Producer, presenter, publicist… In his 40-year career, Thierry Ardisson has played many roles. Since 2022, he produces and hosts a program with an innovative concept, hotel time, in which he interviews deceased personalities using deepfake technology. This creative original, star of the small screen, entrusted to Fred Mazzella, in a special edition of pioneers broadcast this May 18 on BFM Business.
Always being a little ahead, on the sidelines, that comes from childhood. “As a child, I had this horrible feeling of not being part of my family,” he recalls. Lonely, moving a lot, he thus learned to “turn the pages”. A skill that will come in handy later.
The king of advertising slogan
In the late 1960s, almost by chance, he got into advertising, with the BBDO agency, then with TBWA and Ted Bates. Getting to found his own agency in 1978. These experiences, “it was my high school, it was my university”, and above all, a prosperous time. Some of his advertising slogans have marked French consumers. “Go ahead Wasa!”, “Lapeyre, there are no two” or even “when it’s too much, it’s Tropic” all come straight from his mind.
The secret? “A bathroom, a firecracker, a concept.” Thierry Ardisson has never made drugs a taboo, because, according to him, “when you know how to use them, they can be very useful.” In addition to the myriad of advertising slogans, he for 15 years he wrote and published three novels. He ends up getting tired of this “liar’s job”.
television debut
In 1980 he made his first television appearance. It all starts with an interview that she regularly does for the magazine. Rock&Folk, “police raid”. A new concept in which he interviews the stars as if it were a muscular police interrogation. Henri Salvador, Dalida and one day Yannick Noah, who confides in him while he smokes firecrackers. The information makes noise, a minister accuses him of having lied and distorted the singer’s words. Thierry Ardisson goes to a television set to defend himself. The first of forty years.
In 1985 he adapted police raid for TF1. It was the High Audiovisual Authority (now the Higher Audiovisual Council) that put a stop to the project a few months later. The driver had just broken two of a singer’s ribs during an interview. The following years see how the projects follow one another, between production and presentation: midnight baths, Black glasses for sleepless nights… In 1987, he even created his own production company, Ardisson and lights.
Everyone wants to talk to Thierry Ardisson
In 1998, he joined France 2 to co-host with Laurent Ruquier the program Everybody talks about it. A provocative talk show in which the hosts do not hesitate to ask guests “shocking” questions about their private lives, resulting in cult sequences. Like that of Milla Jovovich, in 2002, that she left the set after throwing a glass of water at the presenter or the famous “is sucking cheating?” launched against former Prime Minister Michel Rocard.
It was he who invented, during the same period, the concept of the formatted interview. The same topic, the same questions, for each guest. “First time” interviews, “with ifs” and other “dumb questions” make for bold, intimate and never-before-seen TV moments. Isabelle Huppert’s “Ardiview,” where she admits to lying throughout the interview in 2004; in 2002, the one with Joey Starr who talks about his life… So many sequences that have now earned Thierry Ardisson the qualification of king of interviews.
“What’s the point of being a billionaire if you can’t afford Ardisson?”
In 2006 he joined Canal+, a channel in which he produced and presented hello earthlings, then transmit clear. Every week there are between 1 and 1.5 million viewers. In 2019, he announced the end of his collaboration with the group of Vincent Bolloré, a media mogul.
No hard feelings, perhaps, as he adds, between laughs, a rhetorical question: “what’s the point of being a billionaire if you can’t afford Ardisson?” But leaving is never synonymous with failure for Ardisson, as always, he “turns the page” and contacts France TV, which he had left a few years earlier, with a new program concept. The tone is simple: “I don’t come to replace Laurent Ruquier, I come to raise the dead.”
make the dead speak
Bored of interviewing the living, the creative invented “the first noble use of the deepfake.” That’s all. “I have nothing against Amel Bent, I have nothing against Amir, I have nothing against M Pokora… They are quite respectable people, but I have nothing to ask of them”, he justifies himself. Thus, in 2022, he returns to France 3 with hotel timeprogram that he produces and hosts, in which he interviews, thanks to artificial intelligence, deceased personalities.
If Dalida and Jean Gabin have already come back to life, Ardisson hopes he can make Coluche or Johnny Halliday talk in the next few episodes.
Source: BFM TV
