Accompanied by Jean-Philippe Dion, actress and businesswoman Caroline Néron, actor Denis Bernard and comedian Mathieu Dufour lived a weekend full of emotions. Extraordinary Fact: Two of the members of the trio didn’t know each other at all, which led to some great discoveries!
Here are 11 behind-the-scenes secrets from the latest installment of true nature:
A CHILD THAT HAS IT IN HIM!
Caroline knew from a very young age that she wanted to be an actress. Her calling was already clear at the age of nine. Her earliest memory of “in front of an audience” was being hit by a car when she was four years old. A man was able to save her in extreme cases, but she remembers very well the noise of the car, the screams of people and the crowd around her. The memory she retains above all, though, is of seeing people looking at her! In addition, his entrepreneurial skills were evident from a very young age. When she was younger she lived near a golf course, and by the age of eight she was selling 25¢ a ball on the golf balls she collected at the course. It was his first steps in business…
Photo: Bruno Petrozza / TVA Pu
A CULINARY DISCOVERY
Little unpublished trust as the moment does not appear in the editorial… In the afternoon we played mini putt and I offered my guests ice cream toast. Because when Mathieu was little, his grandfather sometimes looked after him, especially when his parents had to go to work earlier. His grandfather let him sleep while he made breakfast and then sent him to school. Occasionally he would make ice cream toast: toasted and buttered slices of bread topped with a scoop of ice cream! To be honest, it was really good: it tasted like an ice cream cone!
A BIG NOSTALGIA
We found that Denis Bernard is extremely nostalgic. As soon as he saw childhood photos that reminded him of his parents or grandparents, he became extremely emotional. The research team also pulled off a major coup: they got hold of the race track that her father had given her when she was young. We found the original track that has her father’s name on it. It was a fond memory for him as it was one of the games he liked to play with his father. He was a lumberjack and went into the forest for months, but when he got home Denis played with him.
DENIS AT THE CONTROLS!
Denis prepared his classic for us: a seafood risotto that he cooked over a wood fire in a large cast-iron skillet. In this case it was undoubtedly Denis who would take over the kitchen, our other two guests had no talent in the matter!
A LESSON TO LEARN
During the weekend, Caroline and Mathieu discovered several affinities. From childhood everyone was a terror at school! It wasn’t that they weren’t nice, but they were annoying. They had energy, they liked action and they liked to face authority. Dinner made for a special moment… I showed Caroline an excerpt of an interview in which I accompanied her to New York to start her business on American soil. She said loud and clear that she had accumulated 10 million in sales and that she wanted to reach 100 million. We know what happened to Caroline… I asked her what she remembers from all this and she concluded by saying that you should never sell the bear’s skin before you’ve killed it. We can have goals and dreams, but it’s better to talk about them when they’re achieved. For his part, Mathieu told us about his goals over dinner. He dreams of an international career, in French and in English. Caroline didn’t particularly want to warn him, but Mathieu listened carefully and will certainly learn lessons for his own career.
BEAUTIFUL TRUST
Denis Bernard has an extremely impressive CV! He has starred in some of Quebec’s biggest soap operas, from Héritiers Duval to La Galère, including Scoop, Jasmine and Yamaska. He is someone we know without knowing him. It was like he decided to tell True Nature his story. He gave himself up a lot and even confided in something that he had been dragging on for several years. He really agreed to reveal himself.
A BIG MISSING!
We had a crazy night! We gathered around the campfire with our guests. Denis strums the guitar. I wanted to hear him sing and play, but he was extremely nervous. When he was little his father always asked him to play a little song and it was the worst thing in the world for him because he was shy. In a way, he relived that situation with us. Finally, he played his two classics: Si fragile by Luc De Larohellière and Shallow by Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper. With no one singing on the same note, it was a big mess worthy of the nature of La vrai! (laughs)
Photo: Bruno Petrozza / TVA Pu
AN UNFINISHED HEALING
About thirty people work on True Nature. In the evening, the team members return to the hotel and everyone tells what they liked about the shooting. Caroline aroused many reactions that evening… We understood a lot about her, including the fact that she suffered from an image problem. People had an idea of who she was, but it wasn’t necessarily the right one. At dinner, she was extremely emotional as she recounted the downfall of her company. The next morning she told us that she realized it hadn’t fully healed and she still had work to do. It was difficult for her to relive those events.
AN UNKNOWN TALENT
Mathieu woke up the other guests with French horn sounds. He played it when he was younger and with the cadets. He hadn’t played in about seven years. I would say it’s quite an amazing sound that woke our guests up nicely! He also surprised us by sitting down at the piano and singing Adele’s Hello. He really has great musical talent!
FULLY DRESSED IN THE WATER!
Since it was our first shoot of the season, we made sure everything went smoothly. Only problem: we didn’t have the dock and boat installed on the right side! The boat got stuck in the rocks at the bottom of the river and I had to jump in the water to push our guests. The team that got off to a good start was proud to have captured it all!
THE LAST WORD FROM JEAN-PHILIPPE
At La vrai nature we usually receive people who don’t know each other or know very little about each other. In this case we knew that Caroline and Denis had played together at Diva 25 years ago, but we didn’t know if they had seen each other again after that. I was in the control room when these two crossed paths as they arrived at the cabin. Denis recognized Caroline but not Caroline because he was wearing a hat and sunglasses. When he introduced himself to her, she couldn’t believe it! It was interesting for them to have the opportunity to do an update. As for Mathieu, he really felt like he knew every member of Quebec showbiz, but he found that wasn’t the case. He had absolutely no idea who Denis was! And so it was with Denis for Mathieu. It’s still rare that our guests really don’t know the people they’re spending the weekend with… When that happens, I find it comforting: I let everyone tell their story so the others can hear about it.