Céline Dion Addresses Quebec For the First Time in Four Years: “My Fans Deserve To Know What's Happening”
The artist granted an exclusive interview, “Céline brise le silence,” to TVA on the occasion of the release of the highly anticipated documentary I Am: Céline Dion. Here are the highlights.
Céline Dion and Jean-Philippe Dion
Céline Dion spoke directly to Quebecers on Sunday evening, June 16, after four years of radio silence in the media of la belle province. In her interview with TVA host Jean-Philippe Dion, she was luminous, with her humour in tact.
In I Am: Céline Dion by Irene Taylor, available worldwide from June 25 on Prime Video, Céline Dion seizes the opportunity to tell the realities of Stiff Person Syndrome, the condition that put her career on hold.
“If I'm overstimulated, whether it's happiness, unhappiness or something I'm not expecting, it can [trigger] me into a crisis," she said in the TVA interview. "It's not an epileptic seizure, but it looks like it." Céline Dion confides in her fans, while reassuring the public. She and her children — René-Charles, Eddy and Nelson — know perfectly well how to act in a crisis.
Jean-Philippe Dion evokes the transparency of the artist with regard to her fans and the “total access” to her life that she has given since her beginning. “I have always been an open book,” she insists in a burst of sincerity. “I'm made like that."
Céline Dion also discusses the reasons she chose to speak without filter about her illness in the Prime series.
"I could no longer sing, I could no longer walk,” she says. She reveals in the interview she's had symptoms for much longer than she's let on, even if she only had her Stiff Person Syndrome diagnosis recently. She expresses an honest desire to be as open with her home province's fans as possible and says they deserve it after the support they've given her since her early career as a child.
“My fans deserve to know what’s going on,” continues Dion after returning to the daily trials of her illness over the years. “They have given me and my family an exceptional life since the age of 12, [and now I'm 56]. I am not going to let them down.”
Jean-Philippe Dion also chats with the director of I Am: Céline Dion, who had privileged access to the star, without even knowing that she suffered from Stiff Person Syndrome. “No one told me at the beginning, because Céline had not yet announced her illness,” explains Irene Taylor.
Will Céline be able to return on stage one day? The artist reaffirms that she's doing better and is working “super hard” for it, as she expressed in the French edition of Vogue last May. “Maybe I won't be able to do a show five days a week,” but she has lost none of her legendary confidence.
She shares that anyone suffering from illness is not alone. “I love you and I can’t wait to see you,” she says, looking straight at the camera. “Show must go on!”
Watch the TVA interview in full below:
This article was originally published in French. Read that version here.
