He is back on stage, with his new show, “Himself“, in which he takes responsibility for the controversy that fell on him 5 years ago. In 2019, Gad Elmaleh was pinned for plagiarism on the YouTube account of an anonymous Internet user, named CopyComic.
In the columns of Paris Match this week, the actor decided that it was time to talk about it, but with “gentleness, without pride or complaint”.
Gad Elmaleh assumes plagiarism
In fact, he admits: “I have my share of responsibility in this plagiarism story, but it represents so little compared to everything I have written.”. He who always idolized Jerry Seinfeld recalls: “About twenty years ago, quite a few colleagues and I took a lot of inspiration from the Americans and took some little jokes from them. I assume.”
And to deplore, even though the star who became his friend did not hold it against him: “I was pilloried for that“. Fortunately, Gad Elmaleh congratulates himself: “my career did not suffer“. And above all, he learned a major lesson from it.
Indeed, Gad Elmaleh assures that this scandal allowed him to understand who his real friends were. After a “big spring cleaning”he notes that those who had turned their backs on him remained in his fold.
He quips ironically as follows: “certain comedians who spit on me” come back “today ask me to do my first part at the Dôme de Paris”. To all these, he says: “It's not that they don't have a facethey simply forgot. They are not evil or ill-intentioned. They just expressed what seemed right to them at the time.“.
However, Gad Elmaleh refuses to isolate himself from the rest of the community. Moreover, he has a lot of interest in emerging comedians. He believes they are a thermometer. They allow him to know when it becomes “cheesy”. In fact, he scours comedy clubs, to hone his lyrics, and stay “sharpened” and in the moment, like a top athlete.
And young people are a source of inspiration for him, because today, he says, “it plays much faster“. So much reason to go see Gad Elmaleh, revised and corrected in today's style, which will no longer make you laugh like before. But like now.
