Invited to Quotidien on Wednesday, Jean Dujardin returned to the opening ceremony of the 2023 Rugby World Cup during which he appeared as a baker. A staging that had attracted much criticism, but which the actor continues to defend a year later.
A year ago, at the opening ceremony of the 2023 World Cup in France, Jean Dujardin arrived at the Stade de France as… a baker. With a beret, a moustache, a vest and a baguette in his hand, the Oscar-winning actor from The Artist entered a set representing a French village from the 1950s. This staging, which opened the festivities, had provoked mixed reactions, between embarrassment, incomprehension and boredom.
“I am shocked. I would never have thought that my participation in the opening ceremony of the Rugby World Cup would trigger such a wave of comments, political and media… (…) We wanted to celebrate our country, our know-how and the history of rugby,” he reacted a few days later on Instagram.
“Everyone applauds Tom Cruise and I’m like ‘fuck'”
A year later, Jean Dujardin is not budging. Invited on Quotidien Wednesday, he once again defended this show which aimed to highlight the French art of living. “There was a kind of absolutely horrible political recovery. We found ourselves in this when it was totally absurd. We were with volunteers, it was joyful”, commented the French actor. Before ironizing that, during the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympic Games, “we loved each other more than during the Rugby World Cup, that’s for sure”.
Although it did not escape controversy, the audacious show imagined by Thomas Jolly in the middle of the capital made a huge impression. “Paris is not France,” says Jean Dujardin. “We managed, we had little means. We tried to do it well. I was on a wire 40 meters away on an Eiffel Tower. Tom Cruise comes down (at the closing ceremony), everyone applauds and I’m like ‘fuck’,” he compares, a little bitterly. “I laugh about it because it was a very nice memory and what’s more we won the match against the All Blacks and it was wonderful. I don’t regret anything,” concludes the French actor.
