Ahmed Sylla is a comedian and actor. The French public discovered him on stage with the Samba Show team, then on television on France 2 in Laurent Ruquier’s show, We only ask to laugh. At that time, his nickname Ahmed Sarko turns into Ahmed Sylla, an always smiling humorist with many rather eccentric, deeply human characters. With the Palais des Glaces and its first one-man show, To my delusionshe will expand and become the Ahmed Sylla with a capital A, loved by a conquered public.
Today, his place on the small and big screen is no longer a shadow of a doubt and he is, moreover, starring in the film which will be released this Wednesday, September 28, 2022, Twins but not too many, by Wilfried Méance and Olivier Ducray. It is the story of two men who learn 33 years after their birth, the existence of the other.
franceinfo: For Grégoire and Anthony, the surprise is all the greater since one is black… and the other white. For this genetic phenomenon to occur, there is about a one in a million chance. Their skin color is not the subject of the film, it’s really more a film about the notion of family.
Ahmed Sulla: It’s exactly that. This is the reason why I agreed to make this film. If this film had been some kind of joke meeting between blacks, whites, etc. I wouldn’t be here to do this interview.
You took a long time to say yes!
Yes a bit. I took the time to read it because I read all the scripts I receive. And it’s the first time it’s happened to me, I was moved when I read the script. I have a very close relationship with my family and this film brought me closer to them.
Your parents are Senegalese traders. What did they pass on to you in your childhood?
My mother was keen to pass on very universal values to us. I am not someone who is afraid of the work or the amount of work it takes to achieve something. My mother arrived in the 1980s in France and I swear to you, I never saw her stop working. She never took a vacation. The first time we went on vacation together was in Turkey in 2018. So I have this desire to look a little like him and not be reluctant to work.
When we see you, that’s also why you talk to the public, it’s that we feel that you never force the line, the emotions. You feel, ultimately, that nothing negative can affect you.
I try anyway. For example, you can criticize my work, I have no problem with that. On the other hand, unfairly based criticism, just to hurt the person, sometimes it can affect me, but once again I come back to my family base. Me it was not my dream to be a humorist, to be an actor, to go on TV, which means that if it stops tomorrow, I have always said it: I would have liked it.
This film is really a look, a focus on this sibling of course, but above all on the phenomenon that we are much stronger, all together than alone…
I’m a lot like Anthony’s character. I grew up in a city in Nantes and I evolved with the associative fabric. That is to say, we had to deal with social workers. My first holidays, my first campsites, were thanks to associations.
Ahmed Sullaat franceinfo
And then I too became an animator. I was keen to take the younger ones and try to tell them: “Here, try this, try that“. I made them do little theater training and in fact, you don’t realize how much it can save lives. Literally.
It is through school that you will discover theatre. Was it love at first sight?
It was love at first sight. And really, I can thank mom who made this effort to bleed herself because they were very expensive schools. I remember the first trimester, it was fine, we managed to pay. Second trimester, she called the management to arrange with them to pay a little later. I can’t thank them enough, they were always super understanding and they listened.
The theater literally saved my life because it was there, on stage, that I felt alive.
Ahmed Sullaat franceinfo
You learned your trade and you took the time to do things the way you wanted to do them. It starts with the stage, inspired by many comedians, actors very marked by gestures like Louis de Funès, Jim Carrey, Courtemanche!
Michel Courtemanche, incredible! I remember times with my mom when we watched Michel Courtemanche, just her and me, we died laughing. And after the same with Louis de Funès. My mother always told me:I want you to have the same career as Louis de Funès! Same as him“.
The greatest strength of this film, and I’m going to finish on this, is to advance mentalities on the prejudices we may have.
That’s it. What is also beautiful is that my character has as many preconceptions about the character of Bertrand Usclat (Grégoire Beaulieu) as he surely has. And then, indeed, there are these prejudices about a mother who abandons her children. And I think it also echoes a bit the society in which we live today and in which we react a lot out of passion. We don’t take the time today to get information, analyze it and then form our own opinion. And it’s true that this film is going to break down these prejudices a bit and we’re going to get a little slapped in the face. We will realize that, well no, we must not react emotionally, sometimes life means that we have no choice.