At 56, the eldest daughter of Jacques Martin recounts her father, with extreme loyalty and tenderness in the documentary Jacques Martin: behind your applause, to discover on Wednesday May 4 at 9 p.m. on Paris Première.
Télé Star: In this documentary, we discover unknown facets of your father. In particular this need for revenge on his childhood…
Elise Martin: It’s true. I have always known Dad, enjoying life to the fullest, harnessed to a billion things… He made up for lost time as a child in his Jesuit boarding school. And also probably warded off the terrible feeling of abandonment he had known.
You were 2 years old and your brother David, 6 years old, when he separated from Anne, your mother. How has your life been organized?
We stayed with mom and went to see my dad every Thursday. He hosted a daily program with Danièle Gilbert, recorded live from the Jardin d’Acclimatation. We had free places for the rides, it was like Disneyland at the time! We had fun all day but, if you think about it, we didn’t spend time with him.
How did you experience the period of The School of Fans, ultra-popular show presented by your father every Sunday afternoon from 1977 to 1998?
It’s a painful memory. There was a gap between the man I saw on the screen and the one I knew. Often I was told: “Is it your father, Jacques Martin? Luck… “ But the reality is that he had such a passion for his job that he didn’t have time to be attentive with us. But I never blamed him.
Has your relationship changed over the years?
After his stroke, in 1998, there was a big setback. He could no longer be the rushed man he had been all his life and, selfishly, I took advantage of that. I had moments of complicity with him like never before. At the end of his life (he died of cancer in 2007, editor’s note), I went to pick him up on Sundays and we spent the day together. In the evening, when he had to be taken back to his medical home, he said to me: “Keep me”. Even if it was impossible, it was the most beautiful declaration of love he had ever made to me.
With David and Elise.
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