Gad Elmaleh is at peace with himself and wishes – because“We have a huge need for it” – peace to all. “I don’t know if I’m happy, but I’m joyful.”, launches the comedian, Friday June 28, on the stage of the Olympia, in Paris. On tour with his new and seventh show, simply titled Himselfthis veteran of laughter is sold out until mid-November. A slew of dates will take him to the Casino de Paris in December, to the Dôme de Paris in February, and all over France until June 2025.
At 53, Gad Elmaleh maintains a very loyal audience and a certain charisma. No need for sumptuous lighting effects or blaring music for this show man with a talent for storytelling and precise gestures, who occupies the stage with intact ease. In the spirit of his film Stay a bit (2022), an autofiction in the form of a tender comedy, where he announces to his Sephardic Jewish family his conversion to Catholicism, the comedian, with age, plays the sincerity card. After a short-lived American adventure, the stand-up comedian has returned, since 2022 and his previous show Besidesthe warmth of his French fans, whom he never stops calling ” my friends “. And between friends, we tell each other everything.
“I once believed that by getting together with a princess [Gad Elmaleh a été en couple avec Charlotte Casiraghi, fille de la princesse de Monaco]I would become a prince. No, you remain a bledard next to a princess”, admits the actor. For the first time, he ventures into the field of sex, but with elegance and modesty, retracing his meeting, on a TGV, with an unknown woman. “witty” who will drag him to his room for a chaste cuddle. He accepts his age and the medical appointments that go with it (eye and hearing tests) and has not drunk for almost three years. ” I’ve had enough. I don’t want to be guided by addictions. I quit alcohol, cigarettes, social media, and turned to wellness. »
Situation comedy
A change of life that also led him to a spiritual approach, with a retreat in a monastery, and even a one-on-one with the sovereign pontiff. To prepare for it, he read “The Bible, the best of, the best moments of the Torah” and finally spoke football with Argentine Pope Francis after congratulating him on Argentina’s victory at the 2022 World Cup. “I told this discussion to the footballer Olivier Giroud, who got me hooked on Jesus for forty minutes!”he jokes.
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