All right.

So the character, Ramy Youssef.

Who is he?

Oh, man.

Well, the character on the show is Ramy Hasan.

And he's different from Ramy Youssef.

Yeah, he does.

Ramy Youssef.

Ramy Youssef vs Ramy Hasan.

Yes.

That last name change makes everything fix everything for everything's fictional.

And everybody on set refers to you as Rami.

Rami around me.

Rami, you're still thinking.

No, no, no.

I'm Rami Hasan now.

I'm the character now, and none of those things are real.

So that's okay.

I mean, is it?

That is the premise.

The interest of the show.

That he happens to be an Arab Muslim.

Is it a coming of age story when you're thinking about how to kind of truncate this idea and explain to people what he used to say?

It's a little bit of both.

I think the thing that was always really interesting to me was I had never seen someone who is from my generation in openly dealing with faith in a way that felt honest.

I was really fascinated by the concept that there's what you believe and then what you actually do.

And there's kind of this space in the middle where you're trying to navigate it.

Most of the stuff about faith is kind of like, Oh, well, I'm leaving it behind.

It's outdated.

My culture, my religion.

I don't need it.

I need to upgrade.

And I never really related to that.

That's not how my brain works.

It's not what I believe.

I've always been like, No, no, I believe in my faith.

But I also am kind of pulled by my desires, by my ego, by, you know, whatever anyone can be pulled by to not be their higher self.

Right.

Whether it's the faith you believe in or the idea you have who you should be.

And so what does it look like to have a character in a really human way dealing with that in the context of an Arab Muslim family?

And I think seeing someone deal with that, honestly, is probably the most humanizing thing you could do for a group of people that have never had the human treatment.

Yeah.

So there's a clip early on that helps establish that this is with you and your mom in a car and you're starting to talk about dating and marriage a little bit.

Let's take a look Rami, do you want to stay alone forever?

Mom, you can't just walk up to a Muslim girl and, like, start spitting game or something.

What am I supposed to say?

Like, Hey, can I get your father's number?

Yes.

Why not?

Did that happen to you in your life?

Ever of the my parents of my parents have been pretty relaxed.

About pushing it, which is a that's a Ramy Hassan difference.

Yeah.

I think his his family on the show looks a little bit more like some of the Arab families that I grew up around.

Yeah, less so.

Exactly.

My family.

So this this is kind of informed by conversations 100 times with your friends and family.

Yeah.

And looking at the community and and it's also kind of informs, you know, what is I mean, even though I haven't had that conversation with my mom, the conversation I have had with myself is, you know, who am I going to end up with?

What does the next generation look like?

If I do believe in my faith and if I am trying to preserve my culture.

Do I want to make sure I'm marrying someone who speaks the same language as me?

Do I want to have a family that practices the same faith?

Do I want to switch it up?

These are all questions that you don't think you have to answer until all of a sudden you have to right now and watching a character deal with that and realize that he needs to be a leader, even whether it's within a community or just his own family, he's got to grow into himself.

These are kind of sort of textured and nuanced insights into people that right now it seems that we lack when when we are watching portrayals of Muslims broadly in Hollywood on television.

Right.

We we seem to have the kind of generic trope of terrorist on the one hand.

And then we're slowly easing into kind of a very tame and perhaps safe version of a Muslim that we can see.

And you're kind of not in either of those buckets.

You're sort of trying something new.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think we're rooting it in something that I, again, find to be more real.

It's not real to all Muslim experiences.

I mean, most Muslims in America aren't Arab.

They're black or South-Asian.

And so this was, for me, an attempt to be very specific.

I think most of the time when we see these portrayals, they feel more like apologies than representations.

They're more, hey, look, we can be safe or we can be just like you.

And we kind of discarded that dialog and more so through a character in who's really trying to figure out his own agenda.

And it doesn't really matter what the external things are.

There's an entire episode kind of around nine 11 or at least nine 11 is one of the events in that episode.

Is that kind of a demarcation line for most Muslim-Americans or maybe even Muslims around the world of pre nine 11 era in a post-9-11 era?

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, whether you want it to or not, I mean, on one level it's a demarcation for all Americans.

It's just so horrifying.

And it was something that I think was so performative.

We watched and for people who lived close to New York, not only felt with the television performance of it, but the real life impact where you just know people so that in an in and of itself is a demarcation.

And then you add the layer of in the story we explore being a child who when a child is 12 or 13, that in and of itself is a demarcation where it's like, oh man, I am now growing into what is my adulthood, my sexuality, puberty, all of these things.

And then the added layer of, oh, is the face that I have is the sound of my name responsible for the worst thing I've seen.

And so really, that episode is all those things colliding.

It's the overall human level.

It's the being a kid transitioning into a teenager, and then it's this level of our culture and our faith being pinned as the reasons for it and and how that shifts an entire community.

What do you remember from your real life?

I know you wrote an episode, and I don't know how much of it is exactly what happened to you, but what do you remember around that day and then the weeks surrounding it and kind of teaching yourself about maybe how America has changed?

I remember most actually just the self-doubt.

You know, I remember just seeing people who look and are linked to your heritage and your belief.

And when you are a kid who is afraid and you are growing up in a place that you are not part of the majority culture, you can turn on yourself.

And to me, that is the conversation that's always been missed for me is how it affects kids, but also the way that we eventually stereotype ourselves.

So things happen and we distance ourselves from ourselves, from our families, from our faiths.

And so that for me, I remember kind of planting the seeds and then me later kind of pushing against that narrative and stepping towards embracing it and realizing that those things weren't true, but it was such a process.

And so that episode really just captures that initial shock that initial fear from a different perspective.

You mentioned this earlier, but there's a lot of talk about faith, and that's actually something we just don't actually see, whether it was about Islam or about Christianity.

Right now in Hollywood today.

And this was very intentional on your part that there's a strong kind of religious Through-line.

Yeah, it's not just your questioning, but it's almost like a character in the in all the episodes.

Yeah.

I think the presence of spirituality in God as a character throughout the episodes, and I think that we wanted to make it specifically Muslim.

You see me praying in that manner.

You see me at the mosque.

But it's also kind of removed from Islam.

And it really it's, it's talking about spirituality, which I think also gets missed out in the conversation.

So much of it is about, well, I'm Muslim and I'm this type of Muslim or I'm Christian, I'm Jewish.

We kind of talk about religions, but we don't talk about religion or we talk about the rules and we talk about the negatives, but we don't even talk about what the goal is It would almost be like talking about basketball and only talking about fouls and technical fouls and the way why aren't we even why are we talking about like slam dunks?

And now it's like there's all this cool stuff about the sport that we don't even get to, right?

You know, we're we're just focusing on the infractions.

And so this steps out of, you know, only focusing on that and looks at someone striving for that bigger picture.

And there's also it also lends itself to some very funny comedic moments.

There's a clip from a mask that I want to take a look at now from what you're wearing, bro.

What is this?

I mean, seriously behind Gadhafi?

It's got to be a bro.

I mean, what's it going to be?

I love getting a B is nobody to talk about.

They're going to be talking about you in this game.

Libya is a little bit short.

It's it all was like a Muslim escort for a man.

I mean, it's really too much.

Why are you wearing a tracksuit looks dope.

Don't be jealous.

Okay?

Run DMC, baby.

Run DMC all day.

You know, like a Russian basketball coach.

They might try.

I think I look good.

You look good.

Yeah.

For the six year old girl in a row in this whole meeting, it's very frustrating.

But meeting the always of all three in the lines filling the gap took them on a low hook, but.

Oh, my, Alhamdulillah hit a billion.

I mean, under armor and Iraqi army medic.

Yo, Mahdi.

I mean, it might now go down in history as the first visualization of a joke that happened in a mosque.

Because we've only ever seen people very, you know, religiously.

This moment they're having this thing.

I never thought about it.

Yeah.

I mean, I've never seen an even when you look at, like, the portrayals of churches, it's very austere and people are in pain.

And I mean, reframing a mosque is such a goal of the show.

And I didn't even realize how important it was until we made the pilot.

So when we first made the pilot, it didn't open up the way it does now.

Right now, it opens up with the scene we looked at earlier.

My mom and I in the car used to open just at the mosque.

And when it did, you know, they take these new shows before they make the rest of the season.

They throw them to test audiences and say, hey, what do you think of this?

And so test audiences watching it for the first 10 minutes because we started at the mosque speaking in Arabic.

They saw the show was most like a drama, a foreign documentary of homeland.

So they thought the show with me in a mosque was about terrorists.

And it took them 10 minutes until I was on a date with a girl named Chloe to realize, oh, no, no, this this could be a comedy, you know?

I mean, it took that long because they saw a mosque, they heard the call to prayer, and almost universally the testing put it in the category of a drama and a terrorist drama.

And the fact that this place that can be such a place of refuge and we see in the show this is a place where people go to solve their problems, a place where people go to commune with each other and to celebrate and and to, like worship together is only framed in one other way, because we've only ever seen someone say Allahu Akbar and then a detonator go off, you know?

I mean, and so so the reframing of that and to even have a joke like that and even have interactions like that are a huge goal of the show.

And so many people who've seen it are like, I've never even seen the inside of a mosque, you know?

And the fact that they get to see it this way is really exciting to me.

One of my favorite episodes in it was around the mother's character who a fantastic actress.

I mean, she pulled that off brilliantly.

And then there's another one that you have around the sister and you discuss kind of, you know, their sexiness, what's allowed culturally, their roles.

And then also just at a very core level, the kind of double standard that exists for women in these cultures or even in society in general.

Let's take a look at a clip for the kiss I came from.

Where are you going?

I'm going out of it, Habib.

Yeah, I got to go, though, at least an hour with you.

Okay.

Going to be hungry later.

That was filled with sugar.

You know, no way.

Yeah, it's not true.

It's only from me.

It was funny.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The keys are in my purse near the lower okay.

I'm going to Father's tonight.

Again, dinner.

This is the second time this week I'm 25 years old.

Why is there a limit?

Does anyone even care where Romy goes?

You guys never ask him where he is.

He just told me he's going out.

That's what I just said.

He literally gave you no information.

Yeah.

I'm going to love you, my love you, habibi.

What time you coming back?

No, no, no.

Okay, I'm leaving here.

You know, just don't be late.

Yeah, Mom, I had to please text me when you get there, okay?

Spanish way.

Spanish way, please.

Soft on the driving.

Careful with the brakes.

Okay, Mom, you ever get pushback from the Muslim community at large?

You know, because as an Indian, if you try to go do stories about in India, like, oh, why do you want to show the poverty?

Why are you looking at the bad stuff?

Why aren't you painting us in a better light?

Yeah, I mean, it's it's it's difficult in general to even, say, the Muslim community, right?

Because, again, there's so many.

So many different.

Yeah.

So we're going at it from so many different points.

So many different points of view.

I would say Arab Muslims, there's been a little bit of that of why are you showing us like this?

But I would say there's also been a resounding feeling that I felt from from that community in particular of Ahmed, this is us and being really excited and in other Muslim communities feeling well, I don't this has nothing to do with me and this isn't my story.

And so there's that range, but there is kind of this thing of why are you showing those things and why are you displaying them?

And I think that, again, that's kind of the job of a show like this.

I also read that you've really worked hard on trying to whether it's the staffing of the writers room, whether it's the casting, trying to find people that are appropriate to the part who understand what it is that they're writing in the first place.

Yeah, it's really important to inform those conversations in a really good way.

And we've done it by hiring writers, by hiring consultants, by making sure the actors we employ are people who could maybe be close to the experience.

But certainly when we're dealing with stuff that has actual Arabic for an Arab role, someone who can speak it.

One of the most interesting characters that I see in the in the series is Steve Wey, who is in real life, one of your best friends and is the best friend of this character.

Let's take a look at a clip this is my phone.

Tinder is awesome, dude.

Why?

What is the vibe?

No on her.

Just want to know, are all the girls in headscarves do not just she's not my wife.

You're racist.

How is that racist?

Headscarves, not a race.

It's something that people wear.

I love it.

They're all covered their head to their tail.

I don't know.

That mystery is sexy.

That's disgusting.

Have you ever dated a Muslim girl?

No, I haven't.

And that's.

That's why I'm doing this.

I'm trying to meet someone, you know, different because you're racist.

How is that racist?

Student Islam's not a race.

It's.

It's something you believe in.

It's just one of these relationships.

Actually, it makes you realize that we don't see people like Steve on TV.

No.

Hardly ever.

No, you don't.

I mean, you it's really hard to pin actual disabled actors playing disabled roles.

I mean, you should hear Steve rant about Drake on Degrassi.

He'll he'll give you a give you a great ten minute speech about it.

But yeah, it's really obviously something that, again, the accuracy of putting people who are actually the saying when you do it on screen.

And for me, this is a real life relationship with Steve, not the things that happen in this show.

Right.

But you know, he's been a friend of mine for so long and in many ways our differences in many you know, obviously there are different differences, but being different together has been a huge part of our relationship.

And so showing that on the on this show when I had this opportunity to have this show was really important to me because he's one of the greatest comedians that I know.

And I see all comedy.

I'm involved with it.

But he doesn't get an opportunity to be seen just because of really practical things.

And if you try to go to a comedy club in New York, I mean, if you're a patron, you can barely get in, you know, like a walking patron with you.

I mean, it's these tiny little clubs and and they're amazing.

But someone like him doesn't get there, doesn't get to do it.

And so how can we give him a platform and how can we get in his story?

Speaking of standup, when's your HBO special drop?

On June 29th.

And how long did that take to put together?

It's a collection of standup that I've been doing for the last seven or eight years.

I mean, some jokes are from that first year and then some jokes are from two weeks before I shot it.

And it really is a companion piece to the show.

I think a lot of it is a long, kind of a long form talking explanation of certain bits and certain things.

And now it's really personal and it also can be a little bit topical.

So it covers a couple of things from this year, but also really spans into stuff that I think if you've seen the show or if you haven't will integrate, you know, pretty fully.

I'm a use of congratulations.

I think so.

And looking forward to season two.

Thanks for joining us and thanks for thanks for watching.