The story of Inside Jamel Comedy Club by Blanche Gardin and Fabrice Eboué

Inspired by The Office by Ricky Gervais, broadcast on the sly on Canal+ in 2009, which has since disappeared, the mockumentary Inside Jamel Comedy Club is the great hidden treasure in the recent history of French series. Thinking heads of the show, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, Blanche Gardin and Fabrice Éboué reopen the file.

Updated October 7, 2023: 14 years later, Inside Jamel Comedy Club is finally available free and legally on the Jamel Comedy Club YouTube channel. For the 10th anniversary of the cult series, Fabrice Eboué and Blanche Gardin told us about this crazy adventure which marked the history of French comedy.

Article from July 27, 2019: Appearing somewhat furtively in the sky of Canal+ almost ten years ago, the UFO Inside Jamel Comedy Club only lasted for eight 26-minute episodes, before disappearing from the radar: never released on DVD, not available for legal download, absent from VOD platforms, this little gem of scathing humor did not have the success it deserved and, without streaming sites, it might have ended up being completely forgotten.

Inspired by Ricky Gervais, the series plays the mockumentary card to the fullest and follows the tour of Jamel Comedy Club first generation (Fabrice Éboué, Blanche Gardin, Thomas N’Gijol, Amelle Chahbi, Claudia Tagbo, Yacine, Dédo, Noom Diawara and Frédéric Chau). Everyone plays their own role, on the bus, in the hotel, real images of the show and the audience are used… With crazy audacity, Inside sketches the members of the troupe, even Jamel who is portrayed as a stingy autocrat, and addresses all the angry subjects (the disabled, the suburbs, Dieudonné, anti-Semitism…). It’s a series like we’ve rarely seen in France (there’s only Plane tree to make the comparison). The authors and performers Fabrice Éboué and Blanche Gardin look back on this extraordinary experience.

First: How did you come up with the concept ofInside Jamel Comedy Club?

Fabrice Éboué : We were looking for formats other than that of Jamel Comedy Club, which was a succession of people who came to do solo sketches on stage. And we were looking for something that would provide the possibility of interaction between us, through skits. Jamel gave us a camera for the tour, to do what we wanted. And we started thinking about sketches with Blanche, orienting our personalities a little in the caricature. Little by little, we obtained a series of sketches that worked well, we put together a first pilot which we showed to Canal, and they said bingo. We therefore went with a format of eight 26-minute episodes.

When we look Insidewe necessarily think of The Office. Was that your main inspiration?

FE : There is also It happened close to youwhich I watched endlessly as a teenager, or Michel Muller’s life is more beautiful than yours , which did not have the impact it deserved. But, obviously, for my character and the way of filming, the absolute reference was The Office by Ricky Gervais.

Blanche Gardin : We were very, very fans of the series, hence the sometimes slightly abusive camera gazes, we really liked that.

In The Office they were fictional characters, who moved in a setting. There, you go even further, since everything is true: you play your own roles, it’s the real tour, we see images of the real audience…

FE: As we were in docu-fiction, we asked people not to learn the text by heart, to preserve a certain truth, we said: “Say that in your own words, be as close to you as possible. » We sometimes filmed the real audience, without warning them of what we were going to say, to get a real reaction, to see what it was like. All this helped to keep the thing totally real. So much so that some people thought it was true. It was the best compliment anyone could give us.

BG: At the time, fans of Jamel Comedy Club who followed the series stopped us in the street to ask us if Frédéric Chau was really dead!

Finally, the docu-fiction joins the spirit of stand-up, where the comedian uses his own life a lot…

FE : Yes, it fits the spirit of stand-up but, at the same time, it was a complete break with what people had seen in the JCC on the scene. It was more in line with Blanche’s approach, and mine, with a humor different from JCC, which is more like Jamel.

B.G. : We can even say that there were two audiences: fans of the Jamel Comedy Clubhad not really taken to the series, which had attracted another audience, let’s say, more Telerama. At JCCwe were speaking to a larger, more popular audience, and there we suddenly felt that we were speaking to other people.

So in Inside is everything real or inspired by reality?

FE : We caricatured everything, because if you create a character, it’s over. Just take one thread from each and then pull it. I, for example, was really Claudia Tagbo’s director on her first show, and that was also the case in the series. I am a very demanding person, sometimes brittle, so I exaggerated this trait to end up with this asshole who crushes the other. Only one character was created, that of the manager, played by Jean-François Cayrey, but who is totally inspired by our real manager, who liked racist jokes.

B.G. : It had to be an extrapolation of real life, that’s why it’s funny, for me that’s how you can make good comedy.

Was it difficult for some members of the JCCto play with their own lives?

BG: It was a leap into the void, we didn’t really know what it was going to be, we sometimes had to negotiate with the members of the troupe but, in the end, everyone played the game. Even for Jamel , it wasn’t easy, I think. He discovered quite late what we had written, fortunately he is intelligent and he understood where we wanted to go and that there was no malice or malice on our part, even if we damaged the packaging of the Jamel Comedy Club.

FE : You have to be able to be absolutely self-deprecating. Some were not comfortable when the intimate was exploited too much. But since we didn’t spare each other with Blanche either, it was difficult for them to complain.

Were you really paid 30 euros per show for the tour JCC ?

B.G. : No, I think it was 60. (Laughter.) Actually, I never really complained about it. I had never set foot on stage and I found myself in Zenith, I don’t know if that justifies the amount of our fees, but I had the impression of being totally illegitimate when we started, I was an apprentice, in the first year of BEP stand-up! (Laughs.)For others who had been performing for a while, the situation was different.

How did you end up killing Frédéric Chau?

FE : Fred told me he wanted to stop the Jamel Comedy Club , and I asked him if it didn’t bother him if we killed him. That way it’s clear. Thanks to him because in my opinion it was the peak of this series, with the cameo of Pascal Obispo who made us record a song in tribute to Frédéric!

B.G. : It’s like when Bobby left Dallas he had to be killed. (Laughs.)Afterwards he wanted to come back because he liked the series, I told him: “Fred, it’s fake doc, you’re dead, you’re dead!” » (Laughs.)

When we see again Insidetoday, we say to ourselves that there would be grounds for generating great controversies. Do you think you can still go that far?

FE : This is what I continue to do in my shows, or in my films, like Coexist . Same for Blanche. It’s up to artists not to censor themselves. I am currently working on Terminus a series for France 2, freely adapted from a book, Small Suicides between friends(Arto Paasilinna). It tells the story of a group of depressives who leave by bus to commit suicide in the creeks. And it’s supposed to be humor! So, I will always continue to move in this direction.

B.G. : The key is to stay straight in your boots and not forget that we are comedians. You shouldn’t get into that stuff, there’s even no reason to respond to people who feel offended. I know what I’m doing, I know that it’s to make people laugh and that it’s never free. Those are the only two things that matter.

We still have the impression that this freedom has disappeared a little on television…

BG: It’s certain that we worked without control, whereas today, people are convinced that we have to write things that spectators expect. It’s dramatic because in reality, it’s when you surprise people that they ask for more. The less we calibrate, the more chance we have of surprising the public. Leave it to the authors! Plus, it didn’t cost anything to produce, it was quick and well done. We still have this freedom on stage, but elsewhere, it’s complicated.

Eventually, Inside was a popular success but not a hit, how did you experience it?

B.G. : The secret broadcast always remained a mystery, we were a little furious because we had put all our hearts into it with Fabrice, we believed in it to death and the people who saw it only gave us great feedback.

FE : The only regret I have about this series is that it was not highlighted enough when it was released, there was no DVD released, it is also not in download on iTunes or available on a platform, I find that a shame.

B.G. : I’m delighted that we’re talking about it again today, because it’s really close to my heart. I sincerely have the impression that we managed to have a truly original point of view on what was happening on a societal level. It also says something about this big thing that was Jamel Comedy Club, a bit marketed on the theme “be careful, the suburbs are coming on stage”. It annoyed us, we wanted to make fun of this somewhat ridiculous stamping, knowing that few of us had grown up manning the walls in the cities.

Despite everything, does this remain an important project in your eyes?

FE : What I’m really proud of, and that I can watch again easily, is really this series. I think that’s where I hit on something that’s more or less true. I have a lot more trouble watching my films or shows. It’s the best thing I could do today as an author and director. It’s my humor, it’s 100% like me.

B.G. : It is the same for me. I say that often, but it’s the only thing I’m totally proud of, also because it’s the only project we did together with Fabrice. We get along really well as soon as we work together, then it’s complicated because we both have idiotic temperaments. (Laughs.)and after two hours, we generally insult each other. On the other hand, our senses of humor, comedy, rhythm, the angles we take to look at things and make them funny match
totally. We really had fun making it and writing it.

In the last episode ofInsidewe’ll see you again after the tour, and the links between the troupe are already very strained… Here again, does this correspond to reality?

FE : In the first episodes, we already addressed the rivalries that really existed between us. That exists in a theater troupe, then in a group of one-man-show actors, I won’t tell you the story! Nobody had arrived at the time, everyone was sick. There was internal competition. And, by the time we do episode 8, we don’t know where things are going to go. And, ten years later, we realize that it happened. That is to say that no one sees each other anymore, everyone has charted their own path, there was rivalry between some, so it was a bit premonitory. It was a very real fiction.