Interview with Chéli (Part 1)

I'll admit it: I'm a fan. I love television, movies, music--the whole 9 yards. I soak up pop culture and celebrity gossip like a sponge and now, thanks to this site, I've met my first bonafide Québécois celebrity! Technically she's franco-ontarienne, but I'm not going to quibble over details. Now given the fact that I haven't done an interview, face-to-face, in quite some time, I was pretty nervous. Remember how I said I could probably pull off doing the interview in French? Um, yeah. Forget I said that. It felt like my whole vocabulary left my head in the first 5 seconds. Heck, I couldn't even introduce myself properly. «Je suis Alan» is about as fifth grade as you can get. Nice to see that Minor in French paid off, eh?

Thankfully, Chéli is a sweetheart. As we went upstairs to find some place a bit more quiet, I stammered out something about how nervous I was and she just smiled, grabbed my arm and said, "Why be nervous? Let's go shoot the shit." That's when I realised everything would be just fine. We ended up sitting in what I guess would be the staff lunch room. It's definitely a shame that I didn't have more time (and more cassette tapes) because I would have loved to capture more of our conversation for posterity. Oh well. Live and learn, right?

Anyway, I gave her a brief overview of what I'm trying to do with this site and showed her the list of questions I had prepared. I wasn't sure how much she had been told prior to the interview, so I thought it would be a good gesture on my part. After all, she was taking time out of her schedule to talk to me. The least I could do is make sure my questions were clear. So after a quick test of my recorder, we got started. What follows is the transcript of my interview with Chéli, so get comfortable.

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AL B: So I'm here with Chéli de Musique Plus. Chéli, thank you very much for the interview.

Chéli: My pleasure.

AL B: I've got some questions, if you don't mind. Let's start off with some of the more general ones. My audience tends to be more anglophone than francophone, so chances are pretty good they don't pick up Musique Plus on their local cable.

Chéli: Sure.

AL B: Okay, so, um, where are you from?

Chéli: Originally, I'm from Ottawa. I'd lived there my whole life and when I was 21, after university, I moved to Montreal because I wanted to start a career in television. I studied journalism and I knew that TV was the medium for me. I had done radio and I had done written press at the university and that's when I found out that TV was what interested me the most.

AL B: Okay, so when did you start at Musique Plus?

Chéli: I started in September 2002, which would make me in my fourth year right now. I'm not saying that the school isn't good or that the program wasn't good, but let me tell you, I learned more in one year at Musique Plus than in 3 and a half years of university.

AL B: So how did you learn that you got the job as a VJ? Like, did somebody call you... ?

Chéli: Actually, it was really lucky. I mean, a lot of it has to do with contacts nowadays. That's why I'm always telling kids when they come and see me and ask me about it, I always tell them: don't be afraid of making contacts because that's the best way. Market yourself. A lot of it has to do with PR. There was a friend of mine who knew somebody who worked here as a videographer, so they gave me his phone number. I called him and he said, "Listen, send me your CV with a picture and, I won't guarantee anything, but we can try it out..." So that's what I did.

I sent my CV with a picture and then, maybe 3 weeks later, they called me. One of the producers, or at that time she was a producer, called me and said, "We're looking for on-air personalities." I was floored by this because I was ready to be a concierge here. I was ready to do anything here, just to be IN Musique Plus! So she said, "First we want to see if it's worth doing a screen test." So before even testing me out in front of a camera, they wanted to meet and see how I was. So we met for 15 minutes, then I did a screen test. They gave me a few things to prepare, so I did that, and then the last part of it was to meet the Vice-President of Musique Plus, Pierre Marchand, and then a month later they told me I had the job. I was pretty lucky.

AL B: Okay, so when you first found out you got it, like when you FIRST heard the news, what was the first thing you did?

Chéli: Oh God! Well, the way they did it was interesting because they wanted to film it. They wanted to show, on air, how some of us went through it, so they made me come in, along with another girl that has the job now (they hired about 5 of us at the same time), and when they called me I thought that this was it. I had the job. The way they were talking on the phone, it sounded pretty good. "Come in, we just need to finalize some things." So I get here and go to a conference room and I'm with the other girl who got the job and then about 5 other girls show up. I'm like, "Geez, I thought I had the job, but I guess not. It's still a competition." What I didn't know was that these other girls were just posing there. They were girls that already worked here. So they made us do this test and I mean it was a really hard written test with Claude Rajotte. I don't know if you know Claude Rajotte...

AL B: Um, not at this point, no...

Chéli: He's like a Musique Plus icon because he was here from the beginning on and he knows like, everything, about music, so it was kind of intimidating to have him ask us the questions. We had to write down [the answers] . All this was being filmed and as I'm writing the questions, I barely wrote any answers 'cause I didn't even know HALF the answers to these questions. In my head, I was going, "Well, at least they they still have the screen test..." To me, I didn't have the job, but they knew all along that I had it. So when they announced that, "Okay, you guys have the job," the first thing I did is, I immediately ran all the way from here, which is Bleury, to Crescent Street 'cause I worked at a place called New Town. I think I lost about 10 lbs running! So I just came in and went into the office and they knew right away 'cause the knew I was trying out. They were like, "Okay, so when are you quitting?" And I was like, "Next Monday! I have to be at work on Monday!" So they were very nice and the whole thing was a great experience.

AL B: Cool, cool. Now obviously you would have imagined what your daily life would be like as a VJ before you got the job...

Chéli: I did, but it wasn't the same.

AL B: So then, what is the biggest difference between what you imagined and what the reality is?

Chéli: Um, I would say that we easily do 60 hours a week here and you don't realise it. I had never done really practical work. It was all theoretical in university, so to actually do journalism, that's one part of my job. Not only do we prepare all the questions for the artists, we do the interview and then we're the ones who do the editing. So that, in itself, takes a lot of time. Then the thing with me is, because I'm a VJ, I also prepare my live stuff. So between editing and preparing live, you're all over the map. I think it's more the practical work of it all that I didn't expect. It's also, I mean 4 years later, it's the people recognizing you on the street or you're buying groceries and people are just talking to you. I always think I studied with them or something. They approach me right away and I'm always thinking, "Hey! Alright, do I know this person?" So that, too. I'm not used to that.

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Alright folks, now that we've got the introductions out of the way, I'm going to stop here. In the next installment, Chéli and I discuss Québécois culture, the differences between MuchMusic and Musique Plus and assorted other goodies. Continue to Part 2 Here.