"Only idiots didn't understand that I had talent"

• Chagrin d'humour

  was published on November 2.

  In this book, Sébastien Thoen recounts his career as a comedian and settles accounts with Vincent Bolloré who fired him from Canal+ two years ago.

• “I wanted to clarify things, to give my truth.

  I also wanted to tell funny memories, confide in me a little and talk about behind the scenes, he explains to

  20 Minutes

  .

  The profession of comedian is not easy today.

  »

• “Today, we can always say anything, but we mustn't be afraid of the consequences.

  You shouldn't read social media or have your boss read them.

  Ditto for press articles that take you apart or petitions.

  You have to give a damn, but with the Internet, it has an impact,” he also says.

Sébastien Thoen calls us five minutes before the time fixed for the appointment: “Hello?

Sorry, I have an impediment, it will not be possible.

“As we prepare to turn back, he resumes: “No, I'm kidding!

I am installed in a restaurant in the Market Square, I am waiting for you there.

» He comes out of a recording of Les

, so it's a stone's throw from the RTL studios, in Neuilly-sur-Seine, that we join him.

We immediately ask him to adjust our compass in order to find his bearings between the first, the second and the thirty-sixth degree.

He is able to switch from one to the other in the same sentence.

A colleague was trapped, taking for money the statement of the comedian announcing his plan to launch an adaptation of the sitcom

with Jonathan Cohen and Marina Foïs on Amazon Prime Video.

The screenplay fantasies of the ex-member of Action Discreet and the

de Canal+ are not the reason for our interview.

We're here to talk about

.

In this book, which has just been published by Harper Collins, Sébastien Thoen retraces his career as an entertainer and settles his accounts, notably with Vincent Bolloré.

The latter had not appreciated, two years ago, that he participated in a parody of the CNews program,

, and had demanded his eviction from Canal +.

So we took the opportunity to talk to him about humor and the possible lines not to cross.

Is this book to explain once and for all what happened with Vincent Bolloré?

I wanted to clarify things, to give my truth.

This event overwhelmed me.

The explosion hallucinated me.

I also wanted to tell funny memories, confide a little and talk about behind the scenes.

In the title,

, there is something second degree, because I am still paid to do the zozo, so I have nothing to complain about.

But the profession of comedy is not easy today.

I'm part of a generation of comedians who experienced the advent of the Internet, which changed the situation with comments, bad buzz, hysterical petitions, etc.

And then there's the fact that we've gotten to a point where you can get shot for screwing up - I'm thinking of my

.

It wasn't a much easier job forty years ago, but it wasn't the same.

You also admit that the lack of recognition pains you...

I thought this job was going to last a week, but it's been going on for twenty years, I have nothing to complain about.

I'm happy, miraculously, if it stops tomorrow, it's not very serious.

I spent three years on the

, a legendary Canal+ show, which was a bit in decline at the time but not that much and I would have liked to break the house.

It's also my fault, of course.

But these are regrets.

I would have liked to have great memories, to have been able to say to myself "Damn, when we were in Cannes, it was great, when we received So-and-so, it was great" - it wasn't the prison, but I don't can't say it was great.

In particular, you deplore not having worked more at the “Grand journal” in collaboration with the host Antoine de Caunes…

I don't reveal anything.

Antoine de Caunes released a book about his professional career a year and a half ago, he called it

.

It's not a joke, it's not me who says it, it's him.

In the

team , nobody hated me or put a spoke in the wheel, but I worked with people who didn't necessarily want me, so that doesn't help.

What's fault ?

Has a humor that is too corrosive?

At

, I was not with people who wanted to blow up the Fifth Republic.

But neither do I!

Their humor was rather schoolboy, benevolent.

Or, we told you what you could mess about.

[Michel] Denisot, when he had the young people of the Jamel Comedy Club, as he wanted to be a “friend from the suburbs”, he said to [Thomas] Ngijol: “Go ahead, let go!

“Ngijol who wins [Nicolas] Sarkozy on set, that suited him.

Me, I was not too censored, but I felt that I was not welcome, there are sequences that jumped, I was wandered from right to left...

When Canal+ offered me the show, I was delighted, but it didn't really suit me.

It's everyone's fault and no one's fault.

I am aware - and it is perhaps my personal sorrow - that I was not clever, nor strategic, nor very good.

I would have liked it to go better and for it to flow into other things, which it didn't.

It was a way of the cross afterwards, the more it went, the less I was seen on screen.

I'm very proud to have participated in the

, it's legendary, but when you come on Saturday at midnight, it's not the same as selling

like Jonathan Cohen or a TV movie like Alex Lutz,

, broadcast on a Wednesday in prime time with lots of promos.

Jonathan Cohen and Alex Lutz are not in the same register as you...

They're not punks - I'm a cat punk.

But that doesn't mean they aren't funny.

There is no comic charter saying that if you do political and trashy humor, it's funny, and that schoolboy, basic, simple, expected humor is not. 

At the start of the year, Gaspard Proust agreed to perform at a gala organized by “Valeurs Actuelles”.

Would you have gone there?

[He thinks, then answers with a smirk to emphasize that you have to understand the opposite of what he's saying] If

​​calls me tomorrow, that's obviously tempting.

I'm not on the left, so it's easy.

Gaspard Proust is a communist, I don't know how he did it, he had to take a lot on himself to try to make people laugh by making fun of the public, he had to be outrageous and look within his limits to titillate the nationalist.

Me, I'm already on the right, so it would be a gift!

Is there a responsibility in humor?

I do not think so.

I make the jokes I want, if it makes you laugh so much the better, if not, that's life.

On the other hand, I find that there are today, with YouTube, all that, a lot of comedians and not enough plumbers or doctors.

I would prefer it to be the other way around.

When, with Discreet Action, you go to troll an anti-abortion demonstration, there is still a political positioning, right?

They are still quite funny.

Indeed, there were not many centrists in the demonstration.

With Discrete Action or solo, I always wanted to laugh at what seemed silly to me from my point of view.

Is it a political commitment, not at all, I'm not smart enough to know what's wrong, even if I have my notion of right or wrong.

Afterwards, the anti-abortions, we wanted to do them for a long time.

We made them, well, and they remember it.

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Today, your interventions at the "Big Heads" are particularly awaited.

The show's audience adores you...

Only idiots didn't understand that I had talent.

As I've been under-rev for the past five years, I'm giving it my all.

So I still have the peach.

Canal, it's my house, I'll go back, I know.

But RTL is my new home and

is made for me, we are around a table, with a nice guy who tells us to talk bullshit, we say what we want, we answers questions, I let go and apparently it works.

So the "we can say nothing more" is not relevant?

I don't like this expression.

We can always say everything but we must not be afraid of the consequences.

You shouldn't read social media or have your boss read them.

Ditto for press articles that take you apart or petitions.

Who cares, but with the Internet, it has an impact.

Tomorrow, your son can show you his phone: “Hey dad, on Twitter, they say you're just an idiot, homophobic, racist, this, that.

The comedians of the 1980s received insulting letters at home, but it was not set in stone.

There are sensitive areas, such as religion, unfortunately, there are plenty of dramatic events that have shown this to us.

You must first want to make people laugh and not shock.

We understand why youtubers are not too into this delirium.

That's to say ?

They don't have the Eldorado that was Canal+ twenty years ago where you could do whatever you wanted.

They have to find their audience, young,

and they have to place products.

So it's sure that with jokes about religion and politics, it's not Lacoste or Princesse Tam Tam who's going to give you clothes.

You write that you apologized to a beautician for a hidden camera that went wrong…

We did 800 hidden cameras, sometimes we went a bit too far and people were outraged.

You shock a demonstration, it does not matter.

You shock a baker or a beautician, you feel that she is not well, you will see her again and explain to her that it was bullshit because we are not torturers either.

A joke can have consequences, in the trivialization of racism or homophobia, for example... When you make a homophobic joke, there is certainly a context with Laurent Ruquier and other members of the "Big Heads" themselves gay…

Who legitimize...

Who legitimize and have the possibility of being able to laugh about it.

Isn't there a risk that an auditor...

At Les

, we are zozos, we talk nonsense, we don't think it.

They are jokes, they are more or less funny, but we cannot be accused of being first degree.

The fact that Laurent [Ruquier] assumes what he says excuses everything else.

Naturally, you say to yourself that the other idiot who made a joke about gays, if he was really homophobic, he couldn't be a friend or colleague with Laurent Ruquier, that's not possible.

Laurent knows very well that I play the role of the big idiot.

There are other fights, there are real homophobes, they are not at Les

.

What I mean is that what is said on the set with a band where everyone gets along well and winks like one can do between friends, it's one thing.

We know what humor is and what are the limits of the other.

But a listener who hears you say to Stéphane Plaza "On your NYPD cap there are two letters too many", may think it's appropriate to talk like that, to do the same thing to anyone...

We have to bet a little on the intelligence of those who listen to us and know that we are a show of zozos who come out with horrors to have fun.

Just because it's said on the air doesn't mean it has to be said in real life, otherwise it goes a long way.

If we start to wonder if the listeners are likely to repeat that or something else, it's because people have remained and that's another problem, I'm not responsible for it.

What is even more serious, and which shows that we are going through a major crisis, is that there are plenty of people who think that you have to be black to make fun of black people, gay to make fun of gay people... Me, I'm white, straight, capricorn, so I can only make fun of white, straight and capricorn people?

Do we laugh a lot at straight white men?

Of course, that's all I do!

By targeting their sexual orientation and skin color?

Yes, in fact we make fun of clichés.

Me, I make fun of homophobes by making jokes like that, of course.

If a gay man says "dirty hetero" to me, it makes me laugh, I know he doesn't mean it.

We don't care who fucks who, with whom and why.

I have another perception of life in society.

Afterwards, I'm not saying that sometimes we don't miss each other.

Freedom is more and more on stage.

People pay to come see you and know who they are coming to see.

By being in the media, we reach a lot of people who don't know us and don't necessarily agree with what you're trying to do.

What cost you your head at Canal+ were not tweets or petitions, but someone with power.

And who is a man, white, straight…

Like, it all makes no sense.

It's a question of power.

Yes, and this is also the tragedy of our modern media societies.

I'm not for the "nice clown" and "mean CFO" scenario.

But sometimes being led with an iron fist by big bosses who don't want you to tickle them or cause trouble… For them, you're a clown, “do squeak squeak, that'll be enough”.

This is also the concern of the time.

Everything is concentrated.

Tomorrow, all the billionaires will own the media and that will mean that we can no longer make jokes about people who have money?

It's up to them, it's their box, but it kinda sucks.

If tomorrow there are only McFlys, Carlitos and Squeezies, it's a shame… Watch out, I love those guys.

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