Comedian Jamel Debbouze, 46, was the guest of the major maintenance by Daphné Roulier on LCP this Sunday, January 23. The opportunity for the latter to talk about the accident that made him disabled 20 years ago and the courage it took him to overcome this ordeal.
An event which left physical consequences to the actor, causing the paralysis of his right arm, but which forged his character and his courage in life. “From the moment I had this accident, I knew things would not be the same, but I was not different.” explained the father of Léon and Lila to the journalist Daphné Roulier. An accident that could well have discouraged him, confides the native of the 10th arrondissement of Paris: “I knew society was tough, I was short, Arab, suburban and then now disabled, it was piling up.”
“After my accident, I said to myself that I had to be careful that society did not crush me in a certain way. I did not accept my disabled status, I remember that I was granted a disabled worker’s pension which I never received because I did not accept this diminished status“remembered the husband of Melissa Theuriau. It was on January 17, 1990, that the young Jamel Debbouze, aged about fifteen at the time, went to the Trappes station in the Yvelines with a friend. To save time and reach the buses, they cross the tracks, hitting the Paris-Nantes. His friend Jean-Paul Admette dies instantly, Jamel wakes up, meanwhile, in the hospital.
Revealed in the 1990s on Radio Nova and Canal+, Jamel Debbouze would become a comic star in France both on stage and on screen. During the 2000s, he obtained two César nominations for best actor in a supporting role for his performances in the fabulous destiny of Amelie Poulain and Asterix and Obelix: Cleopatra Mission.