La petite vie enters Juste pour rire hall of fame as Claude Meunier reflects on Marc Messier

La petite vie, the iconic Quebec comedy series, will be inducted into the Juste pour rire Temple of Fame on Monday, July 20, honouring a show that defined absurdist humour for generations of Quebecers. An evening tribute will include Marc Messier's family and co-creator Claude Meunier, who is grieving the actor's death on July 7, 2026.

Meunier and Messier met in 1976 on the set of the youth show La Fricassée. "It was like finding a cousin," Meunier recalled in a recent interview. "We were in the same place in our heads. And because my texts made him laugh so much, I wrote a lot for him." That year, Meunier premiered the sketch Le party plate, which later became the matrix for La petite vie. The pair's partnership produced some of Quebec's most memorable comedy moments, including the recurring joke of characters speaking about themselves in the third person — a bit that began as private banter between friends.

The signature third-person dialogue came from barbershop interviewer Ménick, who would ask hockey players questions like "What's Pierre Mondou doing this weekend?" Messier understood this absurdist frequency immediately in a way others didn't. When Michel Côté performed the same sketch later, "he was a formidable actor, but he didn't understand that humour the way Marc did," Meunier said.

Meunier, speaking from a café in Mile End, deflects moments threatening sadness with jokes — exactly the kind Messier would have appreciated. When asked when they met, he answered: "In 1832." Since Messier's death, Meunier said, people have told him "that's life." His response: "No, that's death. Life isn't flat like that."