To Gad Elmalah, his jokes were «borrowed» and not «plagiarized»

In an interview published, Tuesday, by French daily newspaper Le Parisien, French-Canadian-Moroccan stand-up comedian Gad Elmaleh admitted that he had borrowed before some jokes and routines from American comedians.

«The new generation of comedians was born to stand-up comedy, unlike us, we were completely amazed, fascinated by it … At that moment, what do we do? We were inspired by it, yes, we took things and put them in our own context. But, here we are talking about one minute», said the Netflix comedian.

Gad Elmaleh said that he had a hard time managing all the plagiarism accusations that targeted him. «It was very violent and exaggerated (…) no one wants to be featured on the news as a person who steals», he argued.

However, he said he did not «really» regret these loans: «I would not do it again, but I do not regret it because I did not have bad intentions».  

For the record, on January 29, a YouTube video «revealed a slew of examples of comic routines by Elmaleh that show uncanny resemblance to jokes by other comics».

The video alleges that the Netflix comedian copied the routine of two American stand-up comedians, namely George Carlin and Steven Wright, and Canadian actors Patrick Huard and Martin Matte.

It is not the first time that Gad Elmaleh faces similar accusations. In October 2017, the same channel revealed in a video that several French comedians, including Gad Elmaleh, were overly inspired by their American counterparts.