MONTREAL, – The mother and ex-wife of Canadian prime ministers, Margaret Trudeau is taking on a new role — headlining a one-woman show examining her colorful life and battles with mental illness. The 70-year-old is performing “Certain Woman of an Age” at the Just For Laughs comedy festival in Montreal, through Saturday.
Diagnosed with bipolar disorder and hospitalized several times, Trudeau tells the crowd how there were “whispers that Margaret was crazy.”
“You don’t have to whisper,” she quips cheerfully, according to a review in the Montreal Gazette. Trudeau’s son Justin, Canada’s current prime
minister who will be seeking a second term in October, saw the show in Chicago in May.
Margaret Trudeau married Pierre Trudeau, Canada’s prime minister for 15 years in the 1970s and 80s, when she was only 22 years old and he was 51.
They split after six years. Her ex-husband was “a feminist, as long as you weren’t married to him,” she says in her set.
Being the wife of the prime minister was “one hell of a job,” one she was unprepared for. “I felt like I was wearing a mask… I wasn’t myself.”
Meanwhile, the bohemian politician’s wife became tabloid fodder in Canada and the United States for high-profile hijinks she now blames on her mental illness.
She was a regular at New York’s legendary Studio 54 nightclub, and had friendly or even intimate relationships with big name celebrities: Mick
Jagger (“an arrogant ass”), Leonard Cohen, Ted Kennedy, Jack Nicholson — as well as hobnobbing with newsmakers such as Queen Elizabeth II, the Dalai Lama and Fidel Castro.
The grandmother of nine continues to follow politics closely. In her show, she touches on one of the most intense moments from her son’s time in office: When US President Donald Trump called Justin Trudeau “very dishonest and weak” after the Canadian leader criticized US tariffs at a Group of Seven summit news conference.
“I saw a jealous, petulant little boy who was mad because Justin seemed to have the qualities that really attracted a lot of people,” she told The
Washington Post. Still, she said, her son and Trump “have a good relationship” … adding, “They may not, now that I’ve said this.”
