Nawell Madani

Nawell Madani (born 25 October 1979 in Watermael-Boitsfort, Belgium) is an Algerian-Belgian comedian, television presenter and producer. She first received wide recognition in 2012 due to the Jamel Comedy Club. Born to Algerian parents, she grew up in Belgium in a family of 6 children. She suffered third-degree burns at the age of 2 and was a tomboy for most of her childhood and adolescence. Her father is a taxi driver and her mother is a nurse.

She moved to Paris at the age of 21, at first with the ambition to become a professional choreographer and dancer. After several tours as a choreographer, she gave up this career. At the end of 2008 she joined the Studio Pygmalion where she trained for a few months, and was spotted in a small room, The Pranzo, by the artistic director of the Jamel Comedy Club, who invited her to a casting to join the team created by Jamel Debbouze. Madani was the only woman to join the team. In September 2011 she began her career as a comedian, but left the troupe six months later.

On Tele Sud she hosted the programme Backstage, where she received artists such as Rick Ross, Shaggy, Wyclef Jean, Kery James, Nas and Chris Brown. In 2011 she presented the programme Shake Your Body on MTV with Cut Killer. In 2013 she founded the collective Jam'Girls, a television programme which met a new generation of female comedians. In 2014 she went for her first one-woman show, C'est moi la plus belge, in the Palais des Glaces in Paris and toured the Zeniths in France, taking a place in the festival Juste pour rire of Montreal in July 2014. In 2015 she won Best One-Man Show in the Globe de Cristal Awards.