INTERVIEW
Richard Berry is preparing for a big tour throughout France with the play Plaidoiries . Alone on stage and dressed in a lawyer's dress, he brings to life the great arguments of history: Paul Lombard wanting to avoid capital punishment to Christian Ranucci, the triple infanticide of Véronique Courjault, the Papon trial or Jean-Pierre Mignard defending the families of Bouna Traoré and Zyed Benna. In Media Culture on Europe 1, the actor explains how this role and this show have changed his view of the profession and some major criminal cases.
"Representative pleadings of the great events of French society"
As the trials are not filmed, the pleadings often remain where they were given: in the courts. But, in 2010, Matthieu Aron publishes The great pleadings of the tenors of the bar . The French journalist had gone to lawyers and stenotypists to gather the pleadings that marked the French justice. It is from this book that the play where Richard Berry takes the lead role was built. "I make five pleadings by night, but it can happen to me to change," says the comedian. "They are representative of the great events of French society."
"Another form of truth"
Among the major arguments that have marked him, the actor retains including the defense of Paul Lombard, who defended in 1974 Christian Ranucci in "the business of the red pullover". "In his pleading, he says this wonderful phrase: 'do not listen to public opinion, it is a prostitute who pulls the judge by the sleeve.He must chase her from our courtroom because when it comes through a door, the justice goes out by the other '", recites from memory Richard Berry at the microphone of Europe 1.
Another text that marked the actor: the defense of Veronique Courjault by Henri Leclerc, while the mother was accused of triple infanticide. "At first, when we imagine the facts, we do not want to defend this woman, and then I read the pleading that I found overwhelming," says Richard Berry. "The way Henri Leclerc illuminates the facts, of which he tells us another form of truth, (...) makes that changed my point of view, and I told myself that it was the purpose of the work of 'a lawyer: to change mentalities,' says the actor.