Chögy takes a few steps in the middle of the living room then stops dead. The white cat gets up and fixes his eyes on those of his master. “He always does that, has fun the actor and writer Scali Delpeyrat, 54 years old, who receives us in his two-piece of the 14e district of Paris. It’s a psychological fight between us. “ But it’s not yet 6.30 p.m. and Chögy will have to wait for his croquettes.
Without any form of solidarity with the poor feline, we bring out pretzels, mini-pizzas, olives and baby carrots. The market had been passed, we would take care of the appetizers, he, the cocktail. And here we are, shortly after 6 p.m., seated in front of two gin and tonics. “Be careful, this is not gnognotte”, he warns. The tonic is “premium”, the gin served in moderation. “I have a friend who told me: “Don’t drink too much, it would be a shame if you were charming at the start of the interview and ended up being inept.” “
Chögy moves from the sofa to the bedroom entrance, where a wire helps her wait while we look into her case. Because if The world visits the actor who has played great roles in the theater and a multitude of more modest characters on the screens (we can see him in The taste of Others, Maestro, The Tuche 3 or in the series Gears and Black baron), it is because of this cat that Scali Delpeyrat almost never adopted. The day he went to pick it up at the SPA, the actor found himself in a panic attack, forced to get off the RER which brought them home. Fortunately, a friend ends up responding to her panicked texts: Chögy “Will make you the happiest man in the world”.
Mixed heritage
“With the arrival in my life as a childless man of this cat that I call “my baby” and that I feed all the time, I thought about my own father ”, he confides. The frame of his book, I am no longer worried (Actes Sud), released in October 2020, could take shape.
In this short text, which he will play on stage at the Théâtre de la Ville, in Paris, in November, Scali Delpeyrat looks at his past and the world around him with humor and melancholy. He weaves links between his family history and his neuroses. He, the “Jew of the South-West with the accent of Francis Cabrel” – son of a Sephardic mother who narrowly escaped the Vél’d’Hiv roundup and of a silent father, who died today, who had fought in the Algerian war, did not like the Arabs but had married a woman from North Africa – obsessed with what might happen to him afterwards.
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