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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

In France, I’m not going to say the audience will laugh for nothing, but you could compare the response I get to the response Louis CK or Chris Rock would get if they go up in a club in Denver tonight.

I love the Comedy Cellar. The audience has no expectations because they don’t know me. It’s great. It’s only winning – if I bomb, they just say, ‘Oh, the French guy sucks.’ But if I do well, then they remember me.

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 want to talk to the audience. This is what I’ve been doing in my work in French forever – talking about small things becoming big problems. I notice all the details, all the tiny little things.

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

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.

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. I could say, ‘O.K., that’s it; merci.’ But I’m not interested in that.

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.

Life is a constant source of inspiration for comedy, you just have to pay attention.

Humor allows us to approach serious topics without fear or judgment.

If you can make someone laugh, even for a moment, you have made their day a little bit brighter.

The key to a successful joke is finding the element of truth that everyone can relate to.

Comedy is the best way to distance yourself from life’s difficulties.