France Beaudoin, rebel? It’s probably not the first word that comes to mind when you think of her. Meeting with a facilitator for whom insubordination does not exclude a full smile.
In 1992, a very young France Beaudoin took her first steps into the wonderful world of media as a researcher for the CKAC morning show. One morning when a crisis occurs in Russia, the researcher must find someone, somewhere, who could comment on the events. “But you understand that Russian sociologists, I didn’t know any. »
At dawn, she calls each of the Tretiaks who have the misfortune to find themselves in the phone book, looking for someone who has family in Russia. And since it’s 4:30 a.m., several of them offer him slightly irritated answers. “But I’m finally going to come across a real sociologist,” recalls the host with that big smile full of candor that is hers.
Although she had her way, her bosses would later make her understand that waking up the entire Russian-Montreal community in order to find a worker might not be the preferred method. Will the apprentice remember her lesson? On the surface, yes. But curbing his bursts of enthusiasm? Never !
“In fact, my girlfriend, under her very cool looks, is certainly one of the most rock’n’roll women I know, in her way of seeing life, in her way of seeing everyday life,” once said her lover Vincent Graton. France Beaudoin, rock’n’roll?
The main interested party specifies at the microphone of Just between you and me that her boyfriend likes to describe her as a rebellious. Being told that “we do this the same because we’ve always done this the same”? This is a great way to make France rock’n’roll appear.
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“The idea is always to take the opportunity and do something about it, not to be victimized, not to crash,” she says. We have to magnify what is happening. I always have the reflex to ask myself: how are we going to do better than what we planned, in the shit where we are? »
While piloting the cultural magazine La vie en Estrie in Sherbrooke, her first real contract (from 1993 to 1997), France Beaudoin was told one day by the big boss of a Montreal station that she was “perfect for the region”, that she has “a regional look, a regional thought”, in short, that she does not have what it takes to carve out a place for herself on the national airwaves. Ayoye.
His reaction ? “I just told him I didn’t agree. A few years earlier, when her boss in the TQS newsroom in the Eastern Townships asked her, during her job interview, how she would respond if a stressed colleague spoke to her roughly, France replied: “I hope that you will apologize. »
You will have understood it: France Beaudoin is nice because it is in her nature, but also because she does not believe in the usefulness of acrimony. “As a woman, I had to take my place, I looked like a sweet little girl,” recalls the producer who runs Pamplemousse Media, the box behind Mammoth, I come to you and On va tell yourself. “A lot of times I’ve been asked, ‘How are you going to decide? How are you going to establish yourself [as boss]?” Well I’ll just say it. »
In 2005, France Beaudoin agreed to host a new talk show on Radio-Canada, Bonsissers de France, to which half the directory of the Union des artistes had said no. She had however announced that she was leaving TVA not for competition, but for a sabbatical year. Two bosses, at each of the stations, will warn her about the mud that could splash on her, and which will splash on her when her salary is revealed in the media, a controversy she returns to for a rare time during our interview. .
Why did she accept this contract, when she knew she would be made to pay the price? “My mother said to me, ‘Is fear going to decide your life?’ “, she recalls. A question that still guides her to this day.
Is kindness softness, as many seem to believe? “I think on the contrary that you can achieve much more, in some cases. I admire those who go there with their fists on the table, it takes a lot, it’s complementary. What I like less is that we undervalue those who are supposedly nice. I think you can be nice, say what you have to say and still go your own way. »
As a producer, France Beaudoin says she puts a lot of effort into bringing people you rarely see to the screen. “Yeah, you see a lot of the same people on TV. But if you’re really, really honest, when you do Takeout, there’s a difference in ratings between those who are known and those who aren’t. What I believe in is an average of the two, that one [the known] sheds light on the other. »
It was France Beaudoin who asked the actress to co-host Two Girls in the Morning with her in 2000. “[France] gave me loose, permission not to be perfect. As I did not think I was the best to do this, a mistake seemed terrible to me, I had the impression of being unmasked, it was the end of the world. If I hadn’t spent those years with her, I think I could have let go of that job. »
The host prefers not to draw too much attention to her successes, so as not to be handcuffed to them. “The first time we hit the million mark on Direct from the Universe, some people were like, ‘We’re going to send out a press release.’ No no no ! We keep it the same, we don’t say it, it’s perfect. What we want is not to say that we have a million, it is to have the freedom to create, to have fun. We’re in the sweet spot of creative freedom. »
