Virginie Lemoine: This childhood wound of which she has made her strength

Complice of Laurent Gerra at Jacques Martin and Michel Drucker, Virginie Lemoine began her career by making the French laugh. Then, for fifteen years, she has touched them in the series Homestay , including France Ô broadcasts two episodes this Thursday, December 22 from 21 hours. No doubt because she personally experienced abandonment and resilience …

It was rummaging in the apartment. Gustave and Sarah snored lying on the sofa, Brigitte, in another room, lying on the floor. It was 4 o’clock this Saturday, none paid attention to the comings and goings of the mistress of the place. Energetic though. Scarcely had we crossed the threshold of her haussmannian den near Les Buttes-Chaumont, when Virginie Lemoine was going to fetch a dry garment from us-the rain was pouring down on Paris-before bringing us a hot tea. The reality, once will not hurt, like the “as seen on TV ‘: this girl, long and thin, spontaneous smile is really friendly.
No wonder that since 2001, it makes the best audiences of France Télévisions in childminder big heart in the series Homestay (long scheduled on France 3, but it aired December 22 on France Ô)!
Long associated with Laurent Gerra, accessory before the cameras, love the city , and separated for almost three years the actor Darius Kehtari, Virginie Lemoine could count on his own family: his brothers Gregory and Stephen. With Grégoire, decorator of his shows, the complicity is total, almost daily. Virginia remembers that he was “the child who turned two pieces of cardboard robots. ” Whoever, without baccalaureate, learned by doing his job. First runner and props trays (for Dummies , The Puppets of Info …), it became an “artisan”, as he likes to define. And then, there is Etienne, their big brother of 59 years, as important as it is discreet. To put forward is not his thing. Etienne is the musician of the siblings, but especially the elder to whom “the little ones” owe so much.
When their mother died of cancer, Gregory was 11 and a half, Virginia, 10. There was absence, cruel. “The silence of the people around us , recalls Gregory. At the time nobody, death, nobody talked about it. I would have liked a word, a gesture. We were prisoners of this silence. ” There was especially a father, an architect, who ” knew not what to do with us, he was so confused, so mom was everything to him ” , he continues, now mature enough to apologize. Etienne struggled to replace this father.
“I owe him everything,” said Virginie. Etienne gave me love, built me, introduced me to art, theater . An extraordinary being. He never told me “as a woman, you have to be like this, like that.” I grew up with my brothers, both homosexual, without these stereotypes; I am glad to say that the current rise of intolerance in the face of differences makes me uneasy. What I am, what I have become, I owe to my siblings. ”
Marked by his debut at Jacques Martin in 1990, then sketches with Laurent Gerra at Michel Drucker, from 1994 to 1997, people still misunderstand it for a simple funny. But she has already signed several tragicomedies – A diva in Sarcelles , Brigitte, branch manager or the Mauritius Girls .
In early 2017, tireless, she will tread the boards of three theaters. From January 19, the Théâtre de la Bruyère, it will play in Lethal Trap , police comedy of Ira Levin and huge success on Broadway. On January 28, at the Theatre Rive Gauche, it will take the ball to Irene Nemirovsky, she signs the staging that has already played in Avignon, Théâtre Rive Gauche. Finally, from February 3, at the Studio des Champs-Elysées, it will play 31 musicals , vibrionnante thinking on troop life.
Critics are on the alert. But Virginia has confidence. At once light and serious, Virginie is made for life.