Bye Bye 2023 will cover a wide variety of topics. The Israel-Hamas war will not be one of them. No sketches are planned. No jokes either. “It’s just not funny,” says Simon Olivier Fecteau.
In an interview, the content producer and director of the popular television show adopts a more serious tone when the Middle East question is raised. He does not know how to find the “comic angle” of such a murderous and divisive conflict, which has hit the headlines and generated tensions in the four corners of the world (including in Quebec) for two months.
He prefers to leave this task to cartoonists, better placed to “send a message with an editorial point of view”, he believes. “But us, at the end of year party… No. This is extremely serious, what is happening. There are thousands of deaths. »
The war in Ukraine, which intensified when the Russian army moved into the east of the country in February 2022, will receive the same treatment.
“We’re too deep into it,” explains Simon Olivier Fecteau. I don’t know what to do with this. »
Filming for Bye Bye ended last Thursday, a month after it began. The next few days will be devoted to editing the show, once again produced by Guillaume Lspérance (Everybody talks about it, Discussions with my parents).
Once this stage is completed, Radio-Canada’s annual humorous review will be presented – under close surveillance – to a few discussion groups of around thirty people (commonly called focus groups), to take the pulse of the public and make corrections, if needed.
Just before our interview, Simon Olivier Fecteau was chatting on the phone with Maxime Caron, the script editor of Bye Bye. Were they talking about the public sector employee strikes, which are monopolizing the news at the end of the year? Did they discuss the approach they wanted to take to integrate this hot but evolving issue into the 90-minute show? Impossible to know.
“That’s another thing I learned: Bye-bye is never over. Yes, we write 80% of the sketches before we start filming, but there is another 20% that moves until the end. And even when we finish filming, we continue to write. »
Simon Olivier Fecteau displays astonishing serenity before beginning this final blitz of work. Surprising, because the actor, comedian and director did not always cope well with the pressure surrounding the delivery of Bye Bye. In 2019, he even found himself in the hospital a few weeks before New Year’s Eve.
“I had too much weight, I was eating poorly and during filming I had to stop to go to the emergency room. My digestive system had stopped cooperating with me. It wasn’t fun. »
Simon Olivier Fecteau often made himself sick with the show. For several years, when the pressure eased in January, his immune system collapsed. This period seems to be over. He claims to have “got back into shape physically and mentally” in 2023, which he describes as “a year of cleaning, of clarification”. He now runs and prioritizes “good things”. “I’m extremely happy to do the Bye Bye. I am extremely focused. »
As previously announced, Bye Bye 2023 will feature Sarah-Jeanne Labrosse, Guylaine Tremblay, Pierre-Yves Roy-Desmarais and Claude Legault. The latter joins the team after two years of semi-absence (he appeared as François Legault in the 2022 edition) due to professional burnout.
Simon Olivier Fecteau did not hesitate to recall the actor.
“He’s in top shape. He’s never been better. It’s true. What’s fun about Claude is that beyond being funny and being a good actor, he brings depth to the characters he plays, even if it’s to make people laugh. He brings a humanity that a comedian is not necessarily capable of having because he does not have the same tools. I’m very, very happy that he came back with us. »
Once again, this new Bye bye will include several special appearances, an essential ingredient of a recipe that Simon Olivier Fecteau and Guillaume Lspérance have been applying since 2020, a pandemic edition that they did not – initially – want to ensure.
Since this pivotal year, each edition of Bye Bye has recorded astronomical audience ratings. In confirmed data (which includes recordings), we are talking about 4,862,000 viewers for 2021 and 4,702,000 viewers for 2022.
“We kind of reinvented ourselves,” underlines Simon Olivier Fecteau. We’ve been working on this for three years. Every year, we knock on wood, because we never know when we might go wrong. We are never safe from failure. »
