Discover the Taulier in its intimacy. On the occasion of the fifth of his disappearance, M6 offers a special evening in his memory with the documentary Johnny by Laeticia, broadcast this Thursday, December 8, 2022. Directed by William Karel, this exclusive report compiles more than a hundred hours of family archives, filmed for 20 years by his widow.
In this unique documentary, the public invites themselves into the private life of their idol and rediscover the highlights of his career. Like his life as a father with his four children: David Hallyday, born in 1966 from his union with Sylvie Vartan, Laura Smet, fruit of his relationship with Nathalie Baye in 1983, without forgetting the adoption of his two daughters Jade and Joy. in Vietnam in the 2000s. A fatherhood that Johnny did not experience in the same way with each of them.
In an excerpt from the film Johnny by Laeticia that Planet was able to view before its broadcast (spoiler alert), we see that all the children appear on screen despite the rumors about the absence of David and Laura, who would have been cut during the editing . The famous artist evokes his role as a father with each of them and admits not having been very present for his two eldest. “I had a son at 22. I was on the road all the time, I didn’t see him grow up,” he admits in an audio archive. After his divorce from singer Sylvie Vartan, “David went to live with his mother in Los Angeles, it’s been a lack all my life”.
For her widow Laeticia Hallyday, she then confides that the birth of Laura was for “one of the most beautiful moments of her life”. But, again, his separation from actress Nathalie Baye took him away from his offspring who lived with his mother. “Me, I was still leaving, right and left… So I didn’t see him grow either. That was a lack too”.
It will be necessary to wait for the adoption of Jade in 2004 to give him a sense of his role as a father. “I was put in my arms, I looked at her. She had two small black eyes, she stared at me”, he evoked with emotion, as evidenced by the extract revealed on social networks. A new fatherhood that changed the life of the rocker.
Four years later, the Hallyday couple returned to Vietnam to give Jade a little sister. It will be little Joy, adopted in December 2008. For André Boudou’s daughter, Johnny had “become much more homelike, almost asocial. He no longer wanted to see anyone” as he was won over by his two little girls. The way for the son of Léon Smet to “repair his abandonment through that of Jade and Joy”.
Thanks to this new paternity, Johnny Hallyday wanted to reconnect with his two eldest children. “He tried over time to make up for the missteps, to get to know each other, to create a strong and close relationship,” assures his widow in her forties. Three days before the broadcast of the documentary film, David Hallyday published on the web a beautiful poem taken from the Little Prince to pay tribute to his deceased father. “It’s like for the flower. If you like a flower that is on a star, it’s sweet, at night, to look at the sky …”, he quoted in story, before revealing a father son photo. Discover the family album of Johnny Hallyday and his children in our slideshow.
