From the Comédie-Française to the novel, Séphora Pondi dynamites culture

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She has a crazy magnetism, a je ne sais quoi that makes you want to listen to her until the end of the night, she imposes herself and overflows, with irresistible enthusiasm and joy. Thus the imperial Séphora Pondi conquered the Comédie-Française in 2021, Barely 30 years old. She specializes in rebellious characters – Kent in “King Lear”, Margaret Hamilton, the witch from “The Wizard of Oz”, in “Culottées”, and, above all, Euripides’ Medea, in the production scene by the Belgian Lisaboa Houbrechts. Medea, a figure who has haunted Pondi since she discovered her in her high school years. “I like everything about her, the excess, the fact that she is a foreigner, the crazy love and the ultimate transgression,” she gets carried away. Today, Séphora Pondi, nominated for the 2026 Molières, is even dabbling in directing with “Bestioles”, based on the Australian Lachlan Philpott.

However, the young woman grew up far from the places of “high” culture. Born in 1992 in Gennevilliers to parents of Cameroonian origin who were teachers in vocational high schools, she was taken through their transfers in different Parisian suburbs. Its anchor point: municipal libraries…