Kev Adams

Kev Adams, born Kévin Smadja on 1 July 1991 in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, has become one of France’s most recognizable comedy and film personalities, blending stand‑up, television, and cinema with a youthful energy that resonates across generations. Raised in a multicultural Jewish family—his father a real‑estate agent of Algerian descent and his mother a finance professional of Tunisian heritage—Adams grew up with two younger brothers, Noam and Lirone, and began taking theater classes at the age of seven, an early foundation that honed his timing and stage presence. After completing a literary Baccalauréat in 2009, he enrolled in law at the University of Paris X‑Nanterre while simultaneously pursuing a burgeoning acting career, a juggling act he described as “extremely difficult, nearly impossible” to balance. His breakthrough arrived when producer Elisa Soussan spotted him, leading to a performance at the Olympia’s Carte Blanche show and subsequent opening for Gad Elmaleh at the Palais des Sports, after which his first one‑man show, The Young Man Show, toured France and concluded in Switzerland at the Paléo Festival de Nyon in 2012. By 2013 he staged Test… Voilà, Voilà! at the Bataclan, and his popularity exploded on social media, amassing over 3 million Facebook fans and more than a million Twitter followers by 2014, later reaching four million Instagram followers in 2017. On television, Adams left the comedy competition On n’demande qu’à en rire to star in the MF 1 series Soda, a sitcom about the everyday adventures of three teenage boys that ran from 2011 to 2015 and cemented his status as a teen icon. Transitioning to film, he delivered box‑office hits with Serial Teachers and The New Adventures of Aladdin in 2015, demonstrating his versatility as both a comedic lead and a voice actor, later creating the animated series Kev’s World (Le Monde selon Kev) in 2018, where he also provided his own voice. Today, Adams continues to act, write, and produce, maintaining a dynamic presence in French popular culture while influencing a new generation of comedians and performers.