For the past two years, Maripier Morin has taken his life into his own hands. Discreet, but active, she focused her energies on her family, her therapy as well as charitable activities in the fight once morest addiction. The one who is now a mother is also preparing to take the top billing of the film “Arlette”, an additional step in a journey strewn with pitfalls.
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During a press meeting a few days before the release of his new film “Arlette” Maripier Morin did not evade questions regarding the scandal that shook the province in July 2020 when Safia Nolin published, on social networks , allegations of sexual assault and harassment once morest him. Nor on the testimonies of five other people, the following year, who reported inappropriate behavior, gestures and remarks from the former presenter.
Because, in two years, Maripier Morin has evolved, progressed, worked on herself, which she continues to do today. “I took my responsibility, I made my way. […] When this case came out, I said, ‘I had some problematic behavior, I’m going to go do my homework and I’m going to come back.’” She explained that she had started “a process of integrity and honesty. […] I’m an alcoholic, drug addict and still in therapy, but that doesn’t excuse my actions. But my responsibility is that it never happens once more. […] People say, ‘She puts it all down to alcohol’. It’s not true. It contextualizes, it explains better why I did this, because I would never have done this on an empty stomach. But that’s no excuse.”
As soon as she read the script for “Arlette”, in October 2020, she wanted to get this role with all her might. “Right away, I made a lot of parallels. I was upset. It gave me so much business,” she recalls. And she prepared for the auditions. “I felt it inside me, I felt that I had things to sort out thanks to this film.”
an exorcism
The parallels between Arlette, a young woman appointed Minister of Culture and who must learn to deal with the misogyny and verbal violence of the political world and the former star host are unmistakable.
“Yes, the film was therapy for me,” she said. The relationship to the image explored in “Arlette”, this “constant quest to be seen, to exist, to be constantly better, perfect, made me sick. I found it beautiful to exorcise that through a character. Even today, social media is super toxic to me. I am still trying to reestablish my relationship with the image. And, during filming, her psychologist even gave her a daily challenge, to “look in the mirror and say, ‘You were good today.’”
If she had the strength to get up following the scandal, following being let go by her sponsors, it was thanks to the figure skating that she practiced for 16 years. “Learning to fall…I think it’s the most resilient sport in the world because you just fall. This past as an athlete will have allowed me to have the necessary resilience to say that I had fallen very, very low, that it had really hurt, but that it was perhaps necessary to get up and have the life that I I want to have.”
And it is far from easy, even today. “It is a wish to have a healthy relationship with my profession. I haven’t gotten there, not at all. Yesterday, I was really stressed and my boyfriend reminded me that I had called him when I was in therapy by verbalizing for the first time that I did not exist, she delivers, crying. Today, I’m faced with this: if people don’t like the film… I have to be able to create a distance between my value as a human being and my work.”
Does she think she will ever be forgiven? “It’s not me who decides. It is the public who will decide. If the public goes to see the film, that people are curious and that they want to, that will mean that I have the right to do my job.
“Arlette” hits screens in the province from August 5.
CITATIONS
“I want to be optimistic. I chose the light, I chose that the rest of my life was going to be beautiful and happy. The worst thing that might have happened to me at 33, when it happened, would have been to become bitter.”
“I was looking forward to putting the focus on something other than myself and focusing on a more important role which is raising a child.”
“I don’t get through all that if I don’t have a psychologist, if I’m not followed, if my boyfriend isn’t there, if my parents aren’t there too next to me.”
“Everything that comes with motherhood is extraordinary. You learn and relearn a lot of things. I always had both hands tight on the stick wanting to be in control and there, I no longer control anything. Letting go is a cursed beautiful school. And my daughter teaches me that every day.
