The Casablanca comedian shared moving memories during the show broadcast on December 11 on the channel YouTube from Konbini. From his birth at the Val d’Anfa clinic in Casablanca, to the love he had for his teacher in CE1 class,for a basic reason, because she was blonde, and in Morocco, a blonde woman is a minority», Gad Elmaleh looked back at length on his life in Casablanca.
In this exchange, as touching as it was funny, he notably shared a memory that shocked him. “A few years ago when I was in Morocco, I wanted to see the woman who was very present in my life and who also raised me. This woman’s name is Fatima“, he explained, evoking with emotion this second mother to whom he often paid tribute. Gad Elmaleh thus explains having arranged to meet him at the hotel where he was staying during his Casablanca tour.
That day, “there were a lot of people waiting for me, fans of the show who wanted to take photos“, he remembers. “She came with her scarf, her djellaba, she was sitting in this very chic hotel. She doesn’t say anything, she waits very dignifiedly (…) and when I finish, I go and sit with her, and I tell her that I’m sorry», continues Gad Elmaleh.
Read also: Gad Elmaleh bursts into tears upon meeting his Moroccan nanny
«She tells me: it doesn’t matter. It reminded me of when you were a baby and I walked you through the streets of Casablanca in your stroller. Your eyes were so big and blue that everyone stopped and looked at your eyes. And I made people believe that you were my son», recalls the actor and director. Very moved by this memory, Gad Elmaleh confides: ““She amazed me and I said to myself that what she saw was love, the pure side of it all, while I was in ‘resta’ (star) mode.”
A few years earlier, in 2019, when he was a guest on the show Intimate ambitionhosted by Karine Le Marchand, she surprised him by bringing Fatima back to the set. Faced with the one who raised him, Gad Elmaleh burst into tears. “This woman took me to school in the morning, sang me songs in Arabic in the evening to put me to sleep, saw me create my first sketches… She always had a very serene view of what I was doing, even when I started to appear on TV“, he explained.
