Today acclaimed for its black humor and cynicism, Gaspard Proust yet struggled to impose his paw. When he decided to leave his job in a bank in Switzerland to become an actor in Paris, the comedian did not immediately manage to find his audience and convince the producers.
Difficult beginnings in song
In his early days, Gaspard Proust even wrote little songs. “At the start, the show was half a song and the rest was text. I thought it was impossible to last an hour on stage just by telling something. I thought it didn’t make sense. “, he confides at the microphone of Isabelle Morizet in There is only one life in life. “I was doing little songs. People were a little confused and I was getting bad reviews.”
“Be nicer, people will want to go on vacation with you”
The comedian had to be patient before finding success. “People think you jump off the train one night, then boom, you make it. But it doesn’t happen that way. It’s work, it’s a journey, it’s boring, it’s hard. In any case, for me, it was like that,” he recalls. In the end, Gaspard Proust finally discarded the songs to keep only his lyrics, whose darkness and irony were not immediately understood… “There are people who understood, who were intelligent, like Ruquier. And then, there are others who explained to me from the start that it was necessary to smile more”, explains Gaspard Proust on Europe 1 who remembers a producer in particular.
“A great Parisian producer said to me ‘You know, you have to establish a connection with the public, that you are more likeable, that way, people will want to go on vacation with you'”, says the comedian . “I say ‘Well, we misunderstood. If that’s the reward of this job, I think I’m going to go back to the bank'”, he quips.
The desire to “tell it all”
Gaspard Proust has therefore remained faithful to his quirky and irreverent style. “I don’t really understand where the problem is, whether it’s in writing, in artistic creation or on a stage, to say everything. If it’s words, sentences, it’s a frame that’s made If we start to stop there, then we have to stop talking regarding freedom”, underlines the actor who much prefers to be the “asshole on the right” than the “nice on the left”. “And then, you have to be honest, there was more room available on the right, how weird it is,” he adds with humor.
The actor wants at all costs to move away from “banality”. Because what’s the point of going on stage to say “world hunger is not good”? “I obviously agree, but if you get applause on that, for me, it’s the banality of banalities”.
