Bruno Marcil plays very busy scenes in the series of events Meganticjust uploaded to club illico.
The actor plays Vincent Lamarre, a man who runs an excavation company with his brothers Daniel (Éric Robidoux) and Jérôme (Fred Eric Salvail). On the night of July 6, 2013, after successive explosions and the fire caused by a train derailment in downtown Lac-Mégantic, Vincent showed bravery by towing train cars filled with crude oil and chlorine before they exploded.
During this dangerous maneuver with machines, he finds that his wife, his brother Jérôme and his sister-in-law, who were in the Musi-Café, are probably dead since the building is completely destroyed. Vincent then screams 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 catastrophe. The man also witnessed the shooting of certain scenes while Bruno Marcil provided them.
“It’s challenging because you’re playing someone who’s been through all of that and it’s something very draining. You want to do it with the utmost sincerity and face the situation. I met Pascal at his place, we talked a lot and he even taught me how to drive an excavator. And we shot with the spine he used during the tragedy. Of course we wanted to do well.”
Bruno Marcil conjures up “sensitive scenes” because “we are going into quite troubled areas, there is an abyss to be found there” and because he knows that for many Méganticois the wound is still acute.
“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 to do something. It is gestures that he performs, it is deeds, it is the others that follow that qualify him as a hero.
In particular, because the Lafontaines had machines downtown, where they repaired Laval Street that summer, they were also able to demolish homes to stop the fire from progressing.
“It was the Lafontaines who could do it, who could save the situation,” said Bruno Marcil, who had several other significant encounters at Lac-Mégantic while preparing the Les Hardings play, in which he portrayed Thomas Harding, the driver of , camped the train that killed 47 people in Lac-Mégantic a decade ago when it derailed.
With almost 25 years in the business behind the tie, he is aware that he could not have worn this character before. “I wouldn’t have been able to do that 20 years ago, that’s for sure,” says the man, who made himself known to the general public through advertising for Plaisirs Gastronomiques.
He says he feels the eight-episode series is “doing useful work” and that he has “confidence” and joy in finding director Alexis Durand-Brault and producer Sophie Lorain. He had previously worked with the couple on the Sortez-moi de moi and Les Invisibles series.
In STAT, High demolition, beads And Great North
Bruno Marcil is ubiquitous on our screens these days. Alongside Mégantic, he is a regular on the STAT newspaper on ICI Télé and we will see him this spring in Les pearls on Club illico and in Haute demolition on Séries Plus. He will also appear in the film Grand Nord, written and directed by Annick Blanc.