“Laurette's ashes under an olive tree”: Michel Fugain returns with emotion to the death of his daughter

Guest in La Boîte à secrets this Friday January 3, 2024, Michel Fugain, particularly moved, évoiced the death of his daughter Laurette.

© France 3 Michel Fugain in La Boîte à secrets on France 3, January 3, 2025

IN BRIEF

• In 2002, Michel Fugain lost his daughter Laurette, aged 22, to leukemia, which abruptly interrupted his career.
• During an interview in 2025, Michel Fugain evoked the loss of Laurette and his refuge in Corsica.
• Discover how Michel Fugain found a new lease of life thanks to his partner Sanda, whom he met after the death of his daughter.

A family tragedy turned Michel Fugain's life upside down. In 2002, the death of his daughter Laurette put a brutal stop to his career. The young woman aged 22 succumbed to a terrible disease, leukemia. Complications related to a bone marrow transplant precipitated his disappearance.

The interpreter of It's a beautiful novel has evoked several times this difficult page of his past. “When my daughter died, left us, flew away, I was on stage less than a week later. And there, you have to sing 'C'est la fête' because people are waiting for it. It's not easy. Ça requires forgetting oneself, at least for a moment”, he has already confided to Nathalie Lévy in En aparté on Canal+.

Michel Fugain: these images of Laurette that have upset Michel Fugain

This Friday, January 3, 2025, Michel Fugain éwas Faustine Bollaert's guest on the show The Secret Box on France 3. During the interview, the host asked him to react to images from his childhood in Voreppe, not far from Grenoble, in the Isère department. The musician has since found refuge in a “haven of peace” in Corsica.

“I had a first life, around Paris. This life came to an end, triggered by the loss of a daughter, Laurette. We didn't experience the drama in the same way, my ex-wife and I”, he first explained in front of the cameras. The rest was particularly moving.

Michel Fugain: these poignant confessions from the singer

The emotion surfaced in the voice of Faustine Bollaert's guest when he was question of Laurette's death: “I put Laurette's ashes under an olive tree and two months later I went into a piano bar, and I heard an incredible voice. Her name was Sanda and since then she has been my wife”. 

His partner, whom he met in Corsica, helped him get back on his feet. “If you ask me why I'm fine at 82, that I have energy, it's because I met this woman who saved my life. I called her for a long time my mermaid because I sank, I didn't want to anymore, I died with my daughter. I sank and she caught me and brought me back to the surface. She made me take my first sip of air”, concluded the one who recently ranted against Mimie Mathy.