Benjamin Tranié came over for a snack with Zaïd Sahebdin.
In this third episode of the podcast À la Mère de Famille, Déborah and Steve welcome Benjamin Tranié and his guest Zaïd Sahebdin for a snack. Between two good jokes, the comedian and his writer share anecdotes from their years spent working, writing, and eating together. They literally take us along on their friendship, their adventures, and their childhood memories. You will be surprised by their homemade recipes, which are a bit crazy, and their cooking talent… or not!
Thank you @benjamintranie and @zaid_shd
Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Deezer and Amazon Music
Benjamin Tranié
Benjamin Tranié burst onto the public scene one day with a whole gallery of extreme characters that he carries off wonderfully, full of energy and mischief. Sometimes a bit crude, he owns it; never vulgar, we assure you. He decided to make comedy and humor his life about ten years ago now. Stand-up and Radio Nova will be a first field of free experimentation that will quickly lead him to France Inter. Not without some increasingly remarkable appearances in cinema. A great fan of Japan as well as good food, love for others and gluttony guide him daily.
Zaïd Sahebdin
He is the man behind the man. The discreet presence without whom success would not be what it is. He is one of those who remind us that great artists rarely work alone. Zaïd Sahebdin is Benjamin's accomplice, his co-author, without whom the public would never have had the chance to discover Tranié's slightly crazy characters. Zaïd is the one who dares before Benjamin launches himself. A fan of Dragon Ball, he too is sensitive to Japanese culture. As well as snack culture.
Transcript
Déborah Pham — Today, Steve, we have a slightly special episode since it combines two of our greatest passions, I think.
Steve Dolfi — Humor and chocolate?
Déborah Pham — Laughing and eating, yeah.
Steve Dolfi — We are welcoming Benjamin Tranié and Zaïd Sahebdin today. We can't wait to find out if they like chocolate.
Déborah Pham — I am convinced they like chocolate. I'll let you welcome them, they will fill their basket as is customary when you arrive here, and then I'll wait for you upstairs!
Déborah Pham — Hello everyone and welcome to L’Heure du Goûter. I am in the company of Steve Dolfi. Hello Steve.
Steve Dolfi — Hello Déborah.
Déborah Pham — Can you introduce our guests of the day?
Steve Dolfi — We are lucky to have Benjamin and Zaïd with us today.
Benjamin Tranié — Nice!
Steve Dolfi — We did a little shopping in the store. Pretty serious!
Déborah Pham — The weight of words, the shock of photos. Fortunately we have the video, because right now, it looks almost frugal. I have the impression they hid some under the table, right?
Zaïd Sahebdin — In my pockets.
Benjamin — There's still a little in our jackets, I think.
Déborah Pham — Small disclaimer: if you have your mouth full, it's absolutely OK. However, if you choke — which has already happened in the past — try to do it discreetly.
Benjamin — Will we have the names?
Déborah Pham — Of course!
Benjamin — Is this person still alive?
Déborah Pham — Apparently yes. But there are a few little pranksters, especially the breaded fish…
Benjamin — Aaaaaah!
Steve Dolfi — I suggest we start tasting right away.
Déborah Pham — I'll be fine for now, I'm already hyperglycemic, but I'm watching you.
Déborah Pham — Sesame-chocolate, does it work?
Benjamin — Oh yeah.
Déborah Pham — Does it remind you of Japan?
Benjamin — Ah, not bad, it's true.
Déborah Pham — They really want to please me!
Benjamin — We said to ourselves: "But did she work or what? How does she know all that?"
Déborah Pham — I called your wife.
Benjamin — Japan, I had already done. So now, I was introducing it to Zaïd and my wife, who are a bit my two girls.
Zaïd — …
Benjamin — Your look says it all. 100% of the information is true.
But it was great to see the discovery in their eyes, the wonder.
Zaïd — You can do many countries, but Japan, we will go back.
Déborah Pham — You also liked the food.
Benjamin — A lot.
The first time I went there, I was younger, so I mostly did all the little not-too-expensive things.
This time, I told them: "We will do all that again, but we will still have three or four very good restaurants that I was told about."
And they were mega-strikes.
It's crazy: you can already eat very simple sushi and find them better than in France. Then you taste some slightly more expensive things and you realize there is a crazy gap.
It was crazy, frankly.
Zaïd — In terms of food, whether it was junk food or much more elaborate things, we were satisfied with everything we ate.
Déborah Pham — I heard you loved a halal ramen…
Zaïd — Very spicy!
I will not give a name, but there are some who left the restaurant in the middle of the meal to go get some air.
Benjamin — In defense of my friend who is not here to defend himself: it was forty degrees outside, fifty inside and we had taken something super spicy. At no point could you breathe.
It was very, very good, I must say. But I was outside screaming: "Give me back my throat!"
And the next day, it was rather: "Give me something else back…"
The next day was very hard.
Déborah Pham — A whole show about Japanese toilets.
Benjamin — That, there is no problem, we can talk about it.
Déborah Pham — How did you meet, both of you?
Benjamin — In a toilet, I swear.
Déborah Pham — Ah! Tell us.
Zaïd — Me, I used to do stage comedy.
Déborah Pham — You don't do it anymore today?
Zaïd — Not at all. There is a point where you have to realize that you don't like it that much.
At the time, I had a duo. We crossed paths often, we liked each other, until one particular day when I had an anthology flop.
Benjamin — I often saw Zaïd on the panels with the guy with whom he was in a duo.
And Zaïd was very strong, I must still put the church in the middle of the village. He really made people laugh.
I also knew that he worked with Kevin Razy. So, for me, I watched him in mode: "Wow, the guy is a writer for a guy who goes on Canal+, he must make a very good living."
Absolutely not.
I understood much later that the job of a writer was really hell.
And so, one evening, he does a panel where he flops, which did not happen to him. He comes out, completely disappointed.
With my partner, we go up right after him and, as our beginning was not working either…
Zaïd — I had left corpses in the audience.
Benjamin — We said to ourselves: kill the one who is already dead.
We did ten minutes on Zaïd, making fun of him and his flop.
At the end, it was almost a standing ovation: "Bravo, you killed him! It's true that he is bad, thank you for saying it."
It was beautiful, the transmission.
And Zaïd was dying of laughter. With maybe a little tear in the corner of the eye, but still dying of laughter.
Déborah Pham — Do you have a lot of self-deprecation?
Zaïd — Yes.
Benjamin — You are forced to!
But it is not the case of all comedians. That is also why we got along well.
Making fun of each other, me, I find it too funny. The one who takes it badly, I find that he has understood nothing of our job.
Déborah Pham — There is still a border, right?
Benjamin — Yes. First, we really liked it.
I like to make fun of the people I like. I always find it funnier.
Zaïd — The border is that if it only makes the one who made the joke laugh and no one else, it is no longer funny. It is just meanness.
After, it is up to you to judge.
Steve Dolfi — When you met, the roles were established right away? You, Zaïd, were you already writing?
Zaïd — Yes. I was already more of a writer than a stand-upper, so it was my role from the start. Benjamin mostly called me for that, from his first chronicles on Radio Nova.
Benjamin — At the beginning, I was all alone.
I had a little notebook with the equivalent of four years of accumulated jokes. I put everything in a single chronicle. It worked well enough for them to ask me for a second one.
Except that at the second chronicle, I had nothing left.
Dry.
Yassine and Thomas tell me: "This is not great. You need to put jokes back. Come back next week with jokes."
And me, I say to myself: "I really have nothing left."
Finding jokes on command is a job. It is too hard.
I call Zaïd to the rescue. He tells me: "Too good, I have ideas, I will send that back to you in the hour."
And my chronicle changed completely. It was hilarious.
I told him: "Wait, stay a little with me, there. I think we can do great things."
Zaïd — One day, we will be paid.
Benjamin — There. It happened four years later.
Steve Dolfi — How long have you been working together?
Benjamin — Since 2017.
Déborah Pham — And since then, is everything done in a duo?
Benjamin — Always.
Déborah Pham — At the moment, Benjamin, we also find you at the cinema.
Benjamin — There, Zaïd did not work on this film. He knows my other writer very well, who is hilarious, and they also work on projects together.
But me, I think I will never really work with anyone else than Zaïd on my projects.
On the other hand, he has every reason to work with lots of people.
Déborah Pham — Other artists.
Benjamin — Yes. And I have no intention of keeping it to myself.
It would be a shame. Other comedians should be able to enjoy it too. It's really funny!
Déborah Pham — How do you write, Zaïd? What inspires you?
Zaïd — That's exactly why I don't do stand-up.
If you ask me to start from scratch and come up with a joke, it's a disaster.
I need a foundation: a character we've developed, a situation...
And it mostly depends on the character I'm writing for.
Steve Dolfi — You don't write at all the same way for someone like Doully, for example, who doesn't really have a character and talks a lot about their own life.
Zaïd — Actually, even Doully is already a character in their way of speaking.
I have a sense of it in my ear: it sounds like this, this word is funny when they pronounce it this way...
So it becomes easier.
Déborah Pham — That's funny. Depending on the person, you have a different musicality, a different rhythm that you adapt to.
Zaïd — Yes.
That's what it means to be a writer. You no longer exist. You put yourself at the service of the musicality of the person you're writing for.
Déborah Pham — So you have to be a very good observer, extremely attentive to the person you're working with. It's not simply putting jokes in someone's mouth.
Zaïd — No, otherwise it works less.
It's like writing for a singer.
Déborah Pham — You're going to sing now!
Benjamin — Many comedians work with writers or co-writers and I think there's sometimes a kind of shame around it.
As if having someone you work with was shameful.
I don't see why at all.
There are many who don't say they have writers or who ask them: "Above all, don't say you work with me."
I think it's a shame.
And then a lot of people don't even know that it's a job. They think the comedian does everything alone.
When in reality, when you have a huge amount of work, you can't do everything alone.
Déborah Pham — When you think about it, they are two completely different crafts: writing and delivering to the audience.
Benjamin — Exactly.
And someone who loves stand-up but doesn't want to be in the spotlight can say: "I would never go on stage."
Well, you can be a writer.
I think very few people really know that this job exists.
In France, it's not very highlighted — financially either, and that's the whole problem.
Steve Dolfi — Before working with Zaïd, were you already very attracted to characters?
Benjamin — Always. Characters have always made me laugh.
Déborah Pham — Didn't it start with a wig story?
Benjamin — Yes.
I'm going to name-drop a bit: it was at Artus's birthday.
He was born in August, so he's one of those poor people whose birthday falls when everyone is on vacation...
There was a costume trunk. Everyone was wearing jackets, glasses, stuff.
And at the very bottom of this trunk — so you can imagine how disgusting it must have been — I find a piece of hair that, with a cap, makes a long neck.
I haven't washed it since.
And there, I become another man.
In life, I'm not a very expressive guy at all, who tells jokes or gets on tables. That's absolutely not me.
But at this party, in front of maybe two hundred people, I had a capoeira battle with a guy. I started a conga line...
Zaïd — A conga line of two hundred people who said: "Well yes, we're going to follow him, since this guy with a long neck seems to think it's perfectly normal."
Benjamin — "Let's follow him!"
I really was another man.
Then, Artus wanted us to keep going with karaoke — he loves it — and he told me: "No but man, you absolutely have to keep the long neck at the karaoke."
Thanks to him, I kept it.
And I realized how much this thing freed me. It was almost like a magic power.
When we were writing the chronicles with Zaïd and we were a bit short on ideas, I put it back on just for fun.
Which is completely ridiculous on the radio, especially at a time when there was much less video than today.
Zaïd was dying of laughter and, suddenly, we came up with a lot of jokes just because of this long neck.
He told me: "Okay, now you never let go of it. You put it on air."
It made Yassine and Thomas laugh so much that we kept it.
And it helped us a lot at the beginning.
Zaïd — Yes, especially for writing.
Benjamin — Today, that's still what we do.
As soon as we find a character, Zaïd really wants us to immediately find a gimmick, a facial expression, a way of speaking.
It makes writing much easier.
Déborah Pham — It's like a Horcrux in Harry Potter, actually.
Benjamin — Exactly! The little geek reference that makes you happy.
Déborah Pham — Does every character have its accessory?
Zaïd — Often.
Claude Bourbier has his pipe, his earpiece...
Benjamin — Apolline de Malbeu, for example, doesn't really have an accessory. A little shirt, a little jacket... There, I'm just an asshole.
But yes, in general, I always try to find something that helps me get into character.
I don't consider myself an incredible actor capable of showing up in a t-shirt and instantly making you believe I'm a voluptuous woman.
I need two or three objects to help me.
Zaïd — It's true that you're not a great actor.
Benjamin — Thank you!
I simply don't say to myself: "I'm so good that, without any artifice, I'm going to immerse people in my universe."
Déborah Pham — You, Zaïd, do you sometimes call real people to build a character? Can you say: "Oh yes, that one, that's completely so-and-so"?
Zaïd — Claude Bourbier, for example, was really born by watching an episode of Strip-Tease called Les Comiques.
There is a producer in it, Claude Fournier, who had notably produced Bigard and Palmade.
And frankly, our Claude Bourbier is very light compared to the real Claude Fournier.
Benjamin — To tell you the truth, I already had this character.
One day, Yassine, to trick me like the bastard he is, asks me: "What character are you doing on Friday?"
I tell him: "Claude Bourbier."
He replies: "Great, awesome, very good idea."
I arrive late to the show — which rarely happens to me — and I discover the real Claude Fournier in the studio.
There, I say to myself: "Horrible."
I love making jokes about people, but facing them, it's still more complicated.
I send a panicked text to Zaïd: "The real Claude is here!"
Zaïd — "We're not doing it anymore! The real one is here!"
Benjamin — I tell him: "Quick, we remove a lot of jokes."
And luckily I have Zaïd: he doesn't care, it's not his head that's on air. He replies to me: "No, you leave everything. We don't change anything. It's not serious."
Me, I panic.
And Yassine was smart enough to start by handing the microphone to the real Claude.
In five minutes, he went off on a rampage and said ten times worse than anything we had written.
Thomas and Yassine were almost hidden under the table in mode: "But we can't say that live on the radio!"
So, me: "Perfect! I can do my character, it will go very well."
Déborah Pham — Was it still funny?
Zaïd — You don't expect to hear someone say certain things so much that you end up laughing.
Benjamin — A little embarrassment, too.
When it's really too much, you have this embarrassed laugh...
Déborah Pham — Isn't it you who pinches people when you're embarrassed?
Benjamin — Yes, it's true.
I often pinch people, I hit them on the thigh. I almost give kicks in the thighs when I'm extremely embarrassed.
Which happens to me very often, by the way. I'm embarrassed for nothing, it's quite dramatic in my life.
There, I was between embarrassment and the euphoria of telling myself: "The real one is here and he is even worse than we imagined!"
Worse in the sense: even less filtered.
Déborah Pham — And how did he take it?
Benjamin — He loved it. He found it very funny.
He told me: "When it's well done, it's well done."
Déborah Pham — My next question was: "What was your favorite snack when you were a child?", but I almost feel like I have to find something else after that.
Me, I'm very brioche-ganache.
Déborah Pham — Ah, you go straight to it!
Benjamin — Me, I'm first degree on food.
Brioche, spreadable paste, big glass of milk... The teenager snack.
I don't eat it anymore a lot because it's still heavy — and because I already have a very strong, strong belly — but I have a very good memory of it.
Steve Dolfi — You should taste that.
Benjamin — The marshmallow biscuit-caramel?
It looks pretty naughty. I'm going to have a little one.
The fish, on the other hand, I put on pause because it is suffocating us all.
Déborah Pham — We will make you a doggy bag.
Benjamin — And so yes: brioche, spreadable paste and huge glass of milk. I was a very big milk consumer.
Whole, obviously, for the weight.
Déborah Pham — Is it a thing from your home, dairy products?
Benjamin — Dairy products, indeed.
My dad fed almost exclusively on milk. So there was a lot at home, I don't know why.
Steve Dolfi — Did you know that the founder of À la Mère de Famille came from Coulommiers?
Benjamin — It's not true!
Steve Dolfi — Pierre-Jean Bernard, in 1761.
Benjamin — Well then, I'm a little at home here!
Déborah Pham — And besides that?
Benjamin — The Banania too.
A big glass of fresh milk with Banania that doesn't completely dissolve and makes little...
Déborah Pham — Clumps?
Benjamin — There, the lumps in the Banania.
Déborah Pham — And you, Zaïd, what taste reminds you of your childhood?
Zaïd — I don’t really have one specific snack that comes to mind.
Déborah Pham — Cookies?
Zaïd — Honestly, no.
Steve Dolfi — Bread with a chocolate bar?
Zaïd — Not even.
Déborah Pham — Maybe you didn’t get to taste it.
Zaïd — Maybe my family didn’t have the money for snacks.
Benjamin — It’s true that there was a very fresh offer…
Zaïd — The only day of the week I was allowed to eat, it wasn’t necessarily at snack time.
Benjamin — But you had the TV.
Zaïd — Yes. I remember the day we ate chocolate, it was so great.
I was eighteen. That day was crazy.
Déborah Pham — You’ve made up for it since, apparently.
You like being at the table together. And I know Benjamin likes to cook.
You still managed to pick someone up with a scallop recipe, you told me that back then.
Benjamin — It’s not impossible.
You, you know everything.
But yes, I really love eating and cooking.
And Zaïd cooks well too, really well. Except he sees me as a huge pain.
Zaïd — Because you can be.
Benjamin — I love eating so much that I want it to be good. So, he puts insane pressure on himself and tells me: “No, I’m not cooking anything for you because you’re bound to find something wrong.”
Steve Dolfi — You’ve been super precise when talking about food for a while now. Even your Banania, it had to have exactly the little lumps…
Benjamin — So he has reasons to think that.
But the few times he cooked for me — well, sometimes it wasn’t very cooked — it was mega good and I was so happy.
Me, when someone cooks for me, I love it. When it’s made with love, I always find it very good.
I understand that he imagines me that way because that’s the image I project, but I’m not like that at all.
Steve Dolfi — He’s lying.
Benjamin — He’s a jerk.
Steve Dolfi — When you go on tour, does Zaïd come with you?
Benjamin — Yes.
Steve Dolfi — So you still go to quite a few restaurants together.
Benjamin — Yes, but he lets me handle it.
I admit, I’m a pain about that too.
I always start by asking: “What do you absolutely not want to eat?” to avoid choosing a restaurant that won’t work.
Well, it’s happened to me two or three times that I misjudged. Someone says: “No seafood,” and I choose a seafood restaurant…
But overall, on tour, we eat a lot.
Zaïd — We gained a lot of weight during some tours.
Benjamin — Exactly.
Before the show, you eat a little something because I don’t like going on stage with a full stomach.
Afterward, you have a big meal.
And often, the people who host you are so happy that they tell you: “I ordered eight dishes, there are three of us, but you’ll see, it’s so nice!”
So you eat all that, plus the booze, plus the yellow Balistos we were talking about earlier…
You go to bed, you’re sweating, you’re not feeling well.
And the next morning, same thing because there’s the hotel breakfast.
Déborah Pham — Oh yeah!
Benjamin — I’m ready to wake up to go have breakfast and go back to sleep right after.
Déborah Pham — And you, Zaïd, you say you don’t cook that much, but I heard about a very particular pasta recipe…
Zaïd — No…
Benjamin — Your source is really going to end up ruining your friendship.
Zaïd — It’s a really bad thing my mother used to make me do and I swear it’s so good.
You make pasta — not spaghetti, more like macaroni, for example — with either a little tomato sauce, or a little bolognese, or even plain.
And on top of that, you simply crush up some Tuc snacks.
Benjamin — Oh, there’s tomato sauce? I didn’t even know that!
Zaïd — It depends. But yes: you crumble the Tuc snacks on top.
I swear it’s good!
Déborah Pham — But doesn’t it get soggy, though?
Steve Dolfi — Actually, I see the idea. Italians sometimes do something similar when they put breadcrumbs on pasta.
Déborah Pham — My German grandmother made pasta with breadcrumbs, but it’s not exactly the same region.
Zaïd — I want to thank you, because now that you’ve said Italians do something similar, there’s someone who might finally stop making fun of me after eight years.
Steve Dolfi — Zaïd, I’m just a chocolatier. When it comes to pasta, my authority ends pretty quickly.
Déborah Pham — But it’s a family recipe, after all.
Zaïd — It’s been maybe eight years since I made it. I need to start again.
Benjamin — He managed to make me change my mind, by the way.
A while ago, he made me believe something…
Zaïd — Wait. He already looks terrified.
At one point, I had gained a lot of weight. Since then, I’ve lost a lot.
But at the peak of my career as…
Benjamin — Two, two, two…
Zaïd — …of cholesterol, one day, on the phone, I tell him: “Well, after that, it’s my fault, I should have just not drunk oil.”
Just for fun, I make him believe I drink frying oil.
Benjamin — And I believed him.
You have to understand: back then, he was a real beast. He was huge!
So when a guy like that tells you: “It’s my fault, I shouldn’t have drunk oil,” I keep that information in mind.
Zaïd — Six months later, he brings it up again: “And maybe you should stop with that oil-drinking thing, shouldn’t you?”
Déborah Pham — Just between the two of you?
Benjamin — No. I must have told five or six people before talking to him about it again.
Zaïd — My friend really thinks that sometimes I’m at home: “Come on, hop to it! Oil shot!”
Déborah Pham — I have a question more related to humor: who passed on the taste for making people laugh to you?
Benjamin — You go.
Zaïd — Thierry Le Luron.
No, I’m kidding.
Déborah Pham — Benjamin?
Benjamin — For me, it’s my family.
My father is very funny, my sisters are funny, my brother too, my mother too.
I grew up in a pretty funny family. Everyone had a sense of humor, more or less developed.
Déborah Pham — What kind of humor? Roasting? Punchlines?
Benjamin — Not really.
It was a lot of things said without laughing. So sometimes you had to guess: “Is he joking or not?”
My father, for example, had a joke he told absolutely everyone who came into our house.
When a guest arrived, he would open the door and say: “Hello, are you here for the cleaning?”
A dad joke born in the 1940s. You either take it or you don’t.
One day, my brother has a birthday party. One of his friends arrives, a Jewish friend.
My father tells him the same joke he tells everyone on the planet: “Hello, are you here for the cleaning?”
The guy took it very badly.
And my father didn’t downplay it at all. The guy tells him: “No, I’m not here for the cleaning.”
My father: “Very well.”
Then he leaves.
The guy tells my brother: “Wait, your father spoke rudely to me.”
And my brother had to explain to him: “No, actually, that’s just his humor.”
Déborah Pham — Zaïd, you’ve got a story there.
Zaïd — I just won eighteen years of writing.
Déborah Pham — And you, where does that come from?
Zaïd — At my house, it wasn’t a family thing.
I was pretty absent-minded when I was a kid.
And when you don’t go to school and you stay in front of the TV, from eleven o’clock on, there aren’t really any more children’s programs.
So I watched the Comédie! channel all day.
There were a lot of shows.
Déborah Pham — Did you have idols?
Zaïd — It’s a little embarrassing…
Déborah Pham — Go on, that’s what we’re here for.
Zaïd — Élie Kakou, for one. Michel Courtemanche too, I really liked him.
Steve Dolfi — Élie Kakou, I had him as a G.O. at Club Med!
Déborah Pham — Not bad!
Zaïd — Not long ago, I watched Élie Kakou again with my girlfriend because I wanted to show her some things that made me laugh as a kid.
And honestly, it hasn’t aged. It’s still funny.
So for me, it mainly comes from the Comédie! channel. My hobby was watching funny people.
I had this thing about wanting to see every comedy show that aired.
Déborah Pham — And Kakou was already extremely in character.
Benjamin — Of course.
Me too, that’s why I went into characters.
When I was in middle school, I almost exclusively watched guys who did characters. That’s what worked back then.
Les Petites Annonces, Les Deschiens… I was raised on that.
So I don’t see why, at the start of my career, I would have spontaneously gone into pure stand-up. I went into what made me laugh when I was younger.
Zaïd — And we were also very lucky to start in radio.
Radio gave us the right to do characters.
If you had gone straight into a comedy club, in the middle of everyone who comes to tell their life story, and you showed up with a long neck saying: “Hello, I’m such-and-such…”
Benjamin — I did it, with the long neck on comedy shows.
And what happened?
Bomb after bomb after bomb.
I’m the biggest bomb after bomb after bomb of all time.
I remember a show where, after every joke that didn't land, I would say: "Well, you know, you have to know your audience..."
I would make jokes about Hugo Clément having a long neck, no one would laugh, and I could really see people cringing.
It was also the first time my wife saw me on stage.
It was a total disaster.
Déborah Pham — Zaïd, do you ever censor yourself today, knowing that you're on one of the most listened-to radio stations in France?
Zaïd — No.
Benjamin — That's not the impression I get either.
But it's easy for him: he's not the one saying it on air.
That's exactly what works.
Sometimes there are things where I tell him: "That's really too much."
And he won't let it go: "No, you have to do it, it's too funny."
Déborah Pham — And can you say afterwards: "That wasn't me, that was Zaïd"?
Benjamin — Not even. In the end, if I agree to the joke, I own it.
Zaïd — There isn't really any self-censorship in the sense that the things we consider we really shouldn't say generally don't make us laugh, so the issue doesn't arise.
Benjamin — On the other hand, going from a radio station like Nova to France Inter still changes the way you address people.
On Nova, those who listened to us had generally chosen to listen to us.
On Inter, there are people who listen to the station all day and who haven't necessarily chosen you.
So you adapt a little bit.
We keep our DNA, but when we arrived three years ago, during the first month, we didn't immediately start telling all our bowel problems.
We told ourselves: "Let's take it easy, there are still people listening to us."
Steve Dolfi — And it's a public service, too.
Benjamin — Of course. I love it when people tell me: "With our taxes!" after a particularly stupid segment.
Déborah Pham — What are your guilty pleasures, Benjamin?
Benjamin — I have a major sweet tooth.
Desserts, things like that...
Well, there's also pâté en croûte.
Déborah Pham — Pâté en croûte, of course.
Benjamin — But if I have to choose, I'm still going to lean towards sweets.
Floating islands, brasserie desserts... That's really my thing.
Steve Dolfi — You make desserts?
Benjamin — Not really.
Pastry is technical.
I can make little pear-vanilla, pear-chocolate crumbles, that kind of thing.
But I tried to make floating islands because I love them, and honestly, it was a disaster. I was terrible.
Steve Dolfi — Zaïd has a recipe where he grates Tagada strawberries.
Benjamin — It's almost not such a bad idea.
On a floating island, maybe not...
Déborah Pham — And you, Zaïd, your guilty pleasure?
Zaïd — Fatty and salty.
Benjamin — Sorry, this really makes me sound like the guy who picks on his friend, but one day we asked ourselves: "If you had to choose what you would prefer to eat for the rest of your life?"
And he answered me: "Fried food."
Déborah Pham — Oh, yeah!
Zaïd — But obviously.
Even just the sound of the food frying...
Already, I'm like: "Oh boy, we're going to eat!"
Déborah Pham — Fried what?
Benjamin — Mainly chicken.
Just now, in the shop, he still suggested to Steve creating fake fried chicken pieces out of chocolate.
Steve Dolfi — In the shape of wings.
And I'll give you the address of a tempura place in Tokyo, near Tsukiji, where the guy changes his oil between each type of tempura and adjusts the proportions between sesame oil and the other oils.
Benjamin — Oh yeah! That's when it became very Japanese fry chemistry.
We'll have to go back there.
Zaïd — Because when you cook chicken and fish in the same oil and your chicken starts to taste like fish, it can be a bit disgusting.
Déborah Pham — Do you have any guilty pleasures? The kind like pineapple pizza?
Zaïd — I'm going to be very honest: I think we should stop picking on pineapple pizza.
It's not that bad.
Benjamin — I agree.
Déborah Pham — Another blow to the Italians.
Now that we've put Tuc in pasta, we can go for it on pizza.
Zaïd — I'm going to insult an entire country.
Benjamin — Me, there's one thing I like and that has become a bit: "Oh boy, you should never put it in"... It's Maggi.
I really liked it and I admit that I still put it everywhere.
Déborah Pham — We just learned that Maggi Bouillon is widely used in several African countries, in Vietnam and, curiously, in Eastern France — where I come from.
Me too!
Déborah Pham — What do you use it in at home?
Benjamin — In pasta, for example. Pasta, sauce, Maggi.
Zaïd — I remember that at the beginning, when we worked together and I often came to your place, you made pasta with Maggi.
Benjamin — Of course.
And then I love pasta carbonara that is absolutely not pasta carbonara.
Déborah Pham — That is, with cream?
Benjamin — That's it. Cream, bacon bits...
Déborah Pham — Another blow to the Italians.
Benjamin — They terrorize us!
My mother used to make us that: bacon bits, cream...
Déborah Pham — Mine too. After that, I was born in Alsace.
Benjamin — There. It's a tarte flambée in pasta. Which is perfect.
Déborah Pham — What would be a crazy dream for both of you in your career? How do you imagine the next few years?
I understand that you plan to continue together.
Benjamin — Yes.
There are necessarily projects that Zaïd won't be able to work on with me, and his projects where I will have nothing to do.
But the absolute dream would be a film written by both of us, starring me and directed by Zaïd.
I think that's the ultimate goal.
Steve Dolfi — Are you already writing?
Benjamin — We are writing things.
But knowing if Zaïd will really be able to direct it, if I will be able to act in it... It's not solely up to us.
Zaïd — There is a super interesting project starting, but we don't know at all if it will go all the way. So it's a bit painful to talk about it now.
Benjamin — But in the absolute, the dream would be that: Zaïd directing me, saying "Action!", "Cut!"...
And taking care of the catering.
Déborah Pham — With fried food!
And how did you experience, Benjamin, the transition from radio to stage and then to the big screen?
Benjamin — It's too cool.
But I have the impression that we didn't really skip any steps.
Everything happened quite gradually. I didn't have a moment where I said: "Oh boy, everything is going much too fast", even if objectively it is still going quite fast.
Déborah Pham — From the outside, it seems fast.
Benjamin — Yes, overall, it's going fast.
But I don't have the impression of having skipped a step.
With Zaïd, we have always had this requirement of not accepting just anything.
We very quickly asked ourselves: do we want to take on a lot of things now, earn a lot of money, but have it last five years?
Or do we earn less, but try to build twenty years of work?
We told ourselves: "Let's aim for twenty years of work."
Even if we are still very far from it, obviously. I am never safe from doing something that will be precisely the end!
Zaïd — We have refused a lot of things.
Benjamin — Sometimes very well paid.
We would say: "There, we could take the money, but we risk being categorized and then it will be complicated to do something else."
Ads, proposals on the Internet, things where you use a lot of your image and your networks...
You can say: "Yes, that will make us money, we will be happy."
But then, you risk being associated with that brand or that thing.
Maybe it wouldn't have changed anything, by the way, but we preferred not to take the risk.
What I hate most about this job are the choices.
Saying yes or no.
We just want to arrive in the morning, work, write, laugh.
But when the phone rings and you have to decide: "Do we do this or not?", that's the moment I hate the most.
And fortunately I have Zaïd.
There are times when he tells me: "No, we're not going. We don't care."
Zaïd — There will be something nicer that comes after.
Benjamin — Let's wait.
Zaïd — The cash will come!
Déborah Pham — You're very confident.
Steve Dolfi — In hindsight, is there one thing you regret refusing?
Benjamin — Honestly, no.
Déborah Pham — Since we're talking about transmission: what has Zaïd transmitted to you?
You're almost married, as you were saying. What have you transmitted to each other?
Benjamin — It's funny because he transmitted to me the taste for what is called the "punch".
Adding the little joke at the end of the sentence.
At the beginning, I didn't have that at all. That's even why I called him to the rescue: I had a story, but I didn't have jokes.
Me, I often brought a story, a basis, a character, something. And Zaïd mixed all that up and found the good punchlines.
And today, sometimes, it's him who tells me: "A character like that would be nice."
Our way of writing has been a bit reversed, or at least mixed.
I am also unable to stay in front of a computer for a whole day.
I am often standing, I talk to Zaïd, I walk right, left, while he calmly stays in front of the computer writing.
So professionally, he has brought me a lot.
And then there are the choices.
Without him, I sincerely think I would have another career.
Having your best friend who can tell you, “That’s a bad idea. Don’t do it,” knowing that he wants what’s best for you and is thinking about the long term, is invaluable.
I probably would have accepted some things just because they paid well.
You know yourself that it might not be great, but the money can make you doubt.
And Zaïd is there to say, “No. You absolutely should not do that.”
Sports betting, for example.
I can say that because I don’t think I’ll ever do it. These are often very well-paid contracts, but ethically, it bothers me.
There were people in my family who had complicated relationships with gambling. It can really ruin lives.
Obviously, not everyone becomes addicted, but for those who do, it’s devastating.
So Zaïd was there to reinforce that feeling: “No, we don’t do that.”
Déborah Pham — At a time when PMU bars are becoming almost trendy again…
Benjamin — Yes, it’s coming back as something almost trendy.
Déborah Pham — And you, Zaïd, what has Benjamin passed on to you?
Zaïd — I don’t have one specific thing.
I started working with Benjamin quite early in my career. I had probably stopped my real job three or four years earlier.
So I also built myself up with Benjamin.
I can’t say, “This, specifically, came from him.”
It’s more a mix of ways of doing things, values, rigor…
Today, we have a lot in common, and I wouldn’t be able to say who took what from whom.
Déborah Pham — It’s a successful marriage.
Benjamin — Exactly.
I also feel that working with me allowed Zaïd to get out of a professional environment where he had a lot of limitations.
With me, he could perhaps allow himself to be much more himself in his writing.
And it turned out that we had exactly the same taste in that kind of humor.
Zaïd — Before, I worked as a writer on a very, very structured show.
“No jokes about that. No jokes about that. Not even about that thing. The shareholder has a stake in a company that does that, so we avoid it.”
And on the side, I had Benjamin, where the goal was practically to say outrageous things.
The hosts didn’t even read the jokes beforehand. No one listened to us, no one watched us.
Benjamin — It was crazy.
Zaïd — At the time, the videos were on Facebook!
Benjamin — Thank goodness we weren’t on Dailymotion.
Steve Dolfi — It’s still a pretty good job: writing outrageous things that you won’t be forced to say yourself.
Zaïd — I have the best position.
If it’s funny, it’s funny.
And if it’s not funny, I’m not the one who gets the bad comments.
Déborah Pham — Excellent. He’s hiding.
When you say you have the same taste in humor, can you describe it?
Zaïd — When we started working together, we were looking for exactly the right formula for the radio segments.
And we realized that our two favorite radio columnists were Pierre-Emmanuel Barré and Jérôme Commandeur.
They have nothing to do with each other, but we ranked them both at the very top.
Déborah Pham — So they’re mostly references.
Benjamin — Exactly.
Jérôme Commandeur’s humor, which manages to talk about things under the belt all the time without ever really saying it, always made us die of laughter.
We were already making that kind of joke between us.
We realized: “Oh, you like that too?”
And we went all in on it because it was what made us laugh the most: saying outrageous things in the most flowery way possible.
At Nova, among our ten listeners, there were also our families.
I knew that on Sundays, I was going to see my brothers, sisters, and parents.
So I still had to be able to stand by the segment.
Saying things without really saying them helped a lot.
My parents would sometimes call me and say, “I didn’t understand anything, but it was great!”
And I’d say, “Perfect. They didn’t get anything. They didn’t understand that I was saying outrageous things.”
Steve Dolfi — That was kind of the goal.
Benjamin — And by quoting Jérôme Commandeur in one interview out of every two during my first show, he must have been getting Google Alerts every day: “Benjamin Tranié, Jérôme Commandeur. Benjamin Tranié, Jérôme Commandeur…”
He must have eventually said to himself, “Who is this guy? He’s driving me crazy!”
We were put in touch and we got along very well right away.
I think that when you have common tastes in humor and writing, it inevitably creates something.
And he’s really hilarious.
Steve Dolfi — Did he come to see your show?
Benjamin — Yes.
Steve Dolfi — And the debrief?
Benjamin — Very cool.
He said something that, if someone had recorded it, I would have immediately put on the poster: “It’s my bedside show.”
That would have been great: “Bedside Show — Jérôme Commandeur.”
Déborah Pham — But did he also tell you that there were almost too many jokes?
Benjamin — Yes.
And we changed some things afterward.
We still listen to him. We’re huge fans.
Déborah Pham — Can you really tell a comedian, “That’s a bit too funny, slow down”?
Steve Dolfi — I think Jérôme Commandeur can say that.
Benjamin — Yes.
And in fact, he was right.
If you laugh too much, at some point, you stop listening to what’s going on. You’ve laughed so much that you don’t even know where you are anymore.
Déborah Pham — That’s exactly what interests me, this question of pacing.
Benjamin — We came from radio.
So our logic was: joke, joke, joke, joke. No quiet time, no dead time. You have to hit people from all sides.
Zaïd — Because on the radio, you have three minutes.
You can’t start by calmly telling your life story so that the first joke comes at two minutes and twenty.
So it was “bam, bam, bam” from the start.
But when we applied that to the show, Jérôme basically told us, “At some point, I was almost tired of laughing.”
We had to learn to pace it.
In a show, you have to manage to create rhythm, have a little quiet time so you can build it back up afterward.
Benjamin — We incorporated that pretty quickly.
He came back to see the next version a year later and then: “OK, that’s good. There are moments where we can breathe. Everything is fine.”
Steve Dolfi — To stay on the theme of transmission, I’d like to know two things.
First, what you want to pass on to the world.
And then, at this table, what you want to pass on to the next guests.
The second is perhaps easier than the first.
Déborah Pham — And again…
You haven’t eaten much, I think. And I frankly blame the big sandwich you showed up with.
Benjamin — No, exactly, it was strategic!
Zaïd had already done a podcast where there was a lot of food.
And in the comments, it was: “Can he stop eating now?”
He had been eating throughout the show. All we could hear was that.
So this time, Zaïd told me…
Zaïd — “Since we’re hungry, come on, let’s eat something before. Otherwise, it’s going to be horrible.”
I was thinking about your listeners.
Déborah Pham — What was it in the other podcast?
Benjamin — I don’t remember. Groceries.
Déborah Pham — Wait, you ate better in the other podcast, is that what you’re telling us?
Benjamin — No, no, no!
They were mostly even noisier things.
Zaïd — Cut carrots and M&M’s.
Benjamin — And, to your credit, there were four of us, so you had moments where you could eat.
This time, sorry, it was super interesting, we had a lot to say. We had less time to chew.
And I think it’s better for the listeners.
Déborah Pham — We’ll get you a doggy bag.
So: what do you want to pass on to the world?
Benjamin — It’s such a literal question…
It’s hard, when you do comedy, to answer that seriously.
Zaïd — Kindness.
Benjamin — Happiness…
Zaïd — What we have in common, despite our job, is this desire to make people laugh.
Benjamin — It’s true that we were pretty literal in our answers today. We don’t really take ourselves seriously, so as soon as a question calls for a big statement…
It’s complicated.
But sticking to something a bit lighter: I am very happy when we manage to pass on expressions or jokes we put in our segments.
When people use expressions we wrote back to us, it really makes me happy.
Déborah Pham — There’s “big kiss,” for example.
Benjamin — Yes!
We obviously didn’t invent the words “big kiss,” we’re not idiots.
But we featured them a lot with a character.
Zaïd — A character who highlighted it in every way: “I like you, you’re a big kiss!”
Benjamin — And today, it makes me laugh to see people use the expression without even necessarily knowing where it comes from.
Once again, I’m not saying we invented it. But we may have helped put it back into circulation.
So if I have to answer: passing on words, jokes, makes me happy.
And in a really literal version: obviously, passing on laughter. Joy.
It makes me very happy when a little joke we wrote together in our living room, dying of laughter, comes back to us after a show because someone repeats it.
Déborah Pham — Do you laugh a lot at your own jokes during writing?
Benjamin — If we’re both dying of laughter, it stays immediately.
Zaïd — It can even happen that one discovers the joke while the other is writing it.
Benjamin — We work on a Google Doc, so I sometimes see Zaïd writing live and I read the sentence while he types it.
Me, since I'm not fast enough at the computer, it comes out more like: "Don't read it! Don't read it! Wait, let me rephrase it properly, otherwise you won't laugh and you won't want to keep it!"
Déborah Pham — And now, out of everything on this table, what are you passing on to the next guests?
Benjamin — Me, absolutely the marshmallow biscuit-caramel.
Zaïd — Me, it will really be the breaded fish. Even though we came close to death twice.
Steve Dolfi — So you want the next guests to choke too.
Zaïd — It's worth it.
Déborah Pham — It was so great having you.
Benjamin — Thank you for the invitation, it was so great.
Déborah Pham — Zaïd, we now know that it was your first real snack time!
Zaïd — My first real snack time.
Benjamin — The memory! I'm going to take photos.
I've already sent one or two to Madame Sahebdin, who is delighted.
Déborah Pham — You're not going to go home empty-handed.
Zaïd — Otherwise she'll tear me apart.
Benjamin — That's for sure.
Thank you very much for the invitation, it was so cool.
Déborah Pham — Thank you. See you soon!
Benjamin & Zaïd — See you soon!
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Every month, journalist Déborah Pham and Steve Dolfi, co-owner of the oldest chocolate shop in Paris, host inspiring guests for snack time in the secret dining room of the historic shop. Personalities we want to listen to and hear talk about transmission. Each guest arrives with an accomplice, someone who matters, from whom they received an influence or to whom they passed on a certain vision of the world. For one hour, we talk about bonds, memories, what is passed on without even thinking about it. An unfiltered conversation with a full mouth, since here you are allowed.
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