You know him as a singer, discover Kendji Girac as an actor. This Monday, September 5, the famous artist is the hero of the TV movie Champion to discover on TF1. The first role on screen for the one who was crowned “most beautiful voice in France” by participating in season 3 of The Voice.
What a long way in Kendji’s career since his consecration! With four successful albums, hits galore (Color Gitano, Andalouse, Me Quemo, Tiago…), sold-out tours and six awards at the NRJ Music Awards, everything seems to be working for him. It is therefore on a new ground that the young man of 24 years wishes to surprise his audience: that of comedy. “I had already had film proposals, but which did not necessarily look like me. To be able to get started, I wanted there to be an educational goal behind it”, confided the star in the pages of Télé 7 Jours.
In the TV movie Champion, Kendji Girac plays Zack, a pruner and carpenter who builds treehouses with his dad. Happy in his job, he is also passionate about boxing and has a good relationship with his partner Marjorie (played by Aurélie Pons). But her life changes when her father falls into a coma after an accident. As he tries to recover, the hero must face a terrible secret buried since his childhood: he is illiterate.
A deficiency for this character who also echoes the course of the famous singer and musician. “Many people are affected by this problem, and prefer to hide it. When I was younger, I myself had some difficulty reading and writing correctly,” Kendji Girac told our colleagues. “I kept it to myself, partly out of shame, until the day I realized that I had to talk about it in order to progress. After that, I was able to feel better about myself and I I promised myself to help people facing this handicap”.
From his childhood to his career in The Voice, Kendji Girac had to overcome hardships to learn to read and write. “Read, I learned it at school, but I did not know how to write like a person who had a classic school career”, explained the artist in Le Parisien. “I was writing phonetically, actually.”
But, a defining moment in his singing career will be a trigger in his decision: the signing of his first contract at Universal. “I simply had to put the mention: ‘I, the undersigned Kendji Girac’. And it was like writing an entire book. So, I didn’t even want to sign it, for fear of making spelling mistakes”, he still remembers today.
Born on July 3, 1996, Kendji Maillé (his real name) is from Périgueux in the Dordogne. Coming from the gypsy community, he lives with his family and grows up in his caravan. After stopping school at 16, he intended to become a pruner in his father’s business. Like his character in Champion, this job made him take a lot of risks.
“At the time, while handling a sharp tool, I almost lost three fingers. But I was delighted to immerse myself in this magical universe”, says the famous musician for the weekly Télé 7 Jours. “I was also happy to go up in the trees and build cabins, like when I was a kid.” Since all this path, the juror of The Voice Kids has become a key figure of the French music scene, adored by many fans.
Among the women in his life, Kendji Girac is very close to his mother. From her maiden name, from which he takes the artist name, he also dedicated his tube Les Yeux de la Mama to her, certified gold record (ranked n° 5 in sales in France), taken from his second opus Ensemble . “It’s to thank her for everything she has done for me. My mom is everything to me. She gave me everything and she continues”, he mentioned in 2015 for Télé 7 Jours.
However discreet about his private life, Kendji Girac also evokes love and his romantic relationships in music. As in the title Habibi, which has become a cult hit in which he wishes to win back the chosen one of his heart when he was a teenager. “I went to sing love songs to win back a girl who had left me. I sang her Mike Brant in Spanish or a song called Ne me quitte pas, by Sony le Gitan… not that of Jacques Brel !”, slipped the artist and guitarist to Télé Loisirs in 2020.
To the point of having finally found love? “Let’s say that I am happy and fulfilled. At the moment everything is fine”, he specified at the time for our colleagues without extending further. But, another woman makes his heart skip a beat. On January 26, 2021, Kendji Girac became a father for the first time after the birth of his daughter. “When love comes to life…Welcome to my princess Eva Alba whom I love more than anything,” he wrote in an Instagram post.
If the singer remains discreet about the identity of his mother, he dedicated to his daughter a song revealed on September 2, written with singer Juliette Armanet and composer Renaud Rebillaud. “It’s not a song like any other… it’s my declaration of love to my little princess,” he posted on Twitter.
