The six-episode soap opera follows four young people seeking to break into the highly competitive Parisian stand-up scene.

The idea for the series came about thanks to a suggestion from none other than the "king of stand-up".

"I had dinner once with Gad Elmaleh and he said to me: + Do you know a little about the Parisian stand-up scene at the moment? There are plenty of comedy clubs opening +", recalls the 48-year-old screenwriter.

"I was a big fan of Blanche Gardin, I knew the Gad, Jamel, Foresti generation well... but not the new scene," she adds.

After the red carpet, the cellars

The first time in a comedy club was "an artistic crush".

"On the set, young people between 25 and 35 years old, boys, girls of all ethnic and social origins and who spoke politics, sexuality, pop culture, religion," she says.

"Ten percent", which described the life of actors' agents, had involved real stars (Jean Dujardin, Isabelle Huppert, Sigourney Weaver...).

"In + Funny +, it's not the red carpets but the cellars", she says.

"I loved doing + Ten percent + but, for three seasons, I had to deal all the time with stars and the problem of true and false. I wanted to get away from it and be in pure fiction" , explains Fanny Herrero.

Choosing "young people who are not at all known is precisely to have this feeling of truth".

There is Mariama Gueye, who plays Aïssatou, the talented who manages to break through and has to juggle between fame and family life, Jean Siuen, in the shoes of Bling, lacking in inspiration, Younès Boucif, who plays Nezir, talented but shy , and Elsa Guedj as Apolline, the bourgeois who wants to try her luck and challenge her parents.

"I feel that this woman, the only Arabs she has ever seen in her life, are either Ubers or Saudi princes... I'll let you guess which category she put me in," Nezir jokes. , who is often inspired by his modest background for his valves.

Fanny Herrero and her co-author Hervé Lassïnce met a series of stand-up artists, listened to their podcasts, and consulted star comedians, including Jason Brokers, Shirley Souagnon and Marina Rollman.

singular and universal

All to "highlight" an art that is gradually beginning to be taken seriously in France, while it is like a "religion in the United States".

"I have respect and admiration for these artists with whom I am related because they are authors", says Fanny Herrero.

"They spend hours honing their jokes, finding the right tone and rehearsing a lot."

For comedians from the theater world, putting themselves in the shoes of stand-up artists was not easy.

"In the theater, there is the fourth wall (imaginary wall separating the stage from the room). This is not the case in the stand-up, we are close to the spectators and we talk to them", says Jean Siuen.

"The profession of comedian, hat! It's very, very hard to find valves, to memorize them, to interpret them and to make people laugh", confides Mariama Gueye.

Fanny Herrero says she is fascinated by the artists' stories.

"There is a guy who told me that he came from Alsace and that his father was an imam. He was funny and told it with tenderness and laughter. It's a way of talking about identity while we are doing good".

For the screenwriter, the challenge of getting noticed as a series or an artist is almost similar: "You have to try to be both singular and universal".

"There are more and more series, the spectators are more and more demanding. You have to get out of the game thanks to characters with whom you want to stay for hours".

© 2022 AFP