Folks of shade had been instrumental in establishing the French stand-up scene, which is way youthful than in the USA or Britain. Between 2006 and 2015, “Jamel Comedy Membership” aired on French tv, hosted by Jamel Debbouze, one of many nation’s high comedians. Himself of Moroccan heritage, Debbouze featured largely individuals of shade on his present. This gave “a voice to ethnic minorities that they didn’t have on TV reveals,” mentioned the comic Paul Taylor, who performs in a mixture of English and French.
Taylor mentioned there are solely 4 golf equipment in France that comply with the English-speaking stand-up custom, with a lineup of a number of comedians every night time. Usually, solo reveals are favored in France, a results of the nation’s robust theatrical custom. Moreover Paname, the three different golf equipment solely opened within the final three years: Madame Sarfati, Fridge and Barbès Comedy Membership.
The Drôle Comedy Membership in “Standing Up” was a purpose-built set, simply in case Paris went into lockdown due to the coronavirus. The actors practiced their units at Barbès Comedy Membership, which opened for clandestine nights throughout Paris’s second lockdown, with round 10 comedians performing for round 30 viewers members. The viewers didn’t know the “Standing Up” actors weren’t comics, or that they had been training for a tv present.
When it got here time to movie the characters’s stand-up units at Drôle, the viewers was made up of nonactors, with a digicam educated on the performing comic, and one other on the viewers’s reactions. “There may be nothing worse than pretend laughs and faux reactions,” Herrero mentioned.
Nicely-respected French comedians — Jason Brokerss, Fanny Ruwet and Shirley Souagnon — wrote the characters’ units. Like “Name My Agent!,” the present options cameos, on this case from different French comics, together with Hakim Jemili and Panayotis Pascot, who carry out snippets of units all through every episode. Not like with the appearances by internationally well-known actors in “Name My Agent!,” Herrero doesn’t count on the French public, not to mention Netflix viewers from different nations, to acknowledge these performers.
