"I'm enjoying my life": JoeyStarr, from the Monte-Carlo TV Festival to the Nice Jazz Fest, traces his path between series, cooking and music

It's always a gamble to meet JoeyStarr, the former leader of the rap group Suprême NTM, who has since opened his artistic field to everything: cinema, television, podcasts, theater, street art, gastronomy. Nothing stops JoeyStarr, Didier Morville in civilian life, despite his 57 years. In Monte-Carlo, however, the artist has his napkin ring since he joined the selection committee of the Television Festival, where he had arranged to meet us. Le Rocher and JoeyStarr, it's a surprising encounter. Explosive. "I don't know what came over them. I'm replacing Roger Moore ," he says. "I'm the first racialized European to enter. Opposite, there's Dick Wolf, Jerry Bruckheimer. I arrive with my blackface. I love the idea. I asked them if they had the address of their dealer..." The tone is set from the start.

Thirty kilometers from Monte-Carlo, Nice will be the next stop for the artist who will arrive in the heart of the "village of Merenda" during the Nice Jazz Fest (from July 24 to 27). JoeyStarr will be accompanied by great chefs to offer the public an original musical and gastronomic experience. "We will be between the olfactory, the gustatory and the sound," he continues.

Creator of a foundation for "eating well"

"I experienced this at the Big Festival in Biarritz, which lasted ten years. We played music in the evening, but during the day, we brought in all the local food players, farmers, restaurateurs, we had a village where we ate well." The artist goes even further: "There's a real resonance with my life path, in fact. I'm setting up a foundation for eating well, for thinking well, that is to say, trying to reconnect our little cherubs with their parents through food, seasonality, short supply chains, and, for me, who has become a father in the meantime, it makes sense."

JoeyStarr the epicurean is a side of his personality that people are slowly discovering, having launched several gastronomic publications as well as a rum brand and documentary series about food . "It's just that before, I didn't talk about it. I've always eaten well in my life but I wasn't questioned on certain themes. I have no legitimacy to make culinary magazines, for example. First of all, I don't cook, I cook. You have to respect these people."

Eating well, listening to music, JoeyStarr has simple tastes. And, he doesn't hide it, he also admits a passion for TV series. "I just saw Mobland on Paramount with Tom Hardy. And then, while scrolling, I messed up, I came across The Wire and I started all over again. I loved The English with Emily Blunt, a western thing, a style that always gets me in the guts... And since bad faith is a muscle in me, when I start a second season of a series whose first I saw a long time ago, I tell my wife that I have to watch the first one again."

TF1's flagship

A consumer of series, JoeyStarr is also a series actor since he is currently the headliner of the third season of The Replacement on TF1. La Une and JoeyStarr, this is a marriage that no one saw coming. "It amuses me. Life, sometimes, offers us dizzying switches and then me, as someone who works on instinct , I love to see where my Ariadne's thread leads me", continues the actor. A series which allows him to give the reply to François Berléand, notably: "He is a beautiful beast, very good company this man. And then, above all, we learn from him by working happily."

Meeting JoeyStarr means agreeing to jump from one thing to another, to laugh, to see him raise his voice, speed up his speech, get agitated, stir things up. " I think that people who know me, who have followed me for a long time, know that you never know who you're going to run into, so leave me alone . (laughs) I'm a mass smokescreen, I've always liked being one, but I'm enjoying my life. I've just done a graphic novel, I've encountered theater, I'm on my second production. A lot of things are happening, and for someone like me who is still developing at my age, I'm behind. And if you achieve something too early, you get bored." It's hard to prove him wrong.