Absent from our screens for fifteen years, Linda Malo is slowly reconnecting with her life as an actress. One-on-one with a pioneer who, despite setbacks, continues to be carried by hope.
In January 2022, the author of these lines contacted Linda Malo to suggest that she participate in Far from the Spotlight, a series of portraits of artists who have had a profound impact on Quebec culture, but now live withdrawn from the eye of the audience.
An invitation that Linda Malo, with infinite kindness, had preferred to decline. “Doing this kind of interview would have been for me the acceptance that something is over,” she says, sitting in a lotus position in the reassuring light of her Plateau Mont-Royal residence.
She will have been right not to stop believing in it: last May, she played Esther in the series The pearls (Club Illico) and will participate for the first time, next fall on Crave, in a comedy, Inspirez exhale, written by Sonia Cordeau.
The day we met, Linda Malo was still floating in the gentle weightlessness of the end of this shoot. “After a scene with Katherine Levac, as we were leaving the set, she said to me, ‘Linda, you know, you were very, very funny.’ His eyes fill with water. The actress had not lost hope, but had perhaps lost confidence a little.
Linda Malo was in Paris in the mid-1990s when a casting agent contacted her to ask if she would agree to audition for director Jean-Claude Lord, who was then looking for a young mixed-race woman. . As surprised as amused, the model films herself, with the help of her visiting dad, in the inner courtyard of her apartment.
The series Jasmine (1996) made an impression for many reasons, firstly because Quebec fiction had never given a lead role to a black woman, even less that of a policewoman, but also because there was about racial profiling, sexual harassment and intimate assistance for people with disabilities.
Another reason: a large network placed a major role on the shoulders of a pure stranger. “TVA had asked Jean-Claude if he really wanted to put 10 million on a girl who had never played in her life and he had replied: ‘Yes, Quebec will love her.’ »
Jean-Claude Lord was not mistaken. Even without having dreamed of this career, Linda Malo will have the impression, thanks to Jasmine, of arriving “at good port”. Until 2007, she took on mandates as an actress (Virginie, Russian dolls) or host (Bec et Museau, Maison de rêve), became one of the star players of La Fureur and never really left the traffic.
“When I was a young teenager, for a few years I spotted the articles on Linda Malo in 7 days at the dentist, and read with avidity the reports devoted to her Clin d’œil “, wrote the author Chloé Savoie- Bernard in a post published last January in Le Devoir about the reassuring mirror that the actress will have offered to many young black women, at a time when they were rare on TV. “I cut his pictures out of my high school or high school day planner, pasted them between Jennifer Lopez and Kelis. ” Nothing less.
What happened to keep Linda Malo away for so long? Short answer: life. “After Russian Dolls, there was a drop, but it can happen to anyone,” she says, choosing her words wisely. “I wouldn’t want anyone to think there’s any bitterness. »
Linda Malo, bitter? This is an idea that his smile, the very image of gratitude, immediately belies. “We often say that we always see the same people on TV and I will never say that, because I was one of those same people for 10, 12 years. »
After a separation, the mother finds herself alone with her son, then will have to take care of her mother, suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. Not having the luxury of simply waiting, she turned, successfully, to the production of corporate videos, a job allowing her to leave the door open to her life as an actress.
Even though it wasn’t true, the word had gotten around the proverbial circle: Linda Malo had drawn a line under the TV. Then one day, the casting director of the Pearls series, Édith Côté-Demers, took a chance and asked her: “Linda, do you still want to play? »
“Do you allow me to show you something?” Linda Malo gets up from her red armchair and pulls out of a small wooden chest a black and white photo of her parents’ wedding in 1960 in Trou-du-Nord, Haiti.
Adopted child, raised on the Plateau Mont-Royal when it was still a working-class district, Linda Malo’s father, Fernand, had been sent to Haiti by the Jesuits. It is there that he will meet the pretty Marie who, after several obstacles and years of forced separation, will follow him to Quebec.
Linda Malo obviously inherited her sense of hope from her father and mother, who formed a mixed couple at a time when the sidewalks of Montreal saw little.
The parents of Linda Malo will have remained rather modest, with their three daughters, on the insults generated by what their couple represented. “But once, my father told me that one of his brothers had come to the house, drunk, and asked him: why did you marry a Negress? My father immediately kicked him out. »
“The reason I tell you this,” she continues, “is because before he died, one of the last people that uncle asked to see was my father. And he said to him, “Fernand, you will excuse me for what I said to Marie.” »
In the background, the music continues to play, but an immense silence unfolds between Linda and me. “What my dad was trying to get across to me, I think, is that you can carry the weight of something nasty you’ve done to someone else for a long time. »
Linda Malo is back, therefore. “You started the interview by saying that I was [she presses the verb in the past tense] an important personality for Quebec TV…” Moment suspended. She smiles. “Well…maybe next time we can reconnect with the present tense?” »
