“At first, I didn’t want to talk too much about my father,” confides comedian Matthieu Pepper, sitting at a table at the Bordel Comédie Club, where he was a host for a long time and where he still plays regularly. “Rachid Badouri talked so much about his father, it’s as if it had already been done. » But how, when you think about it, can you not evoke on stage the one who introduced him to the wonderful world of entertainment or, finally, to something resembling it?
As a pre-teen, the youngest of a family of five often provided technical direction for the baptisms that his father, a deacon, presided over on Sundays. “He had his entrance song, his song for signing the registers, another more solemn one for his conclusion, that I all had to leave at the right time,” says the son, who nothing could make happier at the time.
Marc Pepper was also a spiritual guide for people at the end of their lives at the Joliette hospital, where he practiced the “science” of “toutoulogie”, using stuffed animals to tame patients who were reluctant to his visits.
A sort of Patch Adams, we notice, which makes Matthieu burst out laughing, not a rare commodity for him.
Died by colon cancer in 2018, at the age of 65, dad Pepper will not have the chance to attend his son’s premiere on Tuesday evening at the Olympia, but will nevertheless have provided his poetic title to this first show entitled Waiting for the village party.
In a burst of lucidity, while his condition had deteriorated, the man announced to his family that he would like to “celebrate in the village this evening”, a phrase symbolizing for the son his hope that in periods of great winds follow the sweet warmth of embraces. An idea in which it is not always easy to believe, however.
Matthieu Pepper is, during his appearances on TV or radio, the archetype of the paying guest, laughing at all the anecdotes, with a lively eye and a comforting smile. If he presents a sad face on his poster, it is to signal to spectators that he is not just what appearances reveal.
“There is nothing wrong with what I am on TV, but it has contributed a lot to people only seeing me as the nice guy, whereas I know myself to be more tormented, more anxious , more complex”, explains the man who left the most recent Les Olivier Gala with the Discovery of the Year statuette (and who still blames himself for having moved his poor mother’s back by lifting her off the ground) .
His desire to show his proverbial dark side, the one who is obsessed with the idea of one day dying and who struggles to find satisfaction elsewhere than in work, will sometimes have led him, at the start of his break-in process, to shed in the opposite excess.
“At one point I had just broken up and my show was flat! I really wanted to absolutely say something and I had to find a balance, so that people had a good time,” says the 33-year-old, creator of the series Entre deux draps.
The death of his father, Matthieu Pepper recognizes, was not accompanied by great epiphanic revelations for him about the meaning of life. But it’s inevitable, the comedian perhaps understands a little more how much better it is to accomplish what you want to accomplish – to live! – while it is time, one of the main ideas of the book published by Marc Pepper in 2017, I will not die before I am dead, in which he recounts his meetings with some of his most memorable patients.
The media premiere of Matthieu Pepper was first to be held in the privacy of the Gesù, at his request. “And one morning, I called my team to tell them that, finally, I wanted to premiere at the Olympia, in a big venue. This might be the only first I’ll do in my life and if that’s the case, I want it to be a real fair. »
He adds, without it being clear whether he’s talking about his comedy career, life in general, or both: “You never know when it all ends. »
