Play It Again: Ramy Youssef Tells a Muslim American Story

Today, we revisit our 2023 conversation with performer and director Ramy Youssef, one of the singular voices of the past decade. We begin with his reflections on Ramadan, before diving into the third season of his Hulu show Ramy https://www.hulu.com/series/4bcb6c3a-3d9a-4d49-b8e0-57fb7de9c8d6 and the questions that shaped it. Then, we walk through his coming of age as a first-generation Egyptian-American Muslim in New Jersey, his early forays into film, and the sketch inspired by a life-altering Bell’s palsy diagnosis. On the back-half, we discuss Youssef's television debut in the sitcom See Dad Run, how he found his “essence” as a performer, and the politics of his stand-up comedy. To close, he describes the influences behind Ramy, from The Carmichael Show to Curb Your Enthusiasm, a philosophy that guides his work, and what he wants to create in the future. Original air date: June 4, 2023 Find our new YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@talkeasypod. Thoughts or future guest ideas? Email us at [email protected]. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:15Sam Fragoso?

  This is Talk Easy. I'm Sam Fragoso. Welcome to the show.

• 0:33Sam Fragoso?

  Today, I'm joined by comedian, actor, and director, Ramy Youssef. He's the creator and star of the titular Emmy-nominated series, Rami. If you haven't seen the show, it's based on Rami's experiences as a first-generation Egyptian-American Muslim on a spiritual journey through a politically-divided New Jersey neighborhood. I should also add, in case it wasn't clear by my overly-serious description, the show is really, really funny. You'll hear why in this conversation that I had with Rami, which covers the Israel-Palestine episode in season three, his Jersey upbringing and early forays into film, the politics of his stand-up comedy,

• 1:18Sam Fragoso?

  and how, as a first-generation Egyptian-American, he's redefining what the American dream looks like. I want to recommend season three of Rami. It's now available to stream on Hulu. It's one of my favorite shows of the last couple of years, and it was an absolute joy and thrill to sit with the one and only Ramy Youssef.

• 1:59Sam Fragoso?

  Ramy Youssef.

• 2:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:01Sam Fragoso?

  A pleasure to meet you.

• 2:02Speaker 01

  So good to meet you.

• 2:03Sam Fragoso?

  How are you feeling?

• 2:03Speaker 01

  I'm really happy to be here. A lot of stuff happened already off pod. There's a lot of good snacks outside and great coffee. Do you have any idea how many things I go to that are completely snackless? There's just not a single offering of anything. Maybe water, and you can tell it's tap. But here, I mean, this shit is filtered. Thank you.

• 2:22Sam Fragoso?

  Is this material for your new stand-up special?

• 2:24Speaker 01

  I express myself in sometimes things that sound like they could be bits, but I'm not a tester. I don't test my material in conversation. If I think something's a bit, I keep it to myself. I'll try it on stage.

• 2:35Sam Fragoso?

  Because you don't want to give ideas away for free.

• 2:37Speaker 01

  It feels cheap. It feels like I'm using a lunch to further my career when I'm just trying to have lunch with my friend.

• 2:43Sam Fragoso?

  Well, you're on a podcast, so if you want to try stuff out, you're more than welcome to here.

• 2:49Speaker 01

  This is a gray area. But I will say it falls a bit into the lunch category because of the snack quality that you offered.

• 2:55Sam Fragoso?

  Do Pop-Tarts constitute a lunch for you?

• 2:58Speaker 01

  So there's this bag here of mini Pop-Tarts that is blowing my mind because I never want to commit to a whole Pop-Tart.

• 3:04Sam Fragoso?

  Of course.

• 3:04Speaker 01

  And I feel bad that they figured out the product outside of my prime of eating it.

• 3:10Sam Fragoso?

  You know what's unbelievable? People always say about our show that we really talk about these big, weighty subjects. But really, we can talk Pop-Tarts.

• 3:20Speaker 01

  Get me going on gushers and it'll get deep.

• 3:23Sam Fragoso?

  I am kind of afraid to get you going on gushers. I feel like we'll never get anywhere. I do want to start with something that's just happened, though.

• 3:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:32Sam Fragoso?

  You recently observed Ramadan, right?

• 3:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's been a week.

• 3:37Sam Fragoso?

  I wanted to start here because you've said this holiday, more than birthdays, has always been a marker of time for me.

• 3:43Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 3:44Sam Fragoso?

  What did this marker denote this year around?

• 3:47Speaker 01

  Great question. You know, this year was, I was traveling a lot. So I spent some of it in the Middle East. I was in Saudi and I was in Egypt. And then I also was in Chicago. So it was cool to be. Be in three different places. And one of my favorite things is no matter where you are during Ramadan, there's night prayers going on. So you can just go to a mosque almost anywhere. And there's people there doing the same exact thing, breaking fast at the same exact time. So it's incredibly grounding, you know? And especially as someone who travels a bunch for stand up or for whatever filming stuff. You show up to a new city and you feel a little weird at first. And so to kind of travel that way where knowing no matter where I was gonna be, there was gonna be something I was gonna be doing every single night was really cool.

• 4:31Speaker 01

  And it felt this year on paper should have been harder than other years. You know, a lot of times I like to stay in the same place because you're not eating or drinking from sunrise to sunset. But it didn't present itself that way, which was really cool. It didn't feel difficult.

• 4:49Sam Fragoso?

  What were the takeaways, if there were any, from this reflection?

• 4:53Speaker 01

  For me, coming to LA right now, and I spent so many of my twenties here, and it was really emotionally turbulent. And you know, it's just like anyone's twenties. You're trying to figure out who you are. And so there were times where I would just feel all over the place. And I think this year was probably the first year that I thought, oh, wow, I'm feeling less scattered. I'm not letting as many things get under my skin as I would have this time last year. And I think sometimes the threshold is really low when you're not eating and you don't have coffee and you don't have water. You see how quickly you can get frustrated. And it really shows you where you're at. You feel really naked. No caffeine will really show you where you are.

• 5:37Speaker 01

  And I was like, okay, I haven't had my coffee and I'm still good.

• 5:42Sam Fragoso?

  You recently said that this new season was mostly about a crisis of faith. Well, what did you mean by that?

• 5:49Speaker 01

  I think, you know, for the Rami character, we kind of built the show. The premise of the show was always. What does it look like for someone to not try to erase not just lineage, but their faith practice? Because I think what I was seeing a lot of was this attitude of, oh, I grew up religious, I grew up this way, but thank God now I'm free of that and I get to update. And I said, well, that's not really how I feel. You know, there's a lot of my tradition, a lot of my faith that I want to adhere to, but I'm kind of trying to figure out what it means to do that right now in this current moment in time. And I thought that tension was different. You know, the guy actually wants his faith.

• 6:30Speaker 01

  This season is the first time in the show where he's disillusioned by it. And we're kind of watching him, I think, arc from performing faith to kind of stripping it down and putting it back together again. You know, that's the journey that I wanted to put him through this season.

• 6:47Sam Fragoso?

  There's also in this season, more of an emphasis on the crisis of faith in the American dream when it comes to your parents.

• 6:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:56Sam Fragoso?

  In particular. Was that on mind?

• 6:58Speaker 01

  Very, very. I mean, I think it was also looking at, you know, we're coming out of COVID and we're coming out of a big reimagining and also a big dent to a lot of the systems that, you know, we've all been trying to invest in, you know, to work. And then we kind of watched a lot of them really shake. And I think part of the pressure that a Rami type has, or any kid of an immigrant has, is knowing that their parents made a really tough move.

• 7:24Sam Fragoso?

  Hmm.

• 7:25Speaker 01

  That was a gamble and, you know, you're the dice. And you got to roll the right way in order for them to feel good about what they did. And so when you spend a lot of your life feeling like, I gotta be the, the thing that makes my parents' existence worth it, it's a very odd pressure to have. But then, you know, really also wanting to step back from the parents who are like, whoa, was it really worth it for us to even come here and make this gamble too? You know, are we getting what we thought we would get? Is this the dream we signed up for? A lot of these things that they put a lot of stock in are falling apart for them. And I think that's also part of them realizing, okay, you know, we've been living culturally in a certain way, but we need to be more spiritual because we're, we're trying to invest in land, we're trying to invest in the idea of a country,

• 8:08Speaker 01

  we're trying to invest in this idea of a job and what a job means. And to have a job, that informs my identity.

• 8:13Sam Fragoso?

  Hmm.

• 8:14Speaker 01

  And then realizing, no, there's probably something more spiritual to really be digging into. And so, yeah, that, that awakening is, is happening for all the characters.

• 8:22Sam Fragoso?

  To understand the context of the dream your parents had, then we have to go back a little bit because you grew up in New Jersey with Egyptian parents. And you said, as practicing Muslims, there was a performative element that felt like you were living in your own Truman Show. We've been talking a whole lot about performance. What did that look like?

• 8:43Speaker 01

  I'm trying to remember the context in which I said that. That does sound like something I said. You're pulling great stuff.

• 8:48Sam Fragoso?

  I like that you like your words.

• 8:49Speaker 01

  I'm like, dude, past me was...

• 8:51Sam Fragoso?

  Wow.

• 8:52Speaker 01

  You ever worry that you're regressing?

• 8:53Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah, I do, I do.

• 8:55Speaker 01

  Is that regress easy?

• 8:57Sam Fragoso?

  We do 52 a year, so I have a shot at redemption every week.

• 9:01Speaker 01

  This one's a progress episode.

• 9:03Sam Fragoso?

  We're finding it.

• 9:04Speaker 01

  I feel it.

• 9:05Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah.

• 9:05Speaker 01

  Your progress is in how I answer these questions.

• 9:08Sam Fragoso?

  And your progress?

• 9:09Speaker 01

  This podcast bears nothing on my progress.

• 9:12Sam Fragoso?

  Oh, really?

• 9:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm just, I've already had a good time, like, coming in.

• 9:15Sam Fragoso?

  Oh, okay.

• 9:15Speaker 01

  This is in the win column. Yeah, I'm already having a good time.

• 9:18Sam Fragoso?

  I found that had most of to do with the Pop-Tarts.

• 9:19Speaker 01

  The Pop-Tarts? I like the lighting in here.

• 9:22Sam Fragoso?

  It's nice.

• 9:22Speaker 01

  You're nice, the AC is good, I'm good.

• 9:24Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah.

• 9:25Speaker 01

  I won.

• 9:26Sam Fragoso?

  Sounds like Trump.

• 9:28Speaker 01

  Honestly, if you didn't look at what he did and just, you know, some of what he said, an optimist.

• 9:33Sam Fragoso?

  I mean, I could see how someone who grew up with a photo of Donald Trump in their living room, as you did, would say something like that. You want to offer context for that for people?

• 9:44Speaker 01

  Um, my father, yeah, he, he worked at the Plaza Hotel for over 10 years. When he came to the country, he, he just started, you know, he was a busboy at some, I think he started at the Waldorf Astoria. And it was because he spoke Arabic and there were a lot of high-spending Arab clientele that would come in from the Gulf.

• 10:02Sam Fragoso?

  He was previously a travel agent in Cairo.

• 10:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, I forgot, you know, my dad.

• 10:06Sam Fragoso?

  I mean, he was last week's guest, so.

• 10:10Speaker 01

  But yeah, so he, he started bussing and then he kind of went over to the Plaza and he was doing that too. And then eventually became a manager of all the food and beverage and all their, like, banquet halls and all that stuff. And so he'd do the Trump kids' birthdays or something. He's, oh, I'm working late tonight, it's, you know, Eric's birthday, you know, like that, you know? And at the time, wasn't bad or anything. It was just, this is just, you know, a guy my dad works with. But I think part of what we got to explore in the first season, which was something that was very true to my life. Just that fear of being a kid and being so close. And at the time, my dad worked in the city when nine eleven happened. And I think part of what we got to do is a show and part of what even other things that I continue

• 10:52Speaker 01

  to explore is just the impact of that time for the psyche of a kid, especially a kid who felt implicated.

• 10:58Sam Fragoso?

  Is that how you felt?

• 10:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, I did, because you're looking at a screen on TV and you're seeing these people who've done horrible things and, you know, one of them's Egyptian, the other one's this, the other one's that, and they have names that sound like people in my family and some look like people that are in my, you know, so, and that's the only reference point in any media was that, right? And then you start to have this self doubt trickle in where I always felt like I had something to hide, even though there wasn't anything to hide. And then I also didn't get to fully digest my own background from, you know, like a pure context or even an inquisitive, curious context. It's all in the defensive, you know, so everything that I know is just about defending myself at that time.

• 11:42Speaker 01

  It's not a curious exploration and understanding. And I see this in a lot of people of my generation where it's like now we're in our thirties and only just now we're really getting into our faith and our background from like a more curious place.

• 11:57Sam Fragoso?

  Specifically, do you remember a moment where you can kind of acutely remember playing defense as a kid?

• 12:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think some of it is in the episode we made in the show of just like, I remember really being in a history class as a middle schooler and pointing to a map and really trying to put Egypt in Africa, you know, and just say, wholeheartedly, straight faced, saying, I'm African, you know, like, and then leaving and knowing, I'm not really African, I know I'm not African, you know, and being in that place. But for me, the whole thing is I'm never going to be someone who sits and pretends like horrible things happened to me, you know, or we experienced hate crimes on a, on a big level or something like that. And it's why in making the show, I never try to paint the family or the Rami character

• 12:48Speaker 01

  as victims, because I'm not in a position to say I'm a victim, but I am in a place to say, oh, you know, there are things that really happened here that, oh, maybe I can make an offering to unpack comedically, but it was a mindfuck the whole time. It took me a long time to even admit that.

• 13:07Sam Fragoso?

  So if it was difficult to explore or even examine parts of yourself at home, I wonder, when high school rolls around, you take this TV production class. Was making videos in that class a way of examining and exploring parts of yourself that you previously weren't able to do?

• 13:27Speaker 01

  You know, I felt this when I was a kid, even before I went to high school. The first thing I ever saved up for with my post Ramadan Eid money was a video camera. And I loved that. I remember being a kid and just going around the whole town and my street. And I would film things. And then we'd go visit my grandparents in Queens. And they had a computer that had a Windows Movie Maker. It'd be a whole day. We'd be there a whole weekend. And I would just be in there on that computer editing things that I shot. And then by the time I got to high school, there were more tools to do that. Then that became short films and that kind of thing. And then, and then I started to write. I was writing those and then I started to be in them. And so it was a big incubator.

• 14:09Speaker 01

  And my buddy Jonathan Braylock, who I still work with a lot, but then my buddy Steve Way, who's on our show, we did a lot together in that period. And I think we kind of started to find a lot of things that we were just making each other laugh. And then years later, we got to make the show together.

• 14:24Sam Fragoso?

  Well, we are going to watch one of those films that appeared on a YouTube comedy channel called Inside Joke Films. Now, for the context around this period, you're a freshman in college at Rutgers, 19 years old, working part-time at an Apple store in the Meatpacking District.

• 14:41Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 14:42Sam Fragoso?

  Attending acting classes at William Esper Studio. Once those classes ended, you would run to the train station, hop on, get home by 12:30, 1 o'clock, and fall asleep. That process was like wash, rinse, and repeat.

• 14:57Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 14:57Sam Fragoso?

  And it's in that wash, rinse process that you wake up one morning, brush your teeth, and notice a minty saliva dribble running down your chin.

• 15:11Sam Fragoso?

  Which I think happened to me this morning, by the way. But what happened there?

• 15:16Speaker 01

  I got Bell's palsy. The level of research is unbelievable. I'm starting to think you knew to bring these mini Pop-Tarts just based on something I had said at some point. Yeah, that was a big life changer for me because I was doing everything. And I was going to college in the morning, then I'd go work at the Apple store, and then I'd go to acting class, and then I'd do an improv set at night or a sketch or whatever, and then I'd get home really late. I was truly burning myself out at a pretty young age. Then this thing stopped me and I said, OK, you know, I can't move my face. It's weird. Sometimes it goes away after a few days. They'll go, oh, it'll be a few days, or it'll be a few weeks, or it'll be a few months, or it'll be a year. And if it's more than a year, it just might be how your face is, where half your face just doesn't work. You can't even blink. I had to wear an eye patch at night because my eye would otherwise dry out.

• 16:00Speaker 01

  And I had it for six months. This was my biggest, at the time, bargain with God, which was, OK, if this gets better, I'm gonna drop out of school. All I'm gonna do is I'm gonna work on acting. If it doesn't get better, I will accept it, and I will continue school, and I'll drop out of acting school and I'm just become a lawyer. You know, so I was really dramatic about it. And it made it a real inflection point for me to say, OK, if I heal from this, I'm actually gonna free myself from trying to do everything and trying to please everybody. And I was in that place where I was enjoying performing, but I really wanted, you know, to do right by again. You know, my parents made this gamble. I didn't know anyone who's exceeded in comedy. You know, how do I go home and tell my dad, like,

• 16:44Speaker 01

  thank you for not seeing your parents for a majority of your life, and I'm gonna perform at a theater? But then this thing happened, and I said, life's too short. I gotta just do this for me. So it created that.

• 16:58Sam Fragoso?

  Well, why don't we take a look at you in that fork in the road moment where you turned Bell's palsy into a short film aptly titled Bell's Palsy.

• 17:10Speaker 01

  Hilarious.

• 17:12Speaker 02

  Robbie, we got it to Chicago Sketch Fest! Yes!

• 17:18Speaker 02

  No! No! What? What's wrong with your face? John, I told you on the phone, I have Bell's palsy.

• 17:27Speaker 01

  We gotta come up with a plan.

• 17:28Speaker 02

  No, there's no plan. We just need to...

• 17:30Speaker 01

  I got it!

• 17:35Speaker 03

  This is great, man. You can't even tell.

• 17:40Speaker 03

  But, um, you know Halloween's over tonight, right?

• 17:47Speaker 03

  It's okay, man. I've got a plan.

• 17:50Speaker 02

  Really?

• 17:51Speaker 03

  Yeah. Three, two, one, Happy New Year!

• 18:00Speaker 02

  Oh, come on!

• 18:01Speaker 03

  What?

• 18:01Speaker 02

  You still have Bell's palsy?

• 18:03Speaker 03

  John, I told you that the changing of the year wouldn't magically heal it.

• 18:08Speaker 02

  That was my Christmas resolution.

• 18:10Speaker 03

  That's sweet.

• 18:12Speaker 02

  I know.

• 18:13Speaker 01

  I have not watched that for 10 years.

• 18:15Sam Fragoso?

  How does that feel, watching that a decade later?

• 18:17Speaker 01

  It's cool that we did it.

• 18:19Sam Fragoso?

  It's not that bad. I was like, this should be a lot worse.

• 18:23Speaker 01

  Right? I watched one of the sketches we did. I was getting ready to be like, this is gonna really suck. And then I went back and I was like, it doesn't really suck. I mean, yeah.

• 18:34Sam Fragoso?

  No, they're all tightly edited.

• 18:36Speaker 01

  It actually means a lot because that's when you work with a network, they always edit you down, you know? But we had no network, man. We edited ourselves down.

• 18:44Sam Fragoso?

  I'm not here to cut you down.

• 18:45Speaker 01

  I take pride in that. You know, I'm like, wow, we had that down. You know, maybe the writing wasn't always there. Maybe we were figuring it out, figuring out our voice, but we edited.

• 18:53Sam Fragoso?

  Your commitment to editing, to acting, to making these, it is what propelled you forward and brought you to Los Angeles. Did you make that call to come here at like, 3:00 in the morning at a place called the Candlewick Diner? Because it seems like you love making big decisions in diners, and I love diners. I think you love them more than me and Michael Mann, who I thought loved them the most, based on every film he's made.

• 19:27Speaker 01

  I love diners. Sometimes I feel like my whole life's happened in a diner.

• 19:30Sam Fragoso?

  What happens to you in there? Is it just like the prices? Is it the good attitude?

• 19:34Speaker 01

  In a Jersey diner, they are encouraging you to loiter. And I think that was really nice to have. I definitely edited some of those sketches. I would go plug it in a diner, for sure.

• 19:46Sam Fragoso?

  Did you make your decision to come to LA at one of those?

• 19:50Speaker 01

  It was kind of made for me because I booked this show on Nick at Night. And I actually was reminiscing about this the other day because it was funny. I got a call from my manager at the time and he said, listen, if you can fly yourself out to LA, they want you to do this producer session, right? For anyone who doesn't know, it's like you meet producers and then if producers like you, you test with the network. And if you test with the network, they pay for your flight. But the producer session, you don't get that. And so I remember looking at my bank account. I got this call. I was at Apple. I had just dropped out of school. I looked up ticket prices. I looked at how much money I had. I logged into my Wachovia bank app at the time. Then Wachovia famously got acquired by Wells Fargo. So this is just for anyone who's really into the economy.

• 20:36Sam Fragoso?

  That's most of our listeners.

• 20:37Speaker 01

  I think a lot of people, right?

• 20:38Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah.

• 20:38Speaker 01

  So Wachovia. So I go to my Wachovia. I type in my username, my password. I look at the amount of money.

• 20:43Sam Fragoso?

  Sounds like a virus.

• 20:45Speaker 01

  It honestly really does have coronavirus.

• 20:48Sam Fragoso?

  I just picked up Wachovia.

• 20:53Speaker 01

  You know, she didn't. Of course we are. She didn't tell me.

• 20:58Sam Fragoso?

  Oh, you're the editor?

• 20:59Speaker 01

  Oh, this is staying in.

• 21:00Sam Fragoso?

  You do like editing.

• 21:02Speaker 01

  I love editing. And I'm telling you, the Wachovia bit has to stay in. I log into my Wachovia. I look at how much money I have. I look at how much the plane ticket is. The disparity between what it would cost to get me there and what I have is.

• 21:14Sam Fragoso?

  Under $50?

• 21:15Speaker 01

  It's under 300. It's tight. But at the time, 300, you're eating for a couple of days. But at the time, I go, okay, I'm gonna do this. My goal was not to get the show. It was to test. Because I thought if I could test for the network, at least I know they'll get me a hotel and they'll get me the flight back. I couldn't fathom that I'd actually book it because it just felt so insane. But yeah, so I end up going and I test and I was like, great. They got my flight back. They put me in a hotel. I literally go from my friend Lena's couch to getting a hotel over on like Hollywood and Vine. I'm like, this is big. I'm by the Chinese theater. I'm hanging out. I'm going to the wax museum. I'm living life and then I booked the, I booked the roll and

• 21:54Sam Fragoso?

  We're like a couple of blocks from there.

• 21:55Speaker 01

  Dude, every time I drive by, and I lived here for 10 years, every time I drive by, I go, man, remember that trip? This is a big shift, you know, it's, it's across the country, which is almost like going to a different country. And I was living at home and then suddenly I'm living by myself. It's actually still the biggest thing that's ever happened to me in my entire life.

• 22:16Sam Fragoso?

  After the break, more from Ravi Youssef.

• 22:31Sam Fragoso?

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• 23:16Sam Fragoso?

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• 23:53Sam Fragoso?

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• 24:34Sam Fragoso?

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• 25:18Sam Fragoso?

  app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com. You can get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns, now available in Canada and the UK, too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Talk Easy. It's really the best way to support the show. Enjoy.

• 25:37Sam Fragoso?

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• 26:21Sam Fragoso?

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• 26:50Sam Fragoso?

  So you move here for this show called See Dad Run.

• 26:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:54Sam Fragoso?

  You're living in an apartment in Koreatown on Sixth and St. Andrew Place.

• 27:00Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 27:01Sam Fragoso?

  When you get this show.

• 27:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:04Sam Fragoso?

  I was thinking, cause like, you know, this writer's strike is upon us right now.

• 27:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:09Sam Fragoso?

  Will you be able to stay afloat through See Dad Run residuals?

• 27:17Speaker 01

  That, and that's the question. Whatever deal we made on that was part of an issue that the WGA had because it was like such a bad type of deal. It was a residual-less deal, actually. And it's the kind of thing that they're trying to get to the bottom of. So I would say the lineage of See Dad Run is very directly tied to what the Guild is fighting for now, you know, over 10 years later. And so you could see that run to the current strike that is upon us. So that's a really clear line that not a lot of people are drawing. I think if you had a yarn board, it's a big one.

• 27:52Sam Fragoso?

  And it's like, it's kind of good that we're finally drawing it, that we're finally making the connection. That's always been there.

• 27:58Speaker 01

  It's always been there. It's been unsaid. It's been awkward. It's been kind of one of those Hollywood things no one wants to talk about.

• 28:05Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah.

• 28:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:06Sam Fragoso?

  Right.

• 28:06Speaker 01

  Should we?

• 28:07Sam Fragoso?

  And we've dared to.

• 28:08Speaker 01

  Wow. You know, this is, it's, this is See Sam Run. You know, this is big. I stand by that joke.

• 28:14Sam Fragoso?

  And that's our show.

• 28:14Speaker 01

  Keep it in the cut.

• 28:15Sam Fragoso?

  Really, that's it.

• 28:15Speaker 01

  Keep it in the cut. I stand by it. It is, it's not quite Wachovia level, but it's good.

• 28:20Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah, I mean, I don't feel sick after it, unlike Wachovia. One of your co-stars on See Dad Run is an Oakland comedian named Mark Curry.

• 28:29Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 28:30Sam Fragoso?

  He decides to take you on the road where you open for him, is that right?

• 28:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:35Sam Fragoso?

  Now, there's one night in particular, you're at a hotel and you're by yourself in your room. And it sounds like, I think because you just bombed, that you kind of lean into and start to discover your comedic voice as a stand-up. Is that right?

• 28:53Speaker 01

  I bombed so bad that the Miami Improv booked another comedian for the next night because I did so poorly the night before. You know, I was supposed to do 15 minutes and then I did it, but then the next night they said, hey, you only need to do five tonight. You know, we got someone else to do. In between the nights, I had this thing, I didn't know anyone in the city. I was so embarrassed. I was so ashamed. And then I go into the hotel and I completely just forced myself to say, okay, I don't want to feel that again. And I wrote a lot that night. And then the next night I came in and even though they had cut my time, like my five was really on it. But I remember the club owner really being like, where was that last night?

• 29:37Speaker 01

  And I just said, jet lag? And then I walked away kind of confidently.

• 29:42Sam Fragoso?

  It sounds like you made a kind of pivot in the work. What do you think you were moving towards?

• 29:47Speaker 01

  It was just digging deeper. It was playing a different kind of room. You know, I was doing, I started doing stand-up when I moved to LA. You know, I'm doing like Silver Lake Rooms, Burbank, these kind of different kind of demographics as opposed to when you go to a Mark Curry show. And it's like, I could feel this thing of what's your essence, as opposed to some of these smaller rooms I was starting to do stand-up in. It was just, do you have a witty idea? These rooms, they were like, dude, are you funny or are you not funny? Because if you're not funny, we'll just talk until Mark comes out. It wouldn't even be like I bombed and it was silent. They would just watch me for two minutes and then go, anyway, so, and then just conversations start.

• 30:23Speaker 03

  Full conversations are happening while you're doing stand up. And so immediately I had to put myself in a position of how do you hold attention? And also realizing the value of having people's attention. Don't waste it. Really offer them something. So I just dug much deeper and I had to move through a lot of fear. And it was really nice to not be in a city where I knew anyone. Those early road dates were just really good for that. You know, you don't know anyone, so just go to the hotel room and write and get better.

• 30:48Sam Fragoso?

  But it essentially all came back to essence.

• 30:51Speaker 03

  Yeah. Any useful diversion from someone's attention to say, watch this, listen to this, do whatever, I take very seriously. And I say, well, I better be providing a unique essence of something for them. If I'm going to ask them to take an hour to watch my special, 30 minutes to watch an episode, like, why? Why am I asking you to not talk to your family for 30 minutes? This better be worth it.

• 31:14Sam Fragoso?

  Well, then I think we should probably take a look at what may be the earliest televised example of you stepping into and finding your essence, which comes in 2017, when you made your late night debut on The Colbert Show.

• 31:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 31:32Sam Fragoso?

  The performance did come on the heels of Trump's Muslim ban.

• 31:37Speaker 03

  I still think we're going to be okay. I really do. Because I believe in God, like God, God, not yoga. And I know that's a weird thing to say. I get it. You know, religious culture can be crazy. I don't agree with all of it. I grew up in a town where I watched my gay friends struggle to come out to the religious community. And now I live in LA where I'm a religious person struggling to come out to the gay community.

• 32:07Speaker 03

  And tell them what I think. And they're just like, you believe in God? Dude, that's so gay. I just, for me, God is hope, that there's more to life than what's in front of us. You know, that even if things seem impossible, there's still a chance that it could be okay. And I'm not trying to be preachy. I'm really not. Like, all I'm trying to say is just, just submit to Islam because it's the truth.

• 32:34Speaker 03

  And that's the only way you'll be saved. Seriously, that's the only way.

• 32:42Speaker 01

  I feel like I'm so much younger there.

• 32:45Sam Fragoso?

  Twenty-six?

• 32:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. I still can't believe that they let me say that on TV, too. Because that was one where the producers were like, I remember just getting this call because they saw the transcript of the set and they're like, so yeah, so you're trying to say, you're trying to end the clip with submit to Islam?

• 33:01Speaker 01

  And I remember I had to like bring them out to a show to say, no, no, it's a bit. It ties to, you know, what's happening. And it's one of my favorite kind of bits because it's the kind of bit where if you are kind of just an open-minded, I'll say comedy fan that skews liberal on a certain level, you watch that and you go, that's really funny. Like, he's playing on this fear that everyone has. If you're conservative, you're like, oh, my God, look at this. It's the Muslim agenda. And if you're Muslim, you're like, nice, it's the Muslim agenda. You know, like, so it kind of hits all three buckets, which is what I, you know, is kind of my favorite, you know, lane to be in.

• 33:38Sam Fragoso?

  You're always thinking about those three buckets?

• 33:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I want them all to be happy, which sounds like an insane way to live.

• 33:44Sam Fragoso?

  It does.

• 33:45Speaker 01

  Sometimes I feel, you know.

• 33:46Sam Fragoso?

  Insane.

• 33:47Speaker 01

  Insane. And I know you feel it, too.

• 33:48Sam Fragoso?

  Don't drag me into this.

• 33:49Speaker 01

  Of yourself, dude. Come on, you do.

• 33:52Sam Fragoso?

  You had me at Wachovia.

• 33:55Speaker 01

  This is such a good bit. That bit comes from pain and shame. You know, you know.

• 34:01Sam Fragoso?

  I like that you know. That's good.

• 34:02Speaker 01

  I know, dude.

• 34:03Sam Fragoso?

  You can hear it in my voice.

• 34:04Speaker 01

  Yes, man. Stuff people can't even see on the podcast. It's a body language thing. Yeah, but, oh, wow, seeing that's crazy. I haven't watched that.

• 34:13Sam Fragoso?

  And looking back at that clip, it feels like a clear bridge between your early comedy and the comedy that would inform the pilot of Rami.

• 34:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, I did that Nick show and then I was doing The Road with Mark. And I remember that show ending and thinking, okay, cool, I was on a show. And now that I've been on a show, I'm going to be on other shows. I'm going to act. And it never happened. I was so bad at auditioning or I would get really anxious. But then I would also feel like nothing quite fit me. You know, I would go in and they'd be like, you're not the leading guy. You're not exactly the. Well, we want you to play the brown guy, but they didn't understand the reference in which they were writing it. They would write something that was for someone who was Indian or Pakistani, and then they'd say, oh, you're kind of, you know, there was no real. So there was this thing where the acting thing just wasn't hitting. And I

• 35:05Speaker 01

  almost forgot for a period that I knew how to make my own things, because I just got so into the the acting world. And then I said, hold up, I got, you know, this gift of an acting job, but that's over. And now I got to go back to digging into what it is I really want to say and what I want to do. And so there was this period of just doing stand up for the first time in a serious way. It was like three years straight, where it's just, I'm doing stand up every night. I'm figuring out what the next chapter of my life is going to be. My first ever open mic in LA was with my buddy Ari Katcher. He'd been working on Gerard Carmichael's show, and I'd been opening for Gerard. I'd also been opening for Mo, who, you know, we had, you know, his show together now. And so in that time, I was just doing a bunch of sets with them. But then Ari and I kind of started

• 35:49Speaker 01

  talking about, okay, cool, like, let's do the show. It was a really productive time.

• 35:53Sam Fragoso?

  From there, you make the show. It premieres in 2019. You win a Golden Globe in 2020. But throughout the show's run, a whole lot of people have compared Rami to programs like Louis, Master of None, Fleabag. But I want to talk about the influence of Larry David and Curb Your Enthusiasm, because he said once, there's a twinship between Jewish humor and Muslim humor. What is that?

• 36:19Speaker 01

  It's like an inherent sarcasm, an inherent self-deprecation. You know, it really hit me just how not celebrating Christmas really put me so closely intertwined with my Jewish friends. It's just, it's you're really missing out on this massive human event. You feel like a five-year-old adult.

• 36:41Speaker 01

  Because everyone believes in magic. And you're like, dude, this is just a ploy for Macy's to sell stuff in December. You know, and you're looking at your Jewish friends and they're the only other ones who know. And so there's something about that in America where I feel, oh, man, we're the only ones who really get each other here because we missed out this childhood window of daydreaming about Santa. We're like, yeah, that dude wouldn't fit down the chimney. And you've got a bunch of kids who are like, of course he fits because of the, you know, and you're just like, you guys are brainwashed. It creates something very early on that I've found to be at the heart of our humor.

• 37:23Speaker 01

  You know, I mean, yeah, look, Larry's just, I think, the funniest and he's so honest to what he thinks and his perspective. And it's why I always think Muslims and Arabs are some of the funniest people because they're so steadfast, whether in what they believe or what they think, they're not going to move off it. And that's comedy to me. And when you have four people in a room who all think that way, it's just so much certainty. It's just hilarious. It's just so funny. I feel that's what's really funny about Larry. He's so certain despite being completely wrong.

• 37:58Sam Fragoso?

  It is reminiscent of Curb Your Enthusiasm because there are so many moments in that show, like in Rami, where you're sitting there going, oh, my God.

• 38:06Speaker 01

  Dude, what are you?

• 38:07Sam Fragoso?

  Will he just stop talking?

• 38:12Sam Fragoso?

  Okay, but hold on. We're talking about the comedy side of this show.

• 38:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:17Sam Fragoso?

  But so much of the writing and the dialogue around Rami is about representation, what this show means in this moment and what it tells us about X people, which I've always found to be sort of reductive and not terribly interesting.

• 38:37Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 38:37Sam Fragoso?

  So I want to ask about something more specific, which is this quote you have. You said, "My work is not about showing that we're all the same. It's actually about highlighting the differences because we're not all the same. But we're all trying in a similar way and we're all feeling in a similar way regardless of those differences."

• 38:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, it's, yeah, I stand by it even more so because I think the level of specificity that we aim for is not with the intention of creating a flag to represent. It's just the thing that me and the people who make the show want to do with this specific set of characters, and it's not really meant to be wholly representative of almost anyone, even if you get really subsecty, you know what I mean? I've always felt like the show has a right to exist outside of that framing because then it allows it to be something that is an exploration in its own tone and its own thing and not have to fit into, "Hey Muslims, we've got a show for you."

• 39:41Speaker 01

  Because that puts us in an impossible position that is also an inaccurate one. And so, yeah, I'm not interested in saying we're all the same. Like, I'm more in favor of saying, "No, no, we're different, but we have the same debts, we have the same stresses, we have the same desires," even though the way we approach them, or the tools we have, or the belief systems we have, look different, you know? And so, it's like, yes, on a level here, I'm saying something has been done to say that people who live in the Middle East are not human, you know? So, on a level, that has been done through a lot of the media that's happened over the last 30 years. There's been a dehumanization.

• 40:22Speaker 01

  So, in terms of where Rami falls into the realm of representation, it probably mainly checks the box of, "If you thought we weren't human beings, we are." But if I'm trying to tell you anything other than that, it's going to fall short. I'm not trying to say this is what Muslims are like all over. I'm not trying to say that I'm just like you. I'm not trying to say whatever, but I'm trying to say the process of surviving and the process of living and being, all of that is really similar. And so, the monoculture of just us, we're all the same, it's well-intentioned, but it really falls short. And then, sometimes, the goal of what that does, that's where I see.

• 41:06Speaker 01

  The effects of colonialism still happening in, you know, those countries in the Middle East where, you know, you go into a restaurant and they only have a menu in English. If you don't read English, don't even be here. These are the kinds of things we've been kind of led to believe in our own culture because the storytelling and the narrative of what American culture is is so strong. And I'm not saying it's all bad. I mean, I love that I grew up here and part of loving growing up here is getting to talk about all the baggage that comes with that and how that influences everyone everywhere. And what's fun about making these shows and, you know, now we're, you know, we're making more shows and we're doing other things that I've been able to do with my production company as it's grown out of making Rami and making other things is like, we just get to show so many different slices of that.

• 41:51Speaker 01

  And I think representation is not one show. It's like 30, you know? It's movies. It's a lot of artists getting to try and getting to fail and getting to mess up and getting to be imperfect and getting to succeed. That is more so what I think that means as opposed to, you know, anything one season of television or even three could do.

• 42:11Sam Fragoso?

  That basically squares away the macro conversation. As we leave, I want to bring it back to you as a person. Because episode two, what happens in the last 10, 15 minutes involves you trying to get past the border, having your coat stolen, inside the coat was your passport, these preteens took it in part because you stole their bike. And you have this quote, you said, "I think what happens with this kid," the kid who stole your coat, "boomerangs for Rami and becomes this ever-present haunting of what happened and is, for me, very symbolic of the manifestation of guilt that I just feel

• 42:55Sam Fragoso?

  as a person all the time." I guess I want to sit with that because at thirty-two,

• 43:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:02Sam Fragoso?

  having just finished Ramadan and where you've been thinking about where you stand and where you are and where you want to go, that guilt that you feel, are you still working through that? Is that still fueling a lot of the work and who you are in this moment?

• 43:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think about the cost of living all the time, just what it costs for us to have everything we want all the time, right? There are people in the margins of this country that are deeply suffering in ways that people in other parts of the world aren't. Then we've lived between New York and LA where you can walk into a supermarket and get whatever you want all the time. You walk into a clothing store and get whatever you want all the time. I'm willing to bet a lot of the people who listen to Talk Easy are able to afford some of those things. And that comes at a cost that's way beyond that. You know, when I look at the way that episode ends, haunts him the whole season because this character for sure is talking about his American passport and he's being very ignorant in how he's doing it.

• 44:03Speaker 01

  And then in order to fight for his privilege, someone in that episode directly suffers and they continue to. And he kind of goes off and he's trying to live his own life and he's spiraling in this way and then realizing, oh man, you know, and then it kind of comes to a moment at the end of the season where he tries to do something towards that debt, even if it's, you know, successful or not, isn't even the point, is he addresses it? And, you know, I think there were a lot of people who saw only that episode and didn't finish the season and were really upset by it, you know, they're really upset by what happened. I think part of that too, even going back to the representation conversation, when there's so little that even touches something like Palestine, I understand those sensitivities and, you know, it's our stab, it's our try

• 44:48Speaker 01

  and it's something that we made with like a Palestinian crew and Palestinian director who really, they understood the vision for the whole season because we're asking people to watch ten episodes, not just the first two. We're asking people to be invested in what this means for a character. And so what it was trying to get at for me is that feeling of sometimes merely the way That you're living has a cost that you never have to look at. And if that is inspiring for me to like, figure out anything I could do in my own, at times, very minimal position in the scheme of the world, or if at any times I have windows or shots to talk about things in a bigger way, then I can't feel good about that because I need to continue to try and be at least somewhat part of making that a little bit better.

• 45:33Speaker 01

  And it's funny, you guys say it out loud and yeah, you sound, it sounds crazy, or it sounds just incredibly, I don't know, I don't know what it sounds like, but.

• 45:42Sam Fragoso?

  It sounds like you listen to what your uncle told you as a kid. He said, "It's the human's job to give back more than what they take."

• 45:54Speaker 01

  That's one of his good quotes. That's a great quote. I think about that a lot.

• 45:58Sam Fragoso?

  It's funny, we keep circling around this idea of what it means to have a voice in this moment, while not being overly delusional about its power. But I do want to know if you think your work, in some ways, is in line with the generations that came before you? Because it seems to me that it feels like an amalgamation of the work your family has done, which includes your grandfather, who was an interpreter for the Arab League and the United Nations, then your father, as we mentioned, last week's guests, the travel agent in Cairo who would show Americans the pyramids.

• 46:42Sam Fragoso?

  And so when thinking about being an actor, a writer, director, the creator of this production company, Cairo Cowboy, do you feel like your work is a kind of amalgamation of both interpreter and travel guide?

• 47:00Speaker 01

  Wow, that's beautiful.

• 47:02Sam Fragoso?

  The funniest answer would just be like, no.

• 47:03Speaker 01

  You know, it's a soft no, but no, it's beautiful to hear it in that context. I think for me, I really respect people's time. You know, you only have a half an hour to watch them. You know, you have such a busy life. When you watch anything that I say, I'm not in a position to give you hard facts about anything. It's truly, it's just comedy, you know? But what I hope I'm able to do is just bring people closer to some of their own human questions. So a lot of what I'm doing and anything I'm doing is openly offering and workshopping the stuff that is going on in my head or in my heart or that I wonder about. I'm open to do that in as naked of a way as I know how to.

• 47:45Speaker 01

  And the hope is, maybe that inspires a conversation you weren't gonna have with someone in your family. And I think especially growing up in a few different communities, not even just, you know, the Arab or Muslim community, but a few different communities where it was hard to talk about certain vulnerable things. My hope is that, you know, me asking my questions, me doing my workshopping, me finding the funny patterns and me also failing sometimes in how I do that and other times succeeding in how I do that is an offering that helps digest some things that are not digestible. Then I feel in my own little corner of what we're all kinda chipping in to try to do, I'm doing something, you know?

• 48:28Sam Fragoso?

  Well, then, my last question here. If we ever like, listen back to this or do this again.

• 48:32Speaker 01

  Oh, I'll be back.

• 48:33Sam Fragoso?

  Okay. So when we do this again.

• 48:36Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 48:36Sam Fragoso?

  Let's have this as a time capsule for us. At 32, recently married.

• 48:41Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 48:42Sam Fragoso?

  What are those questions that you're asking yourself at this moment? We don't have to have the answers for them. What are those that you wanna put on record?

• 48:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, that I wanna put on record is just, we're really siloed right now. I think a lot of people are really siloed into their experience, into their phone, into the thing they're doing. What I've been thinking a lot about is what is community gonna look like? And how do we bring back being connected in as many real life ways as possible? And a lot of what I've been thinking about right now is how do these stupid jokes? And how do these shows, you know, where we're just giving, again, workshopping, giving our best stab and like trying to get at that, you know, ethereal it? What does that turn into just in terms of people getting to feel less lonely?

• 49:35Speaker 01

  But a lot of what I've been thinking about is just, yeah, well, what does that actually mean off screen? What does that actually mean beyond asking for people's attention? What happens once you have it? And where does that go? I don't think I'm the person to lead anyone once I have their attention, but it's more like, yeah, how do you, what does it look like to just turn that into a way where people just get to genuinely feel closer together in real life? And I think, you know, we've been talking a lot about, I'm sure you've been talking about in your circles, a lot about AI and how what we're gonna see over the next few years is just gonna be so rapid. And I think that need for real life togetherness is gonna be at an all time high. And so I've just been trying to figure out, you know, what do I need on a personal level?

• 50:20Speaker 01

  But that's a big question.

• 50:21Sam Fragoso?

  You still wanna make the show?

• 50:23Speaker 01

  There's a lot I wanna make. When we finished the first season, I realized what it took to make a season of television. And I remember thinking, I would love to do this for three or four seasons and then put it down for a bit and live some life. There's nothing about the story that says you can't take off for a while and then come back and say, you know, here's where this is at. So I think a lot of the decisions I'm making right now is, yeah, when does that hiatus come? Is it now or are we gonna do one more? It's probably now.

• 50:52Sam Fragoso?

  Well, look, whenever you put it down, I'll make a promise that I'll still be here on the other side of it, if it's any consolation. And in terms of stupid jokes, boy, we have made so many of them. I don't know if they've helped make meaning out of this conversation, I hope.

• 51:11Speaker 01

  But I think in the time here, we've definitely caught Wachovia.

• 51:15Sam Fragoso?

  God.

• 51:21Speaker 01

  I think it's a great ending.

• 51:22Sam Fragoso?

  Ramy Youssef, a pleasure.

• 51:24Speaker 01

  So fun. That sounds great.

• 52:08Speaker 04

  History gets written, then rewritten, sometimes by scholars correcting the record, sometimes by committees deciding what a generation of kids will and won't learn. The version that makes it into the textbook isn't always the only story. It's the one that won out. That's the kind of thing Ground News was built for. It shows you how outlets across the spectrum tell the same story, side by side, so you can spot the shading for yourself. Ground News gives each outlet a factuality rating, so you know how much weight to give the source, and shows you who owns it, so you know what's behind it. The Nobel Peace Center called it "an excellent way to stay informed, avoid echo chambers,

• 52:52Speaker 04

  and expand your worldview." So go to groundnews.com/rz, that's G-R-O-U-N-D-N-E-W-S.com/rz, for 40% off unlimited access vantage plan. Get it yourself, or gift it to someone who'd rather know than not. Use my link, groundnews.com/rz, so you get the discount and they know I sent you. If you're a fan of learning all sides of history, then Ground News is for you. One more time, groundnews.com/rz.

• 53:29Speaker 05

  I'm Dan Heath. On What It's Like to Be, I interview people about their jobs. Here's a married couple that drives a long haul truck together.

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  We backed up and they loaded fresh dead rats.

• 53:40Speaker 05

  I mean, how many rats would you guess were back there?

• 53:43Speaker 06

  There were 32,000 pounds of them.

• 53:45Speaker 05

  32,000 pounds of frozen dead rats.

• 53:49Speaker 06

  As I said. Correct.

• 53:51Speaker 05

  Find out what it's like to be a long haul trucker, a couples therapist, or an FBI agent, all on the podcast What It's Like to Be.