A pillar of French television died 10 years ago, on August 23, 2022. Yet even after all these years, the death of Jean-Luc Delarue remains full of secrets…
Host and producer Jean-Luc Delarue died on August 23, 2012 at 10:20 a.m. in the American hospital located in the suburbs of Paris, in Neuilly-sur-Seine. After creating some of the biggest TV shows in the French audiovisual landscape in the 90s and 2000s, Jean-Luc Delarue succumbed to a double cancer, stomach and peritoneum – a membrane inside the abdomen – at the age of 48. For the 10th anniversary of this tragedy, TF1 looks back on the life and death of the creator of Reservoir Prod.
A controversial end of career
Before his death, Jean-Luc Delarue made headlines following various scandals caused, in particular, by his addiction to cocaine and alcohol. Involved in legal cases, he is excluded from the small screen by France Télévisions which prefers to detach itself from this colorful character whose escapades could tarnish their image. In 2011, Jean-Luc Delarue learned that he had stage 4 cancer and that the prognosis is not brilliant. Wanting to take advantage of his wealth while there is still time, the host and producer spends lavishly. “Everything I didn’t do when I was healthy, now is the time to do it!” he thus declared to our colleagues from Point. However, this renewed energy comes too late.
Now detoxified, Jean-Luc Delarue must fight against another evil that will leave him little time with his family. A few years earlier, in 1994 he had already wanted to take a look at what awaits us on the other side by crashing into a pole with his car, in which was also his fiancée Elsa Guyon and his half-brother. According to his ex-girlfriend, the producer would have launched a “We would be better up there all together, right?“before driving into the background and causing the car to roll over three times. All passengers in the car survivedbut Jean-Luc Delarue had perhaps played with his destiny there and attracted the mower sooner than expected…
Jean-Luc Delarue: “I don’t want to believe it”
When his strength fails him, his wife Anissa Khelifi, whom he married only a few months earlier, watches over him and stay until his last breath. Before the latter arrives, however, Jean-Luc Delarue has time to regret a death which, in the end, comes too soon. “I’m going to go to the other side. I don’t want to believe it. I have two people to whom I want to give all my love: my son Jean and my wife Anissa. (…) My life, I want my life, not an end of life… I am thinking of those whom I will certainly abandon, despite myself, despite my vital love for them. Pardon me for inflicting on you this suffering which will melt on you…”.
One morning in August 2012, while his wife was with him in the hospital, Jean-Luc Delarue dies in his sleep, “in peace” according to Anissa, “because he fell asleep smiling” she explained then. But the peace will not last very long since from then on appear tensions within his familyin particular between his parents, Jean-Claude Delarue and Maryse Samuel and his wife Anissa Khelifi-Delarue.
Unclear burial and religious conversion
When his son died, Jean-Claude Delarue spoke in September 2012 on Europe 1 to explain that he had not been able to properly mourn his son, whom he had not notified of the funeral in time. “I appeal to those who knew my son and who can help me find answers. Jean-Luc died on Thursday August 23 at 10:20 a.m., and I only learned of his death on Friday noon.. This particularly long delay is justified, by the father of Jean-Luc Delarue, by the fact that his wife did not share with him all the necessary information. “Why wasn’t I told where and when he was buried? I had to fight for days and days to find out where my son was buried.”
And the father of the dead animator goes further and did not hesitate to make a deduction as soon as he learned that Jean-Luc Delarue would have been buried “in the Muslim square of a cemetery in the Paris suburbs“. According to him, “he had to somehow make an act of conversion before marriage. A few days before, he had mentioned it”. The father of Jean-Luc Delarue is thus convinced that his son has become a Muslim shortly before his death. This would also explain the confusion around burials, which he returned to in an episode oflegacies in December 2021.”In fact, there were two successive burials. (…) But that, we were not warned, I could not say goodbye to my son. We were invited to a funny ceremony at Père Lachaise. We were in front of several graves, we did not know which was that of Jean-Luc (…)”.
It would actually be a moment of contemplation in front of an anonymous grave in which Jean-Luc Delarue had already been buried that the host and producer’s parents attended. Shortly after, the coffin will also be moved to land in the Muslim square of the cemetery of Thiais, without his parents being notified. The widow of Jean-Luc Delarue was quick to respond to these remarks. Re the religious conversion of her deceased husbandshe explained in a statement to AFP: “Jean-Luc Delarue did not convert to Islam as Jean-Claude Delarue supposes. He was of the Catholic faith and baptized”.
It will however have been necessary to wait for a second press release so thatAnissa ends up saying what was the real place where her husband was buried. Waiting, Paris Match had published a photo of the tomb that our colleagues located in the Muslim square of a cemetery in the Paris region. In the second press release, Anissa explains that this grave was only the family vaultand added: “The will of her husband being to be buried in a place chosen by his wife to rest at his side, Mrs. Delarue reserves the right, to respect his last wishes, to transfer him either to his family vault provided for this purpose, be in any other place she chooses”.