It all started with a first contact with the Quebec Association for Children with Hearing Problems (AQEPA). This one had been approached by the production of Le Temps des Raspberries, which was looking for a deaf 11-year-old boy. Helped by his parents, Xavier shot and then sent a short video. A week later, he learned that he had been chosen...

• To read also: Club illico: a second season for the series “Le temps des raspberries”

“I was really super happy,” he explains in sign language, which Martin, his interpreter, translated aloud.

Xavier spent the summer on the set of the series written by Florence Longpré and Suzie Bouchard with Michel Lelièvre, a deaf person well known in the community who acted as a teacher, his interpreter and his parents.

“On the set, we were often in interaction with my parents, including my mother, who is deaf, so sometimes she could put her little grain of salt”, says the one who had never thought of playing in a television series.

It was his game coach who helped him to immerse himself in emotion in order, for example, to have his eyes full of water at the right time during filming. This is what was his biggest challenge: crying on command.

“I managed to have my eyes watery, but not to make tears flow, for example,” he laughs.

Inspiration 

Xavier Chalifoux has watched the film CODA, winner of the Oscar for best film in March, several times.

“His gestures and his way of acting are really culturally deaf, so it really resonates with me a lot, he says of Troy Kotsur, the first deaf male actor to have been awarded a golden statuette. The fluidity of movement, the gestures, it's really super good. It was really beautiful to see! I gave a big “wow” when I watched this movie. »

The young actor was delighted to have seen his playing partners learn sign language for this project, in order to communicate with him in front of the cameras as well as outside the film set.

"I'm very happy to see that I have lines in signs and to see Elijah [Patrice], who plays my brother, who is super talented, with whom it was easy to communicate with on the set, he confides. . We really played together a lot and it was really nice. »

The Raspberry Time series is available in its entirety on Club illico.