At 50, Gad Elmaleh is making his big comeback on stage with a show called “D’ailleurs”. To promote it, the famous humorist is currently making television appearances. This Tuesday, February 22, 2022, it was with Manu Katché that he spoke for a long interview in which he confided in his childhood and his origins.
Born in Casablanca (Morocco) in 1971, Gad Elmaleh grew up in a Jewish Sephardic family “not very religious but very traditionalist”. Although the country is predominantly Muslim, he remembers that fraternity was the watchword. “When we were kids in Morocco, we knew each other. The Jews knew the Muslims, the Muslims knew the Jews. Were there tensions? Yes. But there was a real knowledge of each other’s rites .There were no fantasies.” he explains.
At 17, he left his native country for Quebec. “There, there was a real break […] You have the guys who play basketball and hockey. This is the beginning, I look at women. I say to myself ‘I have to take my place in it'” says the comedian. “For them, I am the Moroccan, and there they do not understand. They tell me: ‘You are Moroccan, you have blue eyes, you speak Arabic, you speak French, and then you are Jewish. I do not understand’.”
Gad Elmaleh opens up about his family
Upon his arrival in France four years after his experience in Canada, Gad Elmaleh directly evokes his origins and all the cultures he has encountered… and becomes the famous humorist that we all know today. In his romantic relationships again, Gad Elmaleh bets on diversity: “I had two children, the two mothers are neither Jewish nor Moroccan. I transmitted, but I was more on the symbolism of the values that I learned, which eventually became universal. Rather than dogma or worship.” he explains to Manu Katché.
Gad Elmaleh is indeed the father of Noé, 21, the fruit of his relationship with actress Anne Brochet and of Raphaël, 8, born of his love affair with the Monegasque heiress Charlotte Casiraghi.
ES