Palmade has "monstrous things said" in "Le Grand restaurant"

Comedian Pierre Palmade, at the head of the Grand restaurant on M6.

-

Fred STUCIN / PASCO AND CO / M6

• The third number of the

  Grand restaurant

  is broadcast on M6 this Wednesday, at 9:05 p.m., ten years after the broadcast of the second part on France 2.

• "I love this principle of being able to write sketches for big movie and theater stars, people I admire", confides the father of this project, Pierre Palmade, to

  20 Minutes

  .

• "It's made to be funny and then, sometimes, there is a little morality, a philosophy, these are fables", explains the humorist.

At a time when brasseries and bars are forced to remain closed, due to a health crisis, Pierre Palmade reopens his

Grand restaurant

this Wednesday, at 9:05 pm, on M6.

Forty personalities, from Florence Foresti to Isabelle Huppert, Gérard Jugnot and Alex Lutz, are invited to this fiction where the dialogues are much more gratin than the dishes à la carte.

From table to table, the lines are served, fierce or tender, and with one or two exceptions, the skits are tasty.

20 Minutes

asked Pierre Palmade for its recipe, even if it means setting foot in it.

You launched the first two parts of the “Grand restaurant” on France 2 in 2010 and 2011, why come back ten years later on M6?

It is entertainment that I hold dear and of which I am very proud.

M6 allowed me to do a third part.

I love this principle of being able to write skits for big movie and theater stars, people I admire.

Some are friends, others are not, I went to approach them timidly, with a lot of humility.

Was it easy for you to convince Isabelle Huppert?

I ran into her at a Muriel Robin dress.

With lip service, I asked her if she would agree to play one of my texts on a show.

She answered why not.

We saw each other, she thought about it, she read the text and it interested her.

What is pleasant is that people say yes when reading the text, which means that they prefer my writing.

It's not easy to poach Joeystarr either, even though he likes to diversify.

And then there are people who are very busy like Yolande Moreau and Florence Foresti.

If you want stars, you have to really succeed in seducing them with a text that will leave them with good memories.

The press kit informs that the sketch with Muriel Robin is not the one that was originally planned.

What happened ?

She was to play with an actor who had health concerns at the last moment.

I found out the day before for the next day and I found myself with a Muriel Robin without a sketch when I wanted her in my

Grand restaurant

.

She told me that if I wrote her one in the evening, she would learn it during the night to play it with her partner Anne [Le Nen].

At midnight, I had written the sketch, she learned it until three in the morning and the next day at 11 a.m., she performed it.

It is also a very crazy sketch.

This story of a woman who kidnaps a child to adopt her is indeed very daring.

Is it more liberating to write while being up against the wall, because you think less?

Or is it stressful?

This

Grand restaurant

is a constant stress.

There are actors who can no longer, there are imperatives of schedules, texts, so I am ready to do anything to make it work.

I admit that I work pretty well in the emergency even if, this show, it was three months of writing upstream.

I got help from François Rollin because I wanted to go more into the absurd and not stay in simple observation.

I have a boulevardier, situational humor.

There are some pretty cruel sketches, like the one in which the character of Vincent Dedienne is rejected by his parents ...

There too, it was François who helped me.

Sometimes I take things on the wrong foot and I make him play naturally.

Under the guise of a sort of banality, I make my actors say monstrous things.

Like when the character played by Arielle Dombasle asks, with a completely naive air, her best friend to kill her husband, or when Isabelle Nanty explains to François Berléand that, in life, to be successful, you have to be naughty ... limits of frankness, transparency or cruelty, it is a kind of humor that I like.

You evoke more or less serious social issues, such as the screens that punctuate our lives ...

Absolutely.

There are people who only want to talk to each other by application and not in real life, as in the sketch with Baptiste Lecaplain.

There is another with a mother and daughter forced to communicate through Facebook.

The ubiquity of social networks and phones, especially in restaurants, infuriates me, so it inspires me.

It's made to be funny and then, sometimes, there is a little morality, a philosophy, these are fables.

Joeystarr who confesses to his best friend that he is white, it is obviously an allegory of coming out, when one reveals to be gay.

There is also this woman embodied by Isabelle Huppert in front of whom I play the reactionary who tells her that an alcoholic man is tolerable, but not an alcoholic woman.

This "Grand restaurant" repeatedly evokes homosexuality and features several gay characters.

Is it a conscious choice?

It is true.

There is Muriel [Robin] with his partner who kidnapped a child because it goes faster to adopt.

Jeanfi Jeanssen plays a very susceptible homo who sees homophobia everywhere… Homosexuality is part of my life.

I do not hide it, even if I experienced it in an annoyed way at the beginning while I live it well now.

This remains a very topical issue in society.

Even if in France, we are more and more relaxed with that, it remains very

touchy

.

The allegorical sketch with Joeystarr you were talking about begins with the fact that it reveals to Fred Testot, "to be white".

Seeing him we wonder in which direction it will go ...

The point of the sketch is that there is no question of whether it's good or not good to be gay: it's like that, like being black or white, blond or brown.

Everyone will see either the funny, or the moral, or the social.

But initially, I want to make people laugh and I realize that in spite of myself there is a little message.

In a sketch, Chantal Ladesou and Stéphane Guillon play two trans people.

Do you dread the reactions of the trans community?

So there, no, I don't see where I would say bad things about them.

They are two best friends who have changed sex without telling each other and who see each other again thirty years later.

I don't see where I'm laughing at this.

Chantal sometimes has the air of a trucker and Stéphane knew how to play preciousness very well.

Considering the life that I have and the camp to which I belong, I do not think of making a fault of taste when I touch on these subjects.

Will you be scrutinizing social media reactions during the broadcast?

I'll ask my friends to watch.

I'm sensitive so when I see people having no restraint and being a bit mean or lacking in tact, it can hurt me.

But I will get an account of what is being said.

Would you be up for a fourth “Grand restaurant”?

According to the audience… If many people are watching and enjoying, I will be up for a new adventure with M6.

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