UPGRADE DAY

While filming her documentary series Imparfaite, Julie Bélanger admits to having been “challenged in tabarouette”.

The host, also a content producer, has abandoned entertainment with this new project to focus this time on the human, on the light after the trials and on the lessons left by the storms. .

After her burnout in her mid-thirties and her brother's depression a few years later, Julie Bélanger, who is nevertheless of a discreet nature, felt the need, almost visceral, to talk about it and to do it without filter; to go there in the “no bullshit”, as she says.

“I was really on a quest for meaning,” explained the host on Tuesday during the presentation of the first episodes of “Imparfaite” to the media, adding that this series had been a real dive for her, but the most beautiful thing ever. she allowed herself to do.

Opening the doors of her house squarely – as well as the one on her friendship with Mélanie Maynard, which began with love at first sight and which ended 14 years ago in a fishtail, among others –, she felt that for really get to the bottom of things, she also had to commit herself.

“I have no choice but to get wet like that if I want people to talk about it for real. Without that, it will stay on the surface. It will remain an intellectual discourse on forgiveness [for example]”, she then raised.

“There are plenty of subjects that we all discuss in our private life, but that we do not address in public life, why? Why not in fact?” she asked during the round table in which the QMI Agency participated.

Among these subjects, the host addresses in particular female friendship with Ingrid Falaise, whom she met in the parking lot of a monastery while they were going to closed therapy, non-maternity with Geneviève Brouillette, depression with his family, panic attacks with José Gaudet, how to bounce back after an ordeal with Maripier Morin and Dominique Bertrand, learning to love oneself with Michel Charette and of course forgiveness with Mélanie Maynard.

Forgiveness and reconciliation after 14 years of rumination

Mélanie Maynard and Julie Bélanger (from behind) forgive each other in the new documentary series “Imparfaite”.

Julie Bélanger does not hide it, she harbored a grudge against her former co-host of Two girls in the morningfor 14 years, Mélanie Maynard, who is the new host of Sucré Salé at TVA. The two women who loved each other enormously became rivals almost overnight. Yet complementary to each other, their friendship had at the time brought out old childhood wounds that confronted them. But it was this confrontation that allowed them to do the work on themselves and make peace with their demons.

“I hurt you because I didn't have the sensitivity, at the time, to understand what you were going through. […] All this sensitivity and this sweetness that you brought, I was not able to see it as a plus, as a complementarity”, notably confided Mélanie Maynard, who had not received her diagnosis of ADHD, at that time.

“I was just trying to get you to like me somewhere. I said to myself: when I am perfect, nobody can criticize me. It didn't work with you. So everything broke. And, it had to break. You were really a catalyst in my “healing” […] it was even necessary”, retorted Julie Bélanger before asking her forgiveness for having “chewed her old dirty stockings” for far too long.

The host, who will celebrate her 50th birthday next year, intends to continue exploring new professional avenues. She does not close the door to a career as a producer.

Declined in eight episodes directed by Maude Éthier-Boutet, Imparfaite is available on Vrai.