Charles Alexis Guenard and Tada Piriyanupong, better known as Charles the French and Tada, are best known for their hilarious videos on YouTube. The duo gears up for their new magic show.
Charles Alexis Guenard (right) and Tada Piriyanupong (left), better known as Charles the French and Tada, have been tickling funny bones with hilarious videos on their YouTube channel. But when they’re not making videos, they’re cooking up entertaining live comedy acts. Their upcoming act is an encore of a previous successful run of shows. Charles and Tada are taking the stage of Comedy Club Bangkok for another round of their “All Ages Magic Comedy Show” this month and one show in April. Guru speaks to them about the show, Charles’ comedy album and being recognised by fans out in the wild.
How has Miss Rona affected your careers?
Tada: It hasn’t really affected our video career. If anything, it helped more people discover our channel.
Charles: Yeah, the video career has never been better. The pandemic affected our performance schedule a lot with everything getting cancelled. We were supposed to be on a big Asia Tour for two months in 2020. Sadly, that didn’t happen and we couldn’t meet our fans. Hopefully, this can change next year.
Do you often get recognised for your YouTube videos? Any memorable fan stories?
Charles: Yes we do! We get surprised when it happens because it’s amazing that videos we do for fun end up being watched by so many people, I still get shy about it.
Tada: It’s a nice and humbling feeling. But overall it puts a smile on our faces. Being recognised in public is quite new for us, but we always look forward to greeting or conversing with fans, even if it’s in the middle of our weird antics. We tend to joke around a lot in the open.
Charles: The funniest stories are fans who try to be discreet. We hear them whisper to their friends: “Hey it’s Charles the French and Tada” and we pretend like we didn’t hear anything. Tada: Of course, we receive many gifts from our fans, either randomly or during our meet and greets, and we are very grateful and happy to be able to keep them as memories.
Some gifts are really sentimental for us. Some are just very thoughtful.
Charles: But overall, we are always thankful when we get to meet fans.
Tada: Especially when they tell us that our videos have helped them get through this nasty past year.
How did you come up with the idea of doing a comedy magic show?
Tada: Well, I think it came naturally. We have both been professional magicians for about 18 years now and have worked on corporate events throughout Asia. We’re just our silly selves on stage. So our magic show naturally became a comedy magic show. I’m the serious one on stage and Charles is the silly one. This contrast makes the comedy even stronger because the audience tends to take one of our sides so it’s really fun to play with that.
Charles, you have been doing stand-up in Bangkok for a while now. What’s the difference in the stand-up scene from now compared to five years ago? Charles: Let’s not count 2020 as many shows have been cancelled. But since I started, it has changed dramatically. I started doing stand up in Bangkok in 2017 and it was already pretty well developed. I enjoy the fact that there are various venues and they each serve a different purpose to me. A comedian can fully polish their set in these places, from Raw Comedy to Khaosan Comedy Club to Comedy Club Bangkok. All these places are essential for a comedian to improve and to learn the craft properly.
You guys have done comedy magic shows before. Is it more fun doing a magic comedy show than just a straight-up stand-up show?
Charles: Oh for sure! Because Tada and I are actual magicians, we know what we are doing in terms of tricks and so we can focus on the audience having a good time whereas when you do stand up, there is this extra layer of stress added because you can only rely on your words.
Has there been a time when something didn’t go as planned in one of your shows?
Tada: Definitely. Countless times actually. We have done hundreds of shows together and it’s only logical that some stuff would mess up at some point. But the key is to make sure the audience doesn’t notice it, so we need to have good improvisational skills and come up with a cover up on the spot. Charles: Another technique we use is to just joke about it. Thankfully, the show is full of jokes and we will purposely mess stuff up at point, so hopefully the audience doesn’t notice the actual mess-up!
Charles, you launched a comedy album called From The Earth to Uranus last year. How did that come about?
Charles: I often compose instrumental tracks we use in the
show and I write songs in my spare time. I had nothing to do during the lockdown and I couldn’t meet with Tada to work on videos. On a whim, I wrote a song called The Viral Song and filmed the music video in my bedroom. Fans seemed to enjoy it and asked for more so I dug through my hard drives and found like 25 demos of songs I had worked on for the past six years but never did anything with them. So I did new mixes with those demos, wrote new lyrics and it kept me busy for a few months and this album is the result. It’s just a silly album not meant to be taken seriously.
You guys are like a dynamic duo and are usually at each other’s side. Why do you guys love working together?
Tada: We are best friends in real life, so naturally working with each other is second nature and exciting.
Charles: We have the same sense of humour, hence we understand each other’s visions very easily when it comes to making videos or acts for the show.
Tada: Working together is more like having fun. Our creative flow comes out when we start to make new content. The same goes when we create a new act.
What else do you guys have planned for fans in 2021? Charles: Stay alive for one!
Tada: We’ll keep making videos.
Charles: And do more shows throughout Thailand, hopefully, Asia if borders open up later.
Charles & Tada: Overall, we’ll keep entertaining you.
J