Julie Jardon, 27, was the last companion of Igor Bogdanoff, who died at 72 as a result of Covid-19, 6 days after his twin Grichka. For Gala, the young woman comes out of the silence and looks back on the circumstances of the illness, their memories, her difficult mourning …
It is a Julie Jardon in mourning who offered us her first words following the disappearance of Igor Bogdanoff, his companion for seven years. The famous animator and scientist died on January 3 at the age of 72, just six days after his twin Grichka. The two Bogdanoff brothers succumbed to Covid-19, leaving their family and loved ones distraught.
Exclusively for Gala, Julie Jardon lifts the veil on her passionate, even sometimes tumultuous relationship with Igor Bogdanoff. Their meeting, their 45 years of age difference, Igor’s physical appearance, his relationship to medicine … The 27-year-old young woman answers our questions without language.
GALA: How did Igor get the Covid?
JULIE JARDON : He caught it from Grichka in early December. He didn’t know he had it yet when we saw each other next, around December 6th, but when I started telling him I was feeling tired, he told me his brother had a temperature. . We all found ourselves positive. I was placed in solitary confinement on December 14, a day before Igor was hospitalized. I had to wait seven days and a PCR test to go see him. I told him on FaceTime to hold on, that I was going to arrive. But on the 21st when I was finally able to come, he had just fallen into a coma. I was with him in the bedroom, I massaged his hands with moisturizer, I played music. Even though I was independent, Igor and I were together all the time. He was my lover. We called each other at least twice a day. The first years together he lived a lot at my home in the 7th arrondissement of Paris.
GALA: When did you meet?
JULIE JARDON : I have known Igor since March 17, 2015 very exactly. I was studying neuroscience at Jussieu, I was 20 years old. At the same time, to earn my living, I was a model at Urban, a more commercial branch of Metropolitan because I am small -1.70m-. It was one evening when I was being picked up by a director in a nightclub in Cannes, the VIP Room. I didn’t like it, I went out and once outside I ran into Igor taking pictures. He told me: ” You remind me of someone with whom I climb in Fontainebleau He did a lot of climbing. From there, we saw each other and then saw each other again. And we started a romantic relationship in August of that same year. It was discreet at first and then we were photographed together in 2016.
GALA: You are 27, he was 72 with a slightly surprising physique… that was not an obstacle for you?
JULIE JARDON : In love, what touches me the most is people’s hearts. The physical is not what I look at first. Igor expressed himself well, he was very cultured and I was impressionable. In 7 years, I have never raised the question of his appearance. It belonged to him. And if my mother thought it was too complicated a relationship because of our age difference, we tried to ignore it. With Igor, we often thought that if we had been the same age, we would have built a life together.
GALA: In November 2017, Igor was taken into police custody for breaking into your home. Was it a tumultuous relationship?
JULIE JARDON : We can not really remember this episode about us. Our situation was complicated at the time. Igor was fiery but I was tired of having a story with a man who was still married – even if he was separated from Amélie de Bourbon-Parme he was not divorced -. I then got closer to another man who became my lover. Sometimes you realize what you had when you lose it. Igor couldn’t stand it and broke into my house one evening without my wanting to. He had made a duplicate of my key, he didn’t want to leave my living room. I was leaving him. He was very theatrical as he could be. My boyfriend called the police. Igor went into custody. Finally, we settled this amicably in court. Then, in April 2018, because we were having a hard time doing without each other, we got back together. He divorced that year.
GALA: He met your parents and you his children?
JULIE JARDON : Yes, his family is lovely. For my part, my father hasn’t been in my life for a while. He is a captain and my mother was a flight attendant, she died in 2020. Igor tried in vain to reconcile me with my father and he supported me a lot when I lost mum. He was a pillar for me who was left alone.
GALA: Don’t you blame him for not getting the shot?
JULIE JARDON : He was not taking any medication, ever. I was vaccinated. Maybe he would have. I don’t want to judge him on that, him who wasn’t even taking Doliprane. He would rather suffer than relieve himself. It was his way of life. Trust your body. I know he thought that after death there was one piece of information and it was scattered around.
GALA: What memories will you keep of him?
JULIE JARDON : That of a bubble made of intensity. The strongest moments between us weren’t the social events but those moments when we were on a sofa hugging each other on our way home from dinner. I also remember our travels, when in New York we walked up all of Broadway imagining ourselves living there. From the Sultanate of Oman where we played cards with Omanis at night. From that moment in Moscow when it was so cold that we had to warm up in a souvenir shop. Igor made life different, happy. We were discussing a lot of science. It’s a subject that fascinates me. I am about to take an oral in front of a jury to try to obtain a scholarship to the Gustave Roussy hospital as part of a thesis project on metastatic dissemination in the case of colorectal cancer.
GALA: How have you been living since Igor disappeared?
JULIE JARDON : It’s hard. I lost my bearings, I dread the next day. The first three days after her death, I took refuge with my best friend, some friends came. I put on a good figure and it delayed the feeling of my loss. But when I found myself alone I was devastated. I spend sleepless nights. I think about all those moments, all those breakfasts that I will have without him. The future scares me a little. At the funeral, I placed photos in the coffin. Leave a trail of what we’ve been to each other … for seven years.
Photo credits: BALDINI / BESTIMAGE