Thierry Ardisson, the influential French television host and producer, died on Monday, July 14, in Paris at the age of 76. His wife and children announced in a statement to Agence France-Presse that the cause was liver cancer.
“Thierry passed as he lived: as a courageous and free man,” wrote his wife, TF1 journalist Audrey Crespo-Mara. “Our children and I were united around him until his very last breath.”
Death was a recurring theme in Ardisson’s life and work. “He had ideas”—this is how he wished to be remembered, a sentiment he shared with Le Point magazine on June 9, 2025, upon the release of his book, L’Homme en noir (The Man in Black). In the book, he subverted the traditional autobiography by staging his own death. “I had the idea of a last judgment on acid, an impossible show where personalities and loved ones turn up,” he explained. He had meticulously planned the imagined ceremony, from the incense to a playlist featuring David Bowie’s “Lazarus” and Sean Connery’s cover of The Beatles’ “In My Life.”
This fascination was not a new development. For the 2005 publication of Confessions d’un baby-boomer (Confessions of a Baby Boomer), Ardisson famously posed in a coffin for Paris Match. In that book of interviews, his character succumbs to a fast-spreading cancer and recounts his life from purgatory, reflecting on his journey since his birth on January 6, 1949, in Bourganeuf.
