Trudeau puts her ‘grand life’ in solo show
PM’s mother says he hasn’t reigned her in: ‘His father couldn’t. Why should he try?’
CHICAGO— Margaret Trudeau — the mother of the prime minister and the former wife of another — will perform over Mother’s Day weekend. But not in Canada. In Chicago. In the UP Comedy Club at Second City. Where she will be alone on the stage.
Trudeau, a celebrity staple of glamorous, glossy magazines and global scandal-sheets and tabloids since the 1970s, will workshop a new autobiographical solo show, titled Certain Woman of an Age.
“I am rather astonished this is happening,” Trudeau said, in a telephone interview from her home in Montreal.
Margaret Trudeau, who now is 70 years old, was married to Pierre Trudeau from 1971 to 1984, although the couple separated in 1977, only finalizing their divorce during Pierre Trudeau’s last years as prime minister. The couple’s son, Justin, assumed the office in 2015.
For years, if not decades, Canadian media was consumed with Margaret’s jet-setting personal life: her affairs with the actors Ryan O’Neal and Jack Nicholson; her appearances at the infamous Studio 54 nightclub in New York City, most famously on the very night that her husband lost an election in 1979; her partying with Mick Jagger and Andy Warhol.
“My life for so many years was a reality show,” Trudeau said. “Now I will be able to put that on the stage.”
In more recent years, she has written, spoken and been interviewed about what she has said are her longtime struggles with mental health, a major theme of her new show.
“What I have been for the last 13 years is a mental health advocate,” she said. “I have given over 500 speeches, often to very large crowds. Canadians know me so well — I am part of Canada’s collective memory — and my fame would get people through the door who would not otherwise be interesting in talking about mental health. I think we are now talking about that subject quite a lot in Canada, but I think that’s a little different there in America. Wouldn’t you say?”
Trudeau says that she understands the imperative to entertain as well as educate. “I have had quite the grand, interesting life,” she said. “I have some great stories. But I am also very human and I suffered an awful lot. So I always like to get people laughing.”
The reason for the choice of Second City for the show’s de- but is Trudeau’s 25-year friendship with Diane Alexander, a fellow Canadian and the wife of Second City’s owner, Andrew Alexander. Alexander described Trudeau as “one of the most charming and funny people I have ever met.” Co-written by Alix Sobler, the show is to be produced by Alexander and directed by Kimberly Senior, a director whose career began in Chicago.
Asked her long-term goals, Trudeau said that much will depend on how the show is received in Chicago, but that she had interest in a variety of op- tions, from moving the piece off-Broadway to touring Canada (“if I have the endurance for that”) to pursuing some kind of deal with an entity like HBO which could stream a performance.
“I rather feel like a pregnant woman in her eighth month,” Trudeau said. “All I have right now is the dream of this.”
Asked why she would not prefer to live outside of the public eye, she replied, “When am I going to be allowed to do that?”
Of course, when your son is a sitting head of state, you also have to expect to be asked what he thinks about the project. Margaret Trudeau laughed at the question, saying she expects friends, and especially her family, to come from all across Canada to see the show.
It will be Mother’s Day weekend, after all.
“All of my children have been so sweet and supportive of what I am doing,” Trudeau said. “My honesty about mental illness has helped open a door for real conversation, and I think Justin wants to continue that conversation,” she said. “He has put no restrictions on me. His father couldn’t. Why should he try?”