In “Mégantic” on Club illico: very busy scenes for Bruno Marcil

MISE À DAY

Bruno Marcil plays very busy scenes in the event series Mégantic, which has just been uploaded to Club illico . 

The actor plays Vincent Lamarre, a man who operates an excavation company with his brothers Daniel (Éric Robidoux) and Jérôme (Fred Eric Salvail). On the night of July 6, 2013, following successive explosions and the fire caused by the derailment of a train in downtown Lac-Mégantic, Vincent showed bravery by pulling wagons filled with crude oil and of chlorine before they explode.

By carrying out this dangerous maneuver with machinery, he realizes that his wife, his brother Jérôme and his sister-in-law, who were at the Musi-Café, are presumably dead, the building being completely destroyed. Vincent then cries out in all his pain, a heartbreaking and moving scene.

His character is inspired by Pascal Lafontaine, a Méganticois who was at the heart of this disaster. The man also attended the filming of certain scenes while Bruno Marcil delivered them.

“It's demanding, because you're playing someone who's been through all that and it's something very loaded. You want to do it with the most sincerity and rise to the occasion. I had met Pascal at his place, we talked a lot and he even taught me how to drive the backhoe. And we shot with the spine he used during the tragedy. Of course we wanted to do things well.”

Bruno Marcil evokes “delicate scenes” because “we are going to quite troubled areas, there is a chasm to be found” , and because he knows that the wound remains acute for many Méganticois.

“What he did is heroic, but I didn't have to play a hero. My job was to play a guy who, when he realizes he's lost his wife, brother, sister-in-law and friends, decides he has to do something. It's gestures that he makes, it's action, it's the others afterwards who call him a hero.”

As the Lafontaines had machinery downtown, where that summer they were repairing Laval Street, they were also able to destroy houses to prevent the fire from progressing, in particular.

“It was the Lafontaines who could do it, who could save the situation,” said Bruno Marcil, who had several other memorable encounters in Lac-Mégantic when he was preparing the play Les Hardings, in which he camped Thomas Harding, the driver of the train that killed 47 people when it derailed in Lac-Mégantic a decade ago.

With almost 25 years in the business behind the tie, he is aware that he could not have worn this character before. “I couldn't have done that 20 years ago, that's for sure,” said the man who became known to the general public thanks to the advertisements for Plaisirs Gastronomiques.

He says he has the impression that the series of eight episodes “does useful work”, and it is with “confidence” and with pleasure that he found the director Alexis Durand-Brault and the producer Sophie Lorain. He had already worked with the couple for the series Sortez-moi de moi and Les invisibles.

In STAT, High Demolition, Pearls and Great North

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Bruno Marcil is all over our screens these days. In addition to Mégantic, he is a regular in the daily STAT on ICI Télé and will be seen in Les pearls, this spring, on Club illico , as well as in High Demolition at Series Plus. He will also be in the film Grand Nord, written and directed by Annick Blanc.