Jamel Debbouze and Mélissa Theuriau: ’Common Wounds’ Strengthen Celebrity Marriage

Nearly 15 years after their marriage, Jamel Debbouze and Melissa Theuriau lead a peaceful couple’s life with their two children Lila and Léon. Common wounds have strengthened the ties between these two public figures who met for the first time on the set of the film Asterix at the Olympic Games in 2006. In an interview with Psychologies magazine, the journalist explains that her husband and she are both the eldest and that they have carried a lot so that their families hold up.

"At his place, the ends of the month were difficult, he had to work quickly to relieve his mother. I didn’t have that weight. [...] I had a drug-addicted brother, and it really damaged my already fragile parents as a couple. When I arrived in Paris, I was nobody, I could have needed help, but I didn’t even think about it: the important thing was that my brother didn’t die, that my mother stood up," Melissa Theuriau confides. "Jamel, we expected him even less, this young boy from Trappes, with his disability, who suddenly makes a career that he wouldn’t even have dared to dream of. We pushed doors on our own, because there was an urgency to live. And to live for ourselves," she adds.

Together, Melissa and Jamel were able to overcome these common wounds. "With these common wounds, we were able to extract each other from this rather heavy context. Together, we lighten each other," analyzes the mother of Léon and Lila. And to recount: "We had found each other, it was obvious. So yes, there was probably something of the order of survival. Our love stories and our family stories had damaged and enriched us, we had experienced enough life to tell ourselves that we, one as much as the other, wanted something else."