‘Notre Dame de Paris’ star Matt Laurent loves his role, even after 13 years


Without the make-up and the heavy costume of his famous hunchback character, “Notre Dame de Paris” star Matt Laurent resembles nothing of Quasimodo. Clad in blue jeans and a black jacket, the 44-year-old musical star shows off his cheerful personality during the photo shoot in central Seoul, with his impish and original poses. Then he grabs a bottle of orange juice for “some Vitamin C.”

“This is a million dollar production,” says Laurent, this time showing his professional side. “You have to be at your top shape for it.”

On the other side of the room, however, Yeo Sung-mun, promoter of the currently-running “Notre Dame de Paris,” seems rather concerned. “It is maybe hard for other people to tell, but Matt looks very tired today,” Yeo tells The Korea Herald. “One time this week he stayed until midnight giving autographs after the show. He does not stop until everyone gets what they want. But we cannot have him so sick. He’s important in this show.”

The high demand for his autographs here shows how much popularity he enjoyed in Seoul back in 2005 and 2006, during the first two runs of “Notre dame de Paris” in Korea. The 2005 and 2006 shows were a huge success, drawing a total of 190,000 viewers together. Six years have passed since then, and Laurent is back in Seoul once again with the same hunchback character who is madly in love with the beautiful gypsy woman Esmeralda. The current show, which is being performed in English this time, opened on Jan. 19 at Sejong Center in Seoul.

“Quasimodo isn’t my density but it’s something that I have to do,” he says about the character whom he has been playing since 1999. Tuesday, in fact, is the show’s 13th year anniversary. “He’s really a part of me now. Each time I play, I always learn something new.”

Laurent recalls his own personal experience having a crush on a girl as a teenager, when talking about Quasimodo’s unrequited love. The young Laurent, who had acne and awkwardly long arms, failed to win his first love.

“Esmeralda is the most beautiful thing that Quasimodo has seen in his entire life,” he says. “He cannot believe a woman can be that beautiful ... When you are a teenager and you are in love for the first time, you don’t think you can love like that ever again.”

Prior to “Notre Dame de Paris,” Laurent had been performing in bars and clubs in Montreal. He was a huge fan of Quebecois pop singer Rene Simard as a child, and decided to become a singer like him, too.

“But I was really bad at singing (as a child),” Laurent recalls, laughing. “Then I got a guitar from my parents on my 13th birthday.”

Since then, he became a religious fan of rock band KISS, and thinks he was selected for the role of Quasimodo largely because of his “rocky” and husky voice.

Back in 2006 in Seoul, Laurent famously showcased his rock-n-roll spirit on MBC’s music TV show “Kim Dong-ryul’s For You,” by singing local rock signer Yim Jae-beom’s signature song “For You.” He, with is fellow singer Richard Charest, sang the entire piece in Korean, by memorizing the sound of each and every word of the lyrics. “I was listening to the radio in the car in Seoul and happened to listen to the song,” Laurent says. “And I thought, it’d be cool to sing this in Korean on a TV show. And it happened. Actually, the day after the show I was really sick so I had to be replaced.”

The singer, who is also a proud father of two children ― one 19 and the other two ― has a lot of things on his mind, aside from his already established singing career. He’s been taking private pilot lessons, and is thinking of writing a personal memoir, on each and every musician he’s met in the last 30 years.

“I have 30 years of written-record of the people I met,” he says. “And I told people about it and they said, why you don’t write a book. At first I thought, “I’m not a writer,” but then I later thought it could be very fun. I also want to be in touch with many aspects of the music industry, including art directing and video directing.”

By Claire Lee (dyc@heraldcorp.com)