At the microphone of Michel Denisot, Édouard Baer confides on Saturday on the unique relationship that still unites him to Jean Rochefort, his spiritual father who died in October 2017. A relationship that materializes today by a number that the actor refuses to erase from his repertoire. 

INTERVIEW

They have often been compared, brought together, brought together in a spiritual father-son team of the most playful in the small world of French witticisms.

Between Édouard Baer and Jean Rochefort, there was a rare friendship until the death of the second, in October 2017. However, the story between these two characters did not really stop, as Edouard Baer confided. on Europe 1, Saturday.

The author and actor returned to his relationship with the first role of

Un Éléphant, it is very misleading

.

Rochefort in the "chapel" of Baer

At the microphone of Michel Denisot, Édouard Baer did not hesitate to qualify his former sidekick as an "icon", occasionally defining his conception of what such a character is.

"What is an icon? These are people who are larger than life or who are small statuettes that one would put in his small museum or in his chapel."

>> Find all of Michel Denisot's interviews in podcast and replay here

His museum, his chapel and even his book: Jean Rochefort figures prominently in Édouard Baer's latest work, 

The rantings of a man suddenly struck by grace

(editions du Seuil), a play in which the man greedily summons its masters of literature.

The complicity of the two troublemakers was tied at the end of the 1990s, one being a young comedian from Canal +, the other already one of the most popular actors in France.

It was expanded with crazy projects and atypical collaborations thereafter, as for

Akoibon

, a film by Édouard Baer released in 2007.

The "power" of the landline

There is in any case an unusual place where Jean Rochefort still "exists" with Édouard Baer: his repertoire, more than three years after the death of the French dandy.

"It's something we said about Patrick Modiano, the writer. We must continue to call people who are dead. We must not remove them from our address book. We must not cross them out or wipe off."

"

Here, if I called Jean Rochefort, on a misunderstanding, he could pick up

"

And the actor to launch into a tirade of which he has the secret, this time on the power… of the fixed telephone.

“The landline was louder for that because when you ring a landline, you know your phone call physically exists. There's a room somewhere, where there's a ringing ringing. And sometimes you get it. Said to himself 'Well, if I called Jean Rochefort, on a misunderstanding, he could pick up.' "Jean Rochefort does not pick up, no longer picks up, but Édouard Baer always calls him.

By a burst of laughter or a ringing in an empty room, the tandem is always there.