Asterix at the Olympic Games: why Christian Clavier abandoned the role of Asterix?

This Sunday, June 28, TF1 will broadcast Asterix and Obelix at the Olympic Games. Feature film in which Christian Clavier did not participate for a very specific reason.

If Dr. Jérôme Tarrere des Tanned is one of his most famous roles, Christian Clavier is just as inseparable from the character ofAsterix. But in 2008, the actor had not chosen to re-stack for the film Asterix and Obelix at the Olympic Games, broadcast this Sunday June 28 on TF1 from 9 p.m. The companion of Isabelle de Araujo had thrown the mustache and the winged helmet of the little Gaul at profit of Clovis Cornillac who had taken over. A choice made out of friendship for a member of the Splendid troop, as the creator ofAsterix, Albert Uderzo in the columns of Figaro. Thierry Lhermitte, Michel Blanc, Bruno Moynot? None, since it was actually Gérard Jugnot.

“Jugnot had come without any synopsis. He said he already had the film in mind. He told me about his Asterix, without ever asking me for my opinion. He hoped to play all the Splendid troop in the movie“, Albert Uderzo explained to our colleagues in 2008.”And soon, I had the feeling that he had embarked on something that was nothing like the ‘Asterix spirit’ that was so dear to me and René Goscinny. I found that it was not not at all in the note.“Gérard Jugnot had therefore been turned back, thus precipitating the departure of Christian Clavier of the franchise. Bad luck for Asterix and Obelix at the Olympic Games which managed 7 million entries unlike its previous component (Asterix and Obelix: Cleopatra Mission, directed by Alain Chabat) who had identified 14 millions according to the Belgian site RTBF.

A bad experience with Alain Chabat

And it must be said that the experience of Christian Clavier on the set of Alain Chabat was not a long, calm river. In December 2019, in an interview with BFMTV, the 68-year-old actor confided more about the shooting ofAsterix and Obelix: Cleopatra Mission. “I don’t know if the director wanted so much make the film with me“he said, without specifying the reasons for this feeling.”You ask me how I felt and I think that there was that.“What to make him regret having given the reply to Gérard Depardieu and Jamel Debbouze? Far from it.”These are films that please a lot and that I was delighted to do“, he insisted. The page seems definitively turned. In 2012, it was Edouard Baer’s turn to interpret the irreducible Gaulois in Asterix and Obelix in the service of Her Majesty.