He’s back with the series Pax Massilia. Olivier Marchal signs a detective series in the heart of the city of Marseille, broadcast on the Netflix streaming platform. The opportunity for the director to grant an interview to Leisure TV. Star of latest episode of the podcast Of shadows and lights, released Friday December 8, 2023, Olivier Marchal spoke openly about his addiction to alcohol. The writing and working process is a real escape for the director. “I’m so focused that it saves me from thinking about the rest, he began by explaining. […] To me, to my troubles, to my faults my life, to my failures and all my gray areas…” Olivier Marchal must “desocialize” to work. “I’m not going out, I’m stopping the party, the drinking”he revealed. “I can’t write and drink, he said. I need to be sober. The times I work keep me from being a total alcoholic. I don’t drink when I’m acting, I don’t drink when I’m writing and I don’t drink when I’m directing. Of course, in the evening I have my moments of wandering… At night, for myself, either party or solitude.”
Olivier Marchal, true “epicurean”
It is in writing that Olivier Marchal reconnects with himself. “When I write, that’s where I am myself, he confided. Very sober, very focused and with a deep desire to educate and cultivate myself.” And if he leaves aside his bottle at the heart of his work process, Olivier Marchal recalls being a “epicurean”. “Everybody knows it, launched the 65-year-old director. Deja vu drunk, acting stupid, laughing.” It’s not just work that helped Olivier Marchal: fatherhood helped him face his demons. In the same interview, he confided in his four children Léa (born in 1994), Zoé (1998), Ninon (2006), Basile (2009). “If I continued to work, it’s because I had children. I wouldn’t have had any, I would have died a long time ago… Of alcohol, of sadness, of grief, of despair, of lots of things”he exclaimed into Isabelle Dhombres’ microphone.