Come Monday to present in "Culture Médias" the play "Correspondences between Victor Hugo and Gustave Flaubert", the actor Jacques Weber bounces on the revelations of his "unexpected portrait" to tell his surprising meeting with Nénette, the female orangutan of the Jardin des plants.

INTERVIEW

"She is the oldest lady in the Jardin des Plantes".

It is with poetry and emotion that Jacques Weber evokes Monday in 

Culture Médias

his moving meeting with Nénette, the female orangutan of about fifty years of the Jardin des Plantes, in Paris.

Journalist Hélène Mannarino once again paints the “unexpected portrait” of the actor, revealing this recent episode in his life.

"Thanks to someone, I was able to go to the veterinary side, and therefore be very close to Nénette", adds Jacques Weber.

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Beginning a mime of the orangutan, the actor recounts the scene of their meeting.

"She looked at me. All of a sudden, she moved her ass, she went to get something. She handed me a piece of broccoli through the grill," he recalls.

"People who know her very well told me that it was a sign that she loved me very much. And that, frankly, that totally upset me."

"The religions said that animal intelligence did not exist"

So much so that Jacques Weber kept at home, in a small glass box, the piece of broccoli given by the animal.

"This is one of the things that touched me the most deeply, in what it means, in what it means, in this very strange relationship with this intelligence that we have not discovered for many years. centuries, ”he explains.

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For the actor, to begin to understand the animal world constitutes "a great opportunity of our century".

"We no longer despise him, we look at him much more carefully and we discover a lot of things," he said.

"The religions said there was no such thing as animal intelligence. That's all the wrong they did, among other things."

And there, "there is something happening which is essential for our philosophy and our existence", continues Jacques Weber.

"It's the recognition of the animal world, quite stupid."