Grégory Gadebois plays Jean Valjean

You play the title role in this film about the destiny of Jean Valjean. Who is he when he leaves prison?

He is a man we meet every day in the street. A wanderer we don’t want to see. Someone sleeping across the road. On the sidelines, broken, broken. Filled with pain. Valjean is like an animal in the eyes of others and initially does what people expect of him: he reflects anger in the faces of those who approach him. With the director, Éric Besnard, I liked thinking about the relationship between human beings and anger. Where does she come from? How does it arise? And what do we do with it?

Valjean transforms it into violence…

Initially yes, because it is the simplest distillation. Then, little by little, he learns to master it to do something else with it.

He must choose between good and evil…

Jean Valjean already chose kindness in his youth. He spent years in prison for stealing bread to feed his nephews. It’s quite a nice gesture… It was his escape attempts that prolonged his stay in prison. Over the years, he became hardened to it. He became a stone. A stone among others. “The guilty have nothing to do in prison because they contaminate the innocent,” says a character in Cold buffet, the film by Bertrand Blier. Valjean is an innocent.

There is a tipping point in his journey…

The film tells the story of a human being (Monseigneur Bienvenu) who reaches out to another (Jean Valjean), who can do the same in turn. It is when he grabs this outstretched hand that the convict passes from one world to another. From shadow to light. Did he meet God? Humanism? The good? We will give the name we want to this transformation.

“Everyone is each other’s doctor,” says Monseigneur Bienvenu in one of the film’s dialogues, which are all very beautiful…

The work of adaptation by Éric Besnard, who knows the work of Victor Hugo very well, is magnificent. This is my fourth film with him, and I know that the words he writes are not nothing! During filming, I told him: “That line is beautiful” and he replied: “It’s the language of Victor Hugo. – Ah, but this one is superb too. – Ah, this one is mine!”

And you ? Did you know yourself well Les Miserables?

My first memory of the novel dates back to fifth grade. My teacher, Ms. Balandin (smile), had shown us Robert Hossein’s adaptation with Lino Ventura (Jean Valjean) and Michel Bouquet (Javert) whom I had admired, with particular tenderness for Javert. The same year, she made us sing the musical Les Miserables in end of year show.

Did you participate?

If I had played? (Smile.) I played the role of a revolutionary, but I stood in the background and pretended to sing. I was always a bit of a dunce at school, and I hated end of year shows.

Where did you live then?

I grew up in Trémauville, near Fécamp, in Seine-Maritime. Perhaps there are readers of the Pilgrim in Trémauville? It’s a village I regularly get news from. I’m going through it. I still know the neighbors’ names. We moved to Rouen when I was 12 or 13 years old. It was the city. All of a sudden, the codes were no longer the same as in the countryside. I didn’t have nice clothes. Clothes are an important thing when you’re little. I wanted to blend in to find my place.

You left school at 15…

Initially, I wanted to follow my friends to high school, but I didn’t have the level. So, because you have to have a job, I agreed to be guided towards a CAP. “A CAP of what? What is it that you like?” I was asked. And I replied: “Well, motorcycles!” This is how I followed a CAP in mechanics.

Did you like it?

Oh no! It ruined my mechanics. Well… it taught me how to repair things, but I didn’t get the diploma.

How did you discover theater?

My mother’s friends told her: “Put it in the theater.” They had said that word: “theater”. I was 15 or 16 years old. I didn’t accept right away. Then, around the age of 20, I wanted to get started, telling myself that it would perhaps open me up a little. Expand myself. I was rather closed, not comfortable. A little angry. At that time, I had a fairly promising career as a mover. I might still be if my boss hadn’t wanted to keep me (smile).

That’s to say ?

I was a day laborer in a moving company in Rouen. I worked all the time. Alone. One day, I came into the depot and one of the bosses said to me: “Do you want a new motorcycle? You will be able to buy it. We’re going to hire you on a permanent contract.” That’s what everyone wanted, but it hit me like a bolt of electricity. The next day, I called the boss to say, “No, I’m not coming back.”

It must have disrupted the schedule. I then helped set up the sets in a small company that did street shows. There I learned to weld. And as I knew how to weld, I also worked temporarily at Renault, on the quays of Rouen. Then Emmanuel, the boss of the company, suggested that I go to the conservatory in Rouen, then in Paris. Paris, when you’re young, is great. It is the city of Uncle gunslingers and Brassens.

And you were a student at the prestigious National Conservatory of Dramatic Art. Tell us…

Before I went there, I didn’t understand that it was a school where everyone wanted to go. I was scared. I didn’t know anyone. I was not cured of my shyness.

During the first internship, our teacher, Catherine Hiegel, who was a member of the Comédie-Française, started to speak and her words touched me. Then she called out to me: “But you’re not on stage, are you?” She gave me a monologue for the next day. I can still see myself in the hotel room learning the text and inventing the character. I had respect for her and I didn’t want to disappoint her. What she taught me has stayed with me.

How would you define your acting?

When we play, we don’t really know what we’re doing. I of course have an opinion on my characters, but it is mainly in the face-to-face with the actor giving me the line that I decide. The game is played by two people, is woven. Why does a show work? How do we play? You don’t know? Nobody knows (smile).

“My daughter wants to be an actress, what should she do?” one day asked the great actor Paul Meurisse for a mother. He replied: “There is no method, but we must find it all the same.”

And you ? What role did your mother play in your choices?

She was great because she taught me to be free. By giving me guidelines on good and evil, she left me face to face with my responsibilities. I had the right to make my own choices. I started by making bad ones. And that very quickly forced me to question myself. In the end, I find that I took a not too bad route.

Does spirituality have a place in your life?

When we look at the world, it’s often the bad guys who win. But I tell myself that we must try to move towards good and, like Jean Valjean, prefer light to darkness. When I was little, I liked going to mass, where I sometimes laughed with my friends. I wanted to go to catechism and make my first communion, to have nice gifts, like them: a cross bike, a calculator watch… In the end, I never did.

Coming back to spirituality, I think humans need answers to the questions that occupy them. And even if more and more questions about our lives are taken care of by phones, one of the only answers we don’t have is what exists after death. It would still be a little weird if there was nothing above us, right?