Waly Dia slams “We just want to laugh about it”

A first experience like a bad memory. Wally He columnist on France Inter revealed to the general public in “We just want to laugh about it” between 2010 and 2014 on France 2, lifted the veil on the backstage of the show created by Laurent Ruquier. Ten years later, the comedian spoke without filter to our colleagues at Society on the censorship and intensity suffered in the program.

« It’s both a weapon of exposition and the worst thing for comedians,” he explained in an interview published in the society magazine. And to continue that this exercise, in a limited time and on an imposed subject, was “the best way to do anything”. And the comedian speaks from experience. Indeed, almost ten years after the show aired, he has retained regrets such as that of quickly targeting “people from the neighborhoods and farmers”hiding behind the ease of caricature.

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“Unhealthy in many places”

And the bitterness is all the greater on another subject: the censorship to which he has been subjected on several occasions. “At the time, I had already started this political humor, I spoke about Françafrique, the Islam/terrorism amalgamation, slavery […] When I put in politicians’ names, they cut it out. One of the biggest censorships I’ve ever suffered was on this show. They deleted entire sketches,” he shared, then pointing out that not all comedians could easily keep up with the hectic pace imposed by production. To find people who could keep up that pace… In two years, we had to write, I don’t know… Fifty, sixty sketches? That show was crazy. Almost unhealthy in many places.”

And although he stayed there for three years, Waly Dia did not hesitate to very clearly charge the very concept of the program as well as its jury. “These were people who had never made a joke who came to judge us, who were capable of humiliating kids who were starting out, like that, because they were at the end of their careers from which they couldn’t recover.” Among the cast, some had a stage career like Michèle Bernier, Jean-Marie Bigard or Stéphanie Bataille. But others were far removed from it like Alain Sachs, Catherine Barma or Jean-Luc Moreau. For the man who is now 35 years old, this show was “a money-making machine” […] It wasn’t out of love for comedians that they launched it.”. This experience was ultimately a lesson for the comedian who explained that he had thus discovered “how television works, editing, audience pressure, censorship and hypocrisy”.