“The Angels of Reality TV” star Nabilla Benattia — Who is “France’s Kim Kardashian”?

OHMYGOSSIP — Sexy Reality TV star Nabilla Benattia – the self-dubbed French Kim Kardashian – was arrested near Paris  on suspicion of attempting to murder her boyfriend Thomas Vergara. Here’s a closer look at the how the infamous Made in France star rose to prominence.

Who is Nabilla Benattia?
She’s a 22-year-old French reality TV star and model. Nabilla Benattia was born in Ambilly, France with an Algerian/Italian origin near the border with Switzerland. Her father is Algerian and her mother, Italian. She has been in a relationship with Thomas Vergara since January 2013.

In July 2009, Nabilla Benattia was arrested for her part in a fraud alongside three Zairians and sentenced to six months in prison. She used a stolen passport to open three bank accounts under a false identity. Meanwhile, the Zairians intercepted money transfers from public letter boxes and modified the bank account details to match the accounts Benattia had set up. She subsequently withdrew money from them. The victims were slow to realise the theft because most of them were elderly people. According to the department of justice, approximately 200,000 Swiss francs were stolen. She was caught on CCTV in a branch of UBS Bank in January 2009 and was arrested at Geneva airport in July 2009, with the passport of her cousin, and used a false identity to the police. She spent a month in La Clairière youth detention centre for her part in the crimes.

On November 7, 2014, it was reported that she had been detained after her boyfriend was reportedly stabbed in the chest. In November 2014, she was accused of the attempted murder of her boyfriend, Thomas Vergara.

Nabilla Benattia

Nabilla Leona Benattia, or simply Nabilla, (born 1992), has appeared in l’Amour est aveugle, Hollywood Girls and les Anges de la télé-réalité.

She became known in France for her one-liner “non, mais allô quoi” on les Anges de la télé-réalité. The line was subsequently used in ads from brands such as IKEA and Carrefour. It gave rise to a number of parody videos viewed millions of times on YouTube, including a Downfall parody. She registered the phrase as a trademark at the Institut National de la Propriété Industrielle.

Nabilla was first hired by a modelling agency when she was 14 years old. Soon after, she was elected Miss Salon international de l’automobile de Genève 2011 while working on the Peugeot stand, Benattia, aged 19 in October 2011, appeared in TF1’s reality TV show l’Amour est aveugle (“love is blind”), in which the participants meet in total darkness.

Following her first appearance on TV, Benattia underwent breast enlargement surgery, which she claims was to further her career, enabling her to appear in publications such as Maxim and Playboy.

During 2012, she appeared in the fourth series of les Anges de la télé-réalité, shot in Hawaii. The programme, which airs on NRJ 12, follows a group of reality TV personalities for ten weeks. On the show she became romantically involved with Sofiane Tadjine-Lambert, who was in Star Academy 4. He wrote a song for her Dingue de toi (Nabi… Nabilla), which reached number 25 in the French music charts.

2x Nabilla Benattia

In early 2013, she finished filming on the fifth series in Florida. For her participation in this series, Benattia purportedly earned €25,000. In the fourth episode, after an argument with a participant regarding the purchasing of shampoo, Benattia uttered to the camera the words which led to the establishment of her celebrity status:

    “Euh, allô! non, mais allô, quoi. T’es une fille et t’as pas de shampooing? Allô. Allô! Je sais pas, moi, vous me recevez? T’es une fille, t’as pas de shampooing? C’est comme si je dis: t’es une fille, t’as pas de cheveux!” (“Er, hello ! I mean, like, hello ? You’re a girl, you got no shampoo. Hello. Hello ! I dunno, you receiving me ? You’re a girl, you got no shampoo ? It’s like I’d say : you’re a girl, you got no hair”.)

Nabilla’s uttering caused a media buzz in France and generated many parodies, on the internet and in various media. La Grosse Équipe, the production company behind les Anges, registered four trademarks in mid-March with l’Institut national de la propriété industrielle, the French intellectual property registry. These were “Allô, quoi”, “Allô, t’es une fille, t’as pas de shampooing, c’est comme si je dis, t’es une fille, t’as pas de cheveux”, “Allô, non mais allô quoi”, and “Allô, Nabilla la vraie vie de la famille Benattia”. The last of these resulted in rumours discussed on Twitter that a new reality show was in the offing with her as the star. In a TV interview on the talkshow Grand journal, watched by 1.8 million viewers, Benattia confirmed that there will be a reality TV show following her day-to-day. La Grosse Équipe has also registered “Nabilla cherche l’amour” as a title for a TV show.

Nabilla Benattia

A fifth trademark “Nabilla allô t’es une fille t’as pas de shampooing c’ est comme si t’es une fille t’as pas de cheveux” was registered by Benattia herself. The trademarks are registered across ten categories covering a wide range of products including scientific instruments, jewellery and linen but not shampoo.

On 12 November 2013, her own TV Reality show started on NRJ 12. Called Allô Nabilla, ma famille en Californie (in reference to her famous line “Non mais allô quoi”), the show follows her and her family in Los Angeles. The show got mixed reviews and poor ratings for its premiere.

She is often referred as the “French Kim Kardashian” by TMZ.