Actor Ramy Youssef was in 5th grade and living in New Jersey when the Twin Towers fell. His new Amazon Prime animated show, #1 Happy Family USA, draws on the experiences of his own Egyptian American family navigating Islamophobia after Sept. 11. Conan O'Brien was the recipient of this year's Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. David Bianculli reviews the Netflix special of the ceremony.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
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Your support means so much to us, now more than ever. You help make NPR shows freely available to everyone. We're proud to do this work for you and with you. Okay, let's start the show. This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. My guest Rami Youssef started as a stand-up comic.
Then he created and starred in the semi-autobiographical comedy-drama series called Rami, about a 20-something Egyptian-American Muslim trying to make sense of how his life, including his sex life, fit with his commitment to Islam. The series won a Peabody Award, and he won a Golden Globe for his performance.
Youssef co-created the comedy-drama series Mo, starring his friend Mo Amr as an undocumented Palestinian-American. Last year, Youssef hosted Saturday Night Live and had an HBO comedy special called More Feelings. His acting career is taking off. He stars with Steve Carell and Jason Schwartzman in the new HBO movie Mountainhead, which debuts May 31.
It was written and directed by Jesse Armstrong, the creator of HBO's Succession. In 2023, Youssef co-starred in the film Poor Things, which won a Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy, and was nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture. Rami Youssef has a new animated series set just before and after 9-11. It's about an extended family of Egyptian-Americans in New Jersey.
The parents and grandparents are immigrants. The children were born in America. Each of them is trying to figure out how to respond to the Islamophobia that's resulted from the terrorist attack on 9-11. Rami Youssef was 11 years old and in fifth grade on 9-11. That's about the same age as the boy in the series. The series is called Number One Happy Family USA, and that's streaming on Amazon Prime.
In the father's attempt to prevent people from noticing they're an immigrant family and Muslim, he does his best to blend in by doing his best to construct the image of a happy, average American family. But because he doesn't quite understand American culture, just about everything he does to fit in is wrong, which only makes him stand out even more. The mother wants to stand up and defend Islam.
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