Grégoire Ludig and David Marsais form the Palmashow duo, which became known first on the internet and then on television and in the cinema. The first show of the duo, The crazy story of the Palmashowwas broadcast in 2010, on Direct 8. It was in 2017 that the two comedians presented a pellet entitled Rods off in the show Day-to-day on TMC, in which they are interested in films not selected at the Cannes Film Festival. Today, the Palmashow is starring in the film The stars by Jonathan Barre.
franceinfo: This film is an offbeat look at the place that television occupies in our lives, and in particular in the lives of those who are built on television programs. They are so involved that they feel like part of the TV family. It’s still a pretty squeaky look on TV though.
Gregory Ludig: We go through TV, but it was above all that with David, we wanted to talk about the ambient need for recognition. And it’s true that what could be better than TV, this media of images to say something about it?
David, you’ve always been into parodies, you’ve always had this need to find something else. It started with Batman, The Lord of the Rings…
David Marsais: You worked well because we managed to make these videos disappear! What we often say is that we were born in the mid-1980s, so we grew up with the television of the 1990s and in particular the television of Les Inconnus, which inspired us a lot. When we were children, we saw parodies, it made us laugh. We saw three guys having fun and we were like, “But that’s what we want to do later. It’s great !”
What’s funny is that your friendship is indestructible, you’re really inseparable. It started in college, a revelation for you. You lived in a place where apparently not much was going on and David was lucky to have a dad who had a camera.
David: Thanks Christian! Me, I was very good friends with Grégoire’s little brother, who is called Charles Ludig and who does all the music for the film and for our parodies. I was going to visit him in the next village, there was not much to do and we often met at the village bus stop. Grégoire was there that day and for the record, there was a passing car announcing a circus in the village. Don’t ask me why, but we found ourselves in this car after a while and Grégoire had taken the microphone and announced fictitious animals! And we said to ourselves:Say, don’t we write sketches as long as we can, just to kill time, on Wednesday afternoons and weekends?“
Gregory: And we never stopped. It was 20 years ago now.
You are a bit of a character cruncher and you pay a little attention to everything around you. There is always a respect for the human, moreover, you were supervisor Grégoire.
Gregory: I was supervisor in the Jean Monnet high school and indeed, there was this part of humanity. Anyway, with David, we always did it like that, we always had fun. Already, it had to make us laugh, but sincerely, so that afterwards, we say to ourselves: “Either you like it or you don’t, but at least we’re not making fun of anyone”.
We make a humor in which we are not there to charge anyone. We are there to make observations, to observe and we derive them in our own way.
Grégoire Ludig, from the Palmashowat franceinfo
How did you experience this notoriety that arrived all of a sudden?
Gregory: I think that the fact of being two, of having confidence in each other and above all of knowing why we do this, how we started, why we wanted to write and have fun, means that our feet have never taken off the ground. We go on vacation together, there is something that is very true, which is very natural. We didn’t try to give ourselves roles in life. Us, it’s enough for us to write them and that’s why, moreover, we are often a little modest in real life, when we have to talk about ourselves. There is always this small border where we say to ourselves: “That’s privacy!“There is the “normal” life and all our work and I think we live it well, and the fact of being two, it also helps us to keep our shoulders straight.
David: I think that we, deep down, we always know that when you’re a comedian, there is finally an expiration date after a while. So we try to be careful and we take a lot of distance from what we do. We try to question ourselves a little in any case, we do our best, but we don’t feel like we’re getting there. We say to ourselves that there is always a fall behind.
Grégoire, David is fun to live with on a daily basis?
Gregory: Under his airs a little… Yes, of course!
David, how is Grégoire? Basically, he wanted to become a singer!
Gregory: If you put me an instrumental, I’m not far from pushing the song!
David: What is very surprising with Grégoire is that he has an incredible singing talent, really, which is undeniable, but he never said to himself that one day he would make a song and I believe that is its strength.
What is quite strong in your duo is that your eyes still sparkle as much. I have the impression that you have both kept your childish souls.
Gregory: With David’s father, we were lucky, we started shooting sketches with his camera, more than 20 years ago on the terrace, we had set up a green screen. To tell ourselves that we started from there and that we always laughed, that we still manage to get up and say to ourselves: “I found a joke that is so funny!“It’s that there is a sincerity and I believe that as long as it is there, we will continue to have fun in any case.