Recently invited to Flavie Flament’s Jour J program on RTL, author and director Francis Veber made some curious revelations about Pierre Richard, with whom he toured a lot. Nobody really expected to hear that.
He is one of France’s star directors. Francis Veber is notably known for having created the character François Pignon, interpreted many times in the cinema. By Pierre-Richard (Freinds et The fugitives)Jacques Villeret (The dinner of fools)Daniel Auteuil (Closet)Gad Elmaleh (Lining) and Patrick Timsit (the remake of The Troublemaker).
The one who marked the most in this character is obviously Pierre Richardwhich seduced many French people with its funny and spontaneous interpretation, and this still today. Pierre Richard is for everyone the very incarnation of an endearing and oh so clumsy person., silly but not too much, enough for us to fall in love with her. In other words, Pierre Richard has always been the somewhat ‘dull’ friend that we love to count among our loved ones, with whom we are never bored.
It is therefore difficult to get a bad image of Pierre Richard, so appreciated by several generations. At the microphone of Flavie Flament, Francis Veber however revealed some rather compromising anecdotes about the actor.
Francis Veber “I lived with Pierre extravagant scenes”
In 2020, when the memoirs of Francis Veber were released Let it stay between usreaders were able to read that Pierre Richard is “stingy and sexually obsessed”. Revelations that surprise and that we do not necessarily want to believe.
With his legendary outspokenness, the director however confirmed this information with the help of a few anecdotes of shootings at the microphone of Flavie Flament, including one which takes place while the two men were filming. The goat. The director explained that Pierre Richard had brought a young woman he was dating, nicknamed her ‘love’ and treated her like a little girl : “It was complicated, because Pierre was a little older than her and in the morning, they both fooled around at breakfast. And it went: ‘Does she want tuture on her rusk? Yes , she wants tuture on her rusk’. obviously, we arrived quite tense, Depardieu and I“remembered Francis Veber.
Launched, the director also wanted to share another memory of this same shoot which concerns Pierre Richard and his girlfriend at the time: “He was with ‘Love’ in the makeup room. And there was a curtain. And Gerard Depardieu was being made up, but he was frolicking in the back, which caused Depardieu to get the make-up brush in the eye. And he was screaming, ‘Are you done you bastards?'” confided the author.
Francis Veber and Pierre Richard are still friends
Despite these anecdotes which can at the very least harm the image of Pierre Richard and the assertions written against him in his memoirs, Francis Veber assured Flavie Flament to remain “always friends with Pierre”.
On this subject, the director returned to a questioning of the past in his memoirs: “I wondered if our association hadn’t done him more harm than good. He stopped writing and directing while working with me, and I remember he said in the press: ‘My luck and my bad luck is to have met an author’“he wrote.
This is a rather singular friendship between the two men, but nevertheless sincere and faithful. Together, the duo was able to create, sometimes with the help of another monster of French cinema, Gérard Depardieu, comedies that have marked memories, and that last over time. These films are passed down from generation to generation, shared with family and that’s the only thing we want to remember, in the background. Pignon will forever be Pignon. Performed by many actors, in many ways, but Pierre Richard will have been able to give birth to it, give it a certain character, pouts that we will always remember, a particular genre, such a clean humor… Pierre Richard, for a majority of French people, it is above all that.