“Making us miserable…”: Didier Bourdon pulls no punches with Philippe Bouvard

Sunday, December 15, 2024, Didier Bourdon gave an interview to La Tribune Dimanche. Nearly forty years after his first meeting with Philippe Bouvard, the 65-year-old actor did not mince his words when discussing their disagreement.

© BestImage Didier Bourdon is angry with Philippe Bouvard.

IN BRIEF

• Didier Bourdon, Bernard Campan and Pascal Légitimus experienced a legal conflict with Philippe Bouvard in the 1980s after their departure from the Bouvard Theater.
• Didier Bourdon still expresses resentment toward Philippe Bouvard for the lawsuit filed, despite the subsequent success of the Unknowns.
• Discover how this conflict shaped the careers of the Unknowns and the lessons they learned from it.

It is still not time for reconciliation…In the 1980s, Didier Bourdon, Bernard Campan and Pascal Légitimus found success thanks to the show Le Thééâtre de Bouvard. If everything went well at the beginning, Philippe Bouvard had sued them after their departure. If time passes, Didier Bourdon still holds a grudge against him. Sunday, December 15, 2024, in an interview with La Tribune Sunday, he spoke.

“It is not honest on the part of a 55-year-old man, well-established in the media, to hold it against us after two years at the Théâtre de Bouvard because we decided on our independence”, he estimated before specifying: “He rotted us, promised to make us miserable. At the time, we were known as Les Cinq, with Smaïn and Seymour Brussel. We were starting to perform in small venues, and the four organizers took advantage of our notoriety, without informing us, to add under the posters stuck in the streets 'Seen at the Bouvard Theater'. Who took advantage of it to sue us, considering his name and his émission used and usurped. Then justice gave him reason”.

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Didier Bourdon: “I still want Bouvard”

Angry, the actor explained: “We, on the contrary, wanted to make a name for ourselves.Thus were born Les Inconnus. That is why I still hold a grudge against Bouvard, even if I hesitated to call him after hearing him on the radio. He's really not in shape…”.

Sunday, November 24, 2024, in the show Beau Geste, on France 2, Didier Bourdon had already recalled: “It was a show that we really liked, but it was on a whim, that is to say that someone brought our sketches and Philippe Bouvard and his teams said yes or no. But it allowed us to work, to find ourselves. That's where we really sealed our friendship with Bernard and Pascal. But afterwards when we left because we were fed up, because we felt like we were going around in circles, Philippe Bouvard didn't want us to leave. He took it badly and he made a rather stupid trial”.

Bernard Campan: “Çit showed us that this profession was merciless!”

Faced with Pierre Lescure, the actor had added : “The trial didn't go well. It scared us at the time. We said to ourselves: 'Wow, we have to be careful!' When we were looking for a name, we said to ourselves: 'We'll call ourselves Les Inconnus like that, we won't have a trial'“. Friday, January 5, 2024 at 9:10 p.m., in the Secret History of the Inconnus, Bernard Campan had indicated : “We didn't realize that we were playing a dangerous game when we told Philippe that we wanted to leave. He tried to keep us…”.

For his part, Pascal Légitimus had made it known: “He believed that we were usurping his name to earn a living. So, we received a letter from a lawyer in which he demanded 50,000 francs, or 10,000 francs each from us at the time”. Finally, Bernard Campan had added: “We tried to defend ourselves, but we lost and we had to pay this sum of money that we managed to spread… But in any case, it's a great lesson and it showed us that this profession was merciless!”.