INTERVIEW
More than a year after his departure, Patrick Sébastien has still not digested the attitude of France Télévisions towards him. In the fall of 2018, the management of the audiovisual group had decided not to extend the famous presenter to the next school year, and Patrick Sébastien had presented on May 11, 2019 the last issue of his program Les Années bonheur . Since then, the author and performer of Le Petit bonhomme en mousse has regularly denounced the reasons for his eviction. "The way was filthy," he said again Saturday at the microphone of Isabelle Morizet, on Europe 1.
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However, according to him, he does not miss entertainment TV. "This life is over, it is far away," he says. On the other hand, he recognizes, "the mourning was a little bit difficult". And to continue: "It was not so much about stopping, I would have taken one or two more years, to finish the story. But it was the way that was filthy. not even speak. "
"It is a hell that we lived"
For the host, his departure was more political than motivated by audience reasons. "It was just that I did not like three people who decide for others," he explains, before regretting: "It is a public service, so normally, we must be at the service of the public ".
Fourteen months later, Patrick Sébastien says in any case that "it's not very serious", and is delighted to have found "a freedom that I no longer had". Because if he remembers 30 extraordinary years on television, the former Paf star also recalls that during the past four years, "it is a hell that we lived". One of the main problems of current TV, according to him, is precisely the lack of freedom of tone for the hosts. "This is no longer a TV made for artists. You have to say what to say, especially make the little sentence about the good cause (…) show that we are very nice."
France 2 "closed the door" on TV movies
But could Patrick Sébastien return to television to present entertainment? "Me, it's good, people have seen me enough," he says. "And then, you do not come back, especially when you left in this way. I still have a pride. You are a scoundrel, you are being pumped up, you are not going to come and lick your hand of the one who put on you. "
On the other hand, doing the actor he misses, when he had played the leading roles in some TV movies in the past. But Patrick Sébastien accuses France Télévisions of having killed this vocation in the bud. "They closed the door for me," he said. "The day I was given an interpretation prize at the Lauriers de l'Audiovisuel (in 2019, Editor's note), I was told: 'You will no longer be making TV films'. They were the people from France 2 . "