PARIS — The flamboyant French entertainer who performed during the Olympic opening ceremony as a mostly nude, blue-tinged Greek god said he is feeling “super good” despite the controversy.
Philippe Katerine, a boundary-pushing actor and singer, told Le Parisien newspaper that he spent two hours in makeup being coated with “gallons” of waterproof paint in a shade of sky blue and sprinkled with yellow glitter, which he said he was still finding traces of a day after the ceremony.
“I’m a bit of an exhibitionist,” said Katerine, 55, whose modesty as Dionysus, the god of fertility, ecstasy and wine, was covered by a meager garland of leaves and fruit. To prepare, Katerine recounted details of his all-body waxing.
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“I suffered a lot and I loved it,” he said.
Conservative critics widely denounced the act, featuring Katerine lounging on a table surrounded by drag queens, as mocking the Last Supper. But director Thomas Jolly told BFM-TV on Sunday that his inspiration was not the iconic New Testament scene painting by Leonardo da Vinci, but “a pagan feast linked” to the gods of Olympus.
Katerine said he was “proud” of the performance. “It’s my culture,” he said. “We’re full of different people and everyone lives their own way and, above all, has the right to do so. I loved doing it.”
Katerine, who has two kids with Julie Depardieu, daughter of the French actor Gérard Depardieu, said he sent a video to Jolly pitching the piece, which he said was inspired by a wish to respect the original Olympic Games in Greece.“Nudity is really the very origin of the Games,” he said. “At first, they were naturist Olympics.”
Katerine, who performed his hit “Moustache” with Jimmy Fallon, said he wrote a song called “Nu,” which means nude, and performed it for the first time on Friday. “I wanted to get my message across, which goes something like this: “If you’re naked, there’s no war because there are no weapons.”
