I really liked that Annick didn’t have a filter. It comes out how it comes out, it comes out like this, it comes from the heart. For Lise Moisan we feel the group, the solidarity and the importance of belonging to something that is bigger than oneself. It took a lot of courage back then to come out as a lesbian and as a woman to have a position of power, to have a voice , which is publicly supported, to interfere in important decision-making processes, to demand one’s place in society.
The Mégantic series is available on Club illico, while the Disobeir: Chantale Daigle’s choice series launches on Crave to celebrate International Women’s Day on March 8th.