GAD ELMALEH

I like to do comedy. It's my real passion. I want to make people laugh.

I don't feel any need to play the role of the clown. In my private life I take a break from humor.

There were two things I used to do to seduce girls: jokes and music. Since I'm not a great pianist, jokes were my thing.

My name, my origins, my background and my experiences are what leveraged my success. The angle of the immigrant, through which I examined the reality in France, distinguished me.

Comedy in America is very serious. Either they laugh, or they don't.

Morocco is completely alive for me because I spent about a third of my life there. The first few times I went back to Casablanca, I walked through the streets and remembered how years earlier I had walked those same streets and prayed that a miracle would happen and I would leave and become famous.

I go to New York to see live shows, not movies.

Journalists ask me, 'Why don't you ever talk about sex in your performances?' True, I don't talk about sex - not in my personal life and not in my professional life. This is modesty.

My dream is not Hollywood, but to perform my act in English to 30 people in a Soho comedy club, to show New Yorkers what they look like from the French point of view.

Actually, I don't like dogs. I'm from Morocco, and people there don't like animals.

When they don't know you, when you don't have credits and they're thinking, 'I don't know this French guy,' your first five minutes are trying to seduce them, trying to get them on your side. And it's not easy.

I was in a steak house once, and someone proposed. I was so embarrassed. The woman started crying, and I thought, 'She was just proposed to in a steak house - I'd be crying, too.'

It's a time where every country and every human should be united. I mean, every country has its problems.

It's only fitting that a Jewish comic makes his Just for Laughs anglo debut in a church, right?

If I were bombing with my jokes in English, I would go back to France. Maybe do that mime thing.

America is where standup comedy was born. It's the standard. So you want to go and do your job where this is the mecca of what you do.

It's a good time to be here in America. You feel that people just want to be together and release the pressure and laugh.

When you succeed, at a certain point, you want to challenge yourself. Otherwise, you become boring. You become a has-been. It's not very interesting. I don't want to be this guy who has only succeeded in France.

It's liberating to perform in another language. There are some subjects I would never talk about in French, where they see me as a public figure, that I talk about in English.

Americans don't like puns and plays on words, which is totally opposite in the comedy world to France or even Italy and Germany.

I love coming to New York. I think I'm going to come really often here. I need to - for the show, for the comedy. I want to do the shows here and have a beer and hang out with the comedians.

After New York, Chicago is my favorite city. It's just this great mix of Europe and America. The friends I have there are smart and witty and fun.

I talk about my dad and the American dream, and I just want to say to Americans how fascinated we are by America. We would love Americans to look at the rest of the world that way sometimes.

There's so many funny things to say about being with Charlotte. I've worked on a few bits about it - not to be indiscreet but because the shock of culture and values is so interesting.

I discovered that it's not really about the language. It's about how the words are pronounced and the delivery. We have plenty of good English-speaking comedians. It's O.K. if I have my accent, my gestures, my way of speaking.