Bassem Youssef
speaker
1,048 appearances
3 recordings
3 series
first heard Apr 2024
last heard 5 Jun
Bassem Youssef’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.
Appearances
So it had to be something kind of like with a flavor. So I read the role as if as a mixture of Trump and Mubarak. I did this mix and like, you know, I had like the kind of, but also like kind of like the essence of Trump into it. I went to the airport. It's like an hour. It's like James Gunn saw it. He loves it. What? I never had an audition that fast. I mean, I had a few roles, but not that fast.
Not like that. And then it's like, well, the strike starts like tomorrow and we need to be on the phone. But after the strike, we cannot talk. The SAG after strike, like where the writers and the actors strike. So like, well, I'm going to be on a plane right now. It's like, wait, once you land, you can have a Zoom call with James Gunn. I have a call with James Gunn. He's, I am a huge fan of him.
The guy took like something like Guardian of the Galaxy, nobody knew about it, made amazing trilogy. And he is like a really cool guy. I like what he did. And it was like really nice. And he started to talk to me about the movie. And you know, like I talked to people before casting them. So I know that everybody's on set, have a good chemistry. It was amazing.
So in your mind, if you're an actor, what does that mean? You got the part. And he told me, you got the part. Month goes by, strike goes by, October 7th happens, I do Piers Morgan, one and two, and then I go to my Australian tour. My manager called me, asked him, the circle's over. It's like, you don't have the part anymore. I was sad, very sad, but for three days.
And so like, I need to stand up for it, khalas. I'm actually doing very well, alhamdulillah. And then, when I went to Chris Como, I, after I finished the show, he told me, did you lose any opportunities? And that was off record after, after the show was like, we concluded. And I said, I talked about Superman and I found myself when I was talking, I was angry. I was bitter. And I went home.
It's like, why was I angry? Why was I bitter? It wasn't meant to be, and I'm living a good life now. I don't need to. So when I was asked again the next day in two different interviews, the BBC and another one was alone with my friend, Dina Abedallah, I said the story in a different way. I said, I don't have any anger.
As a matter of fact, maybe if I was Warner Brothers, I didn't talk about James Gunn, I thought it was the studio. If I was Warner Brothers and I'm a Muslim, I wouldn't have like a Zionist or a pro-Israeli in my movie. But I want to tell them that like when I criticize Israel, I am not a threat to you as a Jew. And we can actually have more in common. That was more of a kind of empathic.
So when I said that, the internet went crazy. And you know, James Gunn have haters because you know the Snyder verse and all of the, it's a word that I don't understand. And James Gunn like had all of these attacks on him. And I was pissed of how it was handled. I wasn't angry at James Gunn, but I thought it was. So my publicist, I'm just like, Bassem, stay calm, don't speak.
It's better to not talk about it. I said, okay. So there's nothing wrong about me, but I see the heat is rising against James Gunn. And that is a guy that I had a personal connection with, even through Zoom. And I didn't like what was happening.
And then he called me and he explained to me, I said, Bassem, you know, I actually use, like have camera tests before people before finally, I didn't know that. And then we changed the script and it was the strike, so I didn't call. And also I thought to myself, I'm small, I'm a small actor. I'm not that important for him to call me to say we're gonna change the script.
So I still think that like the timing sucks and everything. But then I went and I did a video explaining exactly what I'm telling you because I didn't want to be famous for the wrong reasons. Because that would be unfair. Because that was, already people were, and I was having like interviews. Can you come about this? Like guys, that's it, I'm not gonna talk about it because this is a non-issue.
And I didn't, and when I talked to James on the phone, I felt how sincere he was. So I didn't want someone to, because of me, will have that kind of attack because I know what it means to be on the other side of that kind of attack. It's terrible. And it ruins your life and it ruins your day. And nobody deserves to be doing that.
And I don't want to be the reason for someone else to go through that pain.
I don't want to be.
I'm having a wonderful, loyal audience that's coming to me. Why would I be angry about the role of Superman? Yes, it's great to be in a superhero movie, but so what?
It's greed. It's greed. They want more attention. They want to be more into the thing. They want more and more. And there is so much to go around to be enough for all of us. But it is greed. It is ego, ego, ego, ego. I need to be in the center. I need to be victimized. I need to be people feel sorry for me and love me. And it is not the right way. It is not because it is fake. It is fake.
It is made up. And I did not victimize myself when I left for Egypt. I mean, in the time that I was, now I speak about it now. But in that dark times, I was detained in airports. I didn't have my American passport yet. I was still traveling with my Egyptian parents. And I was detained in an Arab airport. I was going to be delivered to the Egyptians. I had shows when I was still starting.
I had hecklers being sent to me by the Egyptian embassy and Egyptian council in New York and in London to curse me and to take videos of that and then send it to state-run media in Egypt. And I didn't speak about that because I felt that like, if I speak about that, I feel about like what was going on to me, I would be victimizing myself.
It's like, if I'm gonna be good, I'm gonna be good because of what I do, not because of what people's perception of what I'm going through.
Yeah. And then you cannot leave that habit. You can only exist and thrive if people feel sorry for you.
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