Morocco is completely alive for me because I spent about a third of my life there. The first few times I went back to Casablanca, I walked through the streets and remembered how years earlier I had walked those same streets and prayed that a miracle would happen and I would leave and become famous.
Gad Elmaleh
I love coming to New York. I think I'm going to come really often here. I need to - for the show, for the comedy. I want to do the shows here and have a beer and hang out with the comedians.
Americans don't like puns and plays on words, which is totally opposite in the comedy world to France or even Italy and Germany.
There's so many funny things to say about being with Charlotte. I've worked on a few bits about it - not to be indiscreet but because the shock of culture and values is so interesting.
In France, I'm not going to say the audience will laugh for nothing, but you could compare the response I get to the response Louis CK or Chris Rock would get if they go up in a club in Denver tonight.
I love the Comedy Cellar. The audience has no expectations because they don't know me. It's great. It's only winning - if I bomb, they just say, 'Oh, the French guy sucks.' But if I do well, then they remember me.
When Americans, who have no idea who I am, laugh at my jokes, it's exactly the same if someone loves you even if you're not rich and famous.
I go to New York to see live shows, not movies.
I was in a steak house once, and someone proposed. I was so embarrassed. The woman started crying, and I thought, 'She was just proposed to in a steak house - I'd be crying, too.'
It's a time where every country and every human should be united. I mean, every country has its problems.
After New York, Chicago is my favorite city. It's just this great mix of Europe and America. The friends I have there are smart and witty and fun.
Actually, I don't like dogs. I'm from Morocco, and people there don't like animals.
My name, my origins, my background and my experiences are what leveraged my success. The angle of the immigrant, through which I examined the reality in France, distinguished me.
It's a good time to be here in America. You feel that people just want to be together and release the pressure and laugh.
I discovered that it's not really about the language. It's about how the words are pronounced and the delivery. We have plenty of good English-speaking comedians. It's O.K. if I have my accent, my gestures, my way of speaking.
I want to talk to the audience. This is what I've been doing in my work in French forever - talking about small things becoming big problems. I notice all the details, all the tiny little things.
That's only in America. We don't have French doors in France.
I don't feel any need to play the role of the clown. In my private life I take a break from humor.
In America, going on a date is really more like 'interview night.' You have to give your resume.
There were two things I used to do to seduce girls: jokes and music. Since I'm not a great pianist, jokes were my thing.
When you succeed, at a certain point, you want to challenge yourself. Otherwise, you become boring. You become a has-been. It's not very interesting. I don't want to be this guy who has only succeeded in France.
America is where standup comedy was born. It's the standard. So you want to go and do your job where this is the mecca of what you do.
My dream is not Hollywood, but to perform my act in English to 30 people in a Soho comedy club, to show New Yorkers what they look like from the French point of view.
I talk about my dad and the American dream, and I just want to say to Americans how fascinated we are by America. We would love Americans to look at the rest of the world that way sometimes.
It's only fitting that a Jewish comic makes his Just for Laughs anglo debut in a church, right?
When you succeed, at a certain point, you want to challenge yourself. Otherwise, you become boring. You become a has-been. It's not very interesting. I don't want to be this guy who has only succeeded in France. I could say, 'O.K., that's it; merci.' But I'm not interested in that.
I like to do comedy. It's my real passion. I want to make people laugh.
Comedy in America is very serious. Either they laugh, or they don't.
Journalists ask me, 'Why don't you ever talk about sex in your performances?' True, I don't talk about sex - not in my personal life and not in my professional life. This is modesty.
It's liberating to perform in another language. There are some subjects I would never talk about in French, where they see me as a public figure, that I talk about in English.
I did movies because I was flattered and for money and because I wanted to kiss Sophie Marceau.
Everywhere I go in America, when they learn I'm from France, the first thing they ask me is if I'm a huge Jerry Lewis fan. I've never been able to figure that out.
If I were bombing with my jokes in English, I would go back to France. Maybe do that mime thing.
Eventually I was saying to myself, maybe it would be better, instead of trying to become an American comedian in France, to mix those two styles and those two genres. Because of course it's good to be efficient and sharp, and to have a joke every twenty seconds, but it can be a little cold and dry.
When they don't know you, when you don't have credits and they're thinking, 'I don't know this French guy,' your first five minutes are trying to seduce them, trying to get them on your side. And it's not easy.
If you are not on TV, you don't really exist. I want to bring my comedy to the world and tell my story to a bigger audience.
