“We’re not at the sausage fair here! We’re at school!” The strident voice of Professor Latouche, sworn enemy of dunce Ducobu, resonates in everyone’s mind. With this singular tone, that of Elie Semoun that the general public has known since the end of the 80s.
Over the course of his television appearances, his numerous participations in the cinema and then, of course, thanks to his successful shows, he was able to impose a style of play and characters that have become references. But who is really hiding behind this comedian? It was in Paris that, on October 16, 1963, little Elie was born, who grew up on the 12th floor of a housing estate in Antony, in the Hauts-de-Seine. Her parents, Paul and Denise have just left northern Morocco to rebuild their lives in France. He is a postman, she is a French teacher. Very quickly, the family grew with the arrival of his brother Laurent and his sister Anne-Judith. The hours of childhood flow happily between walks in Saint-Cloud park and beautiful encounters with friends in a place close to his heart: school.
He lost his mother at 11
“It was my first scene, the place of my first love, it’s an opening to culture, you socialize, you are confronted with authority… I loved it!”he confided to Galain 2020. Then comes the tragedy that will haunt his whole life: his mother dies of hepatitis when he is only 11 years old. “When your mother, the being you love most in the world, does the worst thing to you, breaks up… forever… you live in an emotional abyss (…) My father pampered Laurent, my younger brother. Me, they thought I had no pain, when I was the most hurt. That’s why I became an artist, it was vital”he recalls, questioned by Galain 2011.
The adolescent takes refuge in the writing of poems and plays, identifies with the hero of the novel The great Meaulnes, dreams of being an author first, then treads his first boards at the Antony theatre. It was at the age of 18 that his destiny changed when he met director Roger Louret, whose company he joined, Les Baladins en Agenais. There he meets a certain Muriel Robin. Together, they play classic pieces on trestles in the Lot (46)… The trio will never be lost sight of. In the 1980s, Elie Semoun pulled out all the stops, multiplying castings and small roles. With his frail look and quirky humor, it’s hard to win! Then came the idea, in 1990, to form a comic duo with his teenage friend Dieudonné. “It is my love of paradoxes, my taste for contrasts, which attracted me to Dieudo: the little Jew and the big Black”he confessed to the magazine She, in 2005. With his alter ego, his career took off. The humor is corrosive, ruthlessly mocking the intolerant of all stripes.
Elie Semoun Hard breakups
Muriel Robin
The friend of the beginnings, the friend of always. Even today, the actress and Élie discuss and tweak each other on their respective shows.
Gad Elmaleh
Accomplices since Les Petites Annonces – where Gad has never failed to make a few cameos – the two comedians see each other regularly and advise each other…
Laurent Ruquier
The favorite radio presenter of RTL walks on affect… And with Élie, you fell in love immediately! He has therefore been dubbed, since 2016, as a member of the program Les Grosses Têtes.
Dany Boon
The actor is one of his oldest friends, one of those who, like him, have broken into the profession… necessarily faithful to the position!
Dieudonne
Between Elie and Dieudo, there are six years of fusional relationship and two successful shows before the big clash for deep difference of opinion. About him Elijah writes in his biography: “I missed Dieudonné a lot. I really experienced this breakup as I experience my love breakups, with a strong feeling of abandonment”.
Frank Dubosc
Water has flowed under the bridges since but… Élie did not appreciate his friend’s attitude after their success in Classified Ads : “I found that I had extended my hand to him, and I was waiting for him to extend his to me at the cinema. He made films with everyone except me… But it does not matter. He knows, I told him. I have nothing to settle, I always say things. At least I won’t die of an ulcer!” (The ParisianSeptember 2013).
…WHICH ARE NO LONGER
But the stage couple ends up divorcing painfully, leaving Élie bruised. He who needs love so much – as he claims in the magazine Interviewin 2020: “I have an irrepressible need to love and be loved, and that’s also why I go on stage!”–, finds a bond with comedian Franck Dubosc and creates Classified Ads. Hilarious sketches where the two friends do not skimp on makeup or the coarse features of their characters. Antiheroes who will feed his future one-man-show: “The characters I compose in my shows don’t have much to save them: failures, mediocres, poor guys”. (SheSeptember 2005).
“There is a crazy part of femininity in me”
For his part, Dubosc breaks through at the cinema, but Elie still rows… Again, he feels left out, alone: “The presence of another reassures me, I like the intellectual ping-pong that results. In private, it’s the same, I like the couple, family life. If we don’t have someone who to tell about your day, it fucks the blues”he explained in 2009 in Gala. In perpetual quest for love, he will marry then divorce, will fall under the spell of a young blonde for ten years who will end up leaving him, he will then accumulate serious crushes and those of a single evening… Élie flutters. “I’m a good flirt when it comes to seducing a woman I don’t have feelings for”he says to France-Evening, in 2010. And still claims to be currently single. In 2013, he delivered to TV Star : “There is a crazy part of femininity in me… I like gardening, flowers, contemplation, decoration. I could be homosexual! (He laughs) (…) I am a blue flower, let’s say” .
Comedian with a hard tooth on stage, the man turns out to be a great romantic on the private side. Fan of the artist Léo Ferré as well as of the composer Richard Wagner, he revealed himself to be a smooth singer of bossa-nova over the course of three albums imbued with poetry. Even more surprising, his passion for horticulture and botany. From his house in Enghien-les-Bains, north of Paris, he can talk about his garden at will: “I like to give it life, to carve it in my own way”.
Subscriber to small roles He is in all the popular French films and series without ever being the headliner… “I created secret places, in the shade, in the sun”. (France SundaySeptember 2020). “It’s as if I was in front of a blank page. Nothing is frozen in a garden. It’s a living spectacle, in perpetual evolution. The artist that I am expresses himself in it in another way”he analyzes for TV 7 Daysin 2019. Between cuttings and writing, Élie Semoun, like a plant, grows and renews itself.
A family, dramas
After the death of her mother, Denise, at 37, it was at the same age that Laurent, her younger brother, left after suffering from AIDS. Two tragedies in the life of Elijah. At the end of 2020, after a year of filming with director Marjory Déjardin, the actor sees his documentary My old man broadcast on the LCP channel, devoted to his father Paul, suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. He films his daily life there, takes him in the footsteps of his childhood in Morocco… Between disconcerting moments and scenes of laughter, the whole is modest and moving. Paul died that same year at the age of 88.
Loves and disloves
Annie Florence Jeannesson is his first and only wife whom he will divorce in 2002. Together they will have Antoine, born in 1995. In his bio, the actor confides: “She was very exclusive. Very quickly, I had the feeling that she was taking me away from all my group of friends. (…) I wanted to vibrate, to feel alive, to be in love. So I fled, I was a coward, I stunned myself in a frantic and sterile seduction, until I cheated on Annie. And fell in love with a 20-year-old girl. In this case, Juliette Gernez, a professional dancer from the Paris Opera, nineteen years his junior, with whom he lived “ten years of tormented, eventful love”. His last romance with the young Belgian Anaïs will end in December 2021, The love between the Paris region and Liège did not resist the distance.
His career
1999: ELIJAH AND SEMOUN After years of success with Dieudonné, he signed his first solo show, directed by Muriel Robin and co-written with Franck Dubosc.
2002: ELIE SEMOUN A one-man-show directed by Roger Louret, the famous director who will welcome the actor in his troupe, from 1982.
2003: SONGS A spoken and sung debut album with a bossa-nova background sold 80,000 copies. The next two won’t work as well.
2005: WHO IS ELIE SEMOUN? A new show, always with the complicity of Roger Louret, which is a hit throughout France.
2008: MERK… Darker, but still just as funny, the actor delivers an intimate show to the public, inspired by his career and a breakup.
2009: CYPRIEN Co-screenwriter of this film, he plays the character of the binoclard amateur of busty blondes, born in the series Les Petites Annonces.
2011: DUCOBU STUDENT Elie Semoun perfectly embodies the psychorigid Professor Latouche. Three other parts of the saga will follow.
2012: SLICES OF LIVES A sketch show in which we find all the favorite characters created by the comedian in Les Petites Annonces.
2014: THE CUPBOARD The actor succeeds, on the boards of the Théâtre des Nouveaux, to Daniel Auteuil in the role of François Pignon. A triumph.
2017: TO SHARE A half-trash, half-intimate one-man show that successfully criss-crossed France before ending at the Casino de Paris.
2018: FORBIDDEN LAWN In this book, Élie Semoun reveals his passion for plants and gardens, through his own poetic texts and photos.
2019: ÉLIE SEMOUN AND HIS MONSTERS A seventh show successfully staged by Fred Hazan and followed by a monumental tour.
See also: “No sex…”, Elie Semoun reveals what Jamel Debbouze forbids comedians who participate in “Marrakech du rire” and why!
Beatrice New