Recently invited to Flavie Flament’s program Jour J on RTL, author and director Francis Veber made some curious revelations about Pierre Richard, with whom he toured a lot. No one really expected to hear that.
He is one of France’s star directors. Francis Veber is notably known for having created the character of François Pignon., interpreted many times in the cinema. by Pierre-Richard (Friends Y the fugitives)Jacques Villeret (The dinner of the idiots)Daniel Autheil (Cabinet)Gad Elmaleh (Covering) and Patrick Timsit (the remake of the troublemaker).
The one who marked the most in this character is obviously Pierre Richardwho seduced many French people with his funny and spontaneous interpretation, and still today. Pierre Richard is for everyone the very embodiment of a lovable 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 ‘boring’ friend that we love to count among our loved ones, with whom we never get bored.
Therefore, it is difficult to get a bad image of Pierre Richard., so appreciated by several generations. However, at Flavie Flament’s microphone, Francis Veber revealed some rather compromising anecdotes about the actor.
Francis Veber “I lived with Pierre extravagant scenes”
In 2020, when Francis Veber’s memoirs were published Let it stay between usreaders could read that Pierre Richard is “stingy and sexually obsessed”. Revelations that surprise and that we do not necessarily want to believe.
However, with his legendary candor, the director confirmed this information with the help of a few anecdotes of shootings at the microphone of Flavie Flament, including one that takes place while the two men were filming. The goat. The manager explained that Pierre Richard had brought a young woman he was dating, nicknamed her ‘love’ and treated her like a child : “It was complicated, because Pierre was a little older than her and in the morning, they both fooled around at breakfast. And she would say: ‘Do you want tuture in her cake? Yes, she wants tuture on her biscuit.’ Obviously, we arrived quite tense, Depardieu and I“recalled Francis Veber.
Launched, the director also wanted to share another memory of this same shoot that 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 getting his makeup done, but was frolicking in the back, causing Depardieu to drop his makeup brush into his eye. And he was yelling, ‘Are you done, you bastards?'” the author trusted.
Francis Veber and Pierre Richard are still friends
Despite these anecdotes that can at least damage the image of Pierre Richard and the statements written against him in his memoirs, Francis Veber assured Flavie Flament that he would remain “always friend of Pierre”.
On this subject, the director returned to a questioning of the past in his memoirs: “I wondered if our partnership hadn’t done him more harm than good. He stopped writing and directing 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 quite a unique friendship between the two men, but nonetheless sincere and faithful. Together, the duo were 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 movies are passed down from generation to generation, they are shared as a family and that is the only thing we want to remember., in the background. Pignon will always be Pignon. Played by many actors, in many ways, but Pierre Richard will have known how to give it life, give it a certain character, pouts that we will always remember, a particular genre, such a clean humor… Pierre Richard, for most French people, is above all that.