Extracts from La Presse, Le Soleil, Journal de Québec

<< All text within quotation marks are Roy’s speech unless otherwise stated – viv >>

“To shoot a feature film in so many locations, with so many characters and in such a short time – let’s say that you had to know what you were doing. For me it’s been a marathon race. But it all went very well.”

Two roles, therefore, in a comedy with a modest budget, written by an unknown (it’s Luis Furtado’s first screenplay) and made by an almost unknown director (Alain Zaloum who was behind the romantic comedy Promise Her Anything and whose first French shoot this is). What’s Roy Dupuis doing here? Well … cinema!  “I received the screenplay, I read it, and it seemed it would be fun to do.”

Zaloum (who is a great fan of the work of Mike Nichols) on this ‘situation comedy’: “The situations are serious, the comedy comes from the dialogue and the way the characters react.” In short, it’s not slapstick. “Otherwise, I would have been a lot less interested,” says Roy.

He saw something else in it. For example, the culture shock between France and Quebec. “We often associate with France as a motherland but we forget how different we are from the French. The French social structure, the French hierarchy causes big differences in the individual himself. These are not the same people. It was amusing to exploit this in the film, through the language and the use of expressions.”

To say that Roy Dupuis and Anémone don’t understand each other is, in this context, a euphemism!  It was, however, quite the opposite on the set, as soon as they got out of character and became themselves again. “Anémone is one of the reasons I agreed to take part in the film. I respect her as an actress, and I wanted to meet her and work with her. What’s more, she has ecological concerns that match my own.”

Zaloum again: “To play Vincent and Claude, I wanted an actor with a lot of experience – because there are nuances in the two characters … even within Vincent himself, because he changes at the end. He had to be credible, it was necessary for people to sympathise with him and believe in his ‘redemption’. In short, I didn’t want a clown who would play him in two dimensions.”

Roy Dupuis had no problem with this view of things – and of the characters; it was the same as his. “I approached them as I would any other role. I tried to define them better, to study their background. Vincent, who comes from rather a low social class, is not sophisticated. Claude is a lot more so, but he has a macho side that Vincent doesn’t have.” He admits that appearing as both characters on the screen at the same time, in the closing scenes, was more demanding than the rest. He worked as if on his own, opposite a double. “As an actor, I’m used to working with someone, to feed off them and to feed them.”

Something that he does a lot of in the cinema. But not, in recent years, in the theatre. He misses it a bit. And certainly he has offers. Nothing, however, that has given him a taste for returning to the boards. “I’m often offered the classics or contemporary classics. That’s of no interest to me. It would need to be a new work or an obscure play that has never been put on here before. I’m not saying that redoing the classics isn’t important, but for me a new work is more important. Exactly as I think that in the cinema, a remake is less important than an original.”

When he was younger, Roy Dupuis was the exact copy of his younger brother. A resemblance so striking that it caused all sort of muddles amongst their friends – notably the girls – muddles which often amused the brothers. Was it this youthful prank – passing yourself off as someone else – what planted the seeds of his vocation as an actor? Who knows! He smiles as he recounts the anecdote which, however, had nothing to do with his desire to play a case of mistaken identity in the comedy C’est pas moi … c’est l’autre. “No, that aspect reminded me rather of the old French comedies that I like. An absurd side which I found very funny.”

Comedy? You read it correctly. Roy Dupuis, the actor in all the dramas, who’s been seen in the cinema this year in Jack Paradise, Monica la mitraille and especially Mémoires affectives, here plays a rare comedy role. […]

It’s not the first time that Roy Dupuis has devoted himself to raising a laugh. His very first stage role at secondary school was, after all, that of Molière’s  Malade imaginaire. In the cinema however, since the intense Being at Home with Claude, we haven’t often seen him in this range. He was in J’en Suis, which he doesn’t deny, but which wasn’t exactly what you would call a success. In C’est pas moi … c’est l’autre, on the other hand, he’ll surprise more than few by showing another colour in his palette.

If it’s easier to leave a comedy character in the dressing room after a day’s shooting, the actor insists that nevertheless you need to take on the character in order to find the truth. “Once you’ve gone home, the working day is still not finished. I always prepare my lines for the next day. Having said that, it wasn’t so bad. We still took the time to enjoy ourselves and I’ve made some fun friends.”

“What makes a comedy, a drama, isn’t important. Even science fiction can be interesting to do. There are science fiction writers who get close to the great philosophers. Shakespeare wrote tragedies, and Molière comedies, but they both had interesting things to say.