The creator and comedian discusses his penchant for self-reflection, how politics fits into his work and why he’s not interested in representing anyone but himself.Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Chapter 1: Who is Ramy Youssef and what new projects is he working on?
Hey.
Hey.
How are you?
I'm really excited to sit down with you.
Thank you for having me.
You are in Utah right now, right?
Yes.
And you're filming a movie and it's directed by Jesse Armstrong, the Jesse Armstrong, who created Succession, one of my favorite shows. Correct me if I'm wrong. It's about a group of billionaire friends who get together during the financial crisis.
It's not exactly the financial crisis, but it's a financial crisis.
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Chapter 2: What is 'Number One Happy Family USA' about and why now?
a period of time that I don't think has escaped us in any way, unfortunately. And to get to do it in a style that is somewhat, you know, familiar in terms of trotting on political things that can feel a little difficult and undercuts them, right, and doesn't make them feel so volatile. To get to give this kind of family that treatment, is really exciting.
And to go into this and at this through a totally unexpected and very silly lens. And maybe that's where that hope feeling comes from because it's so unfiltered and it's so wild. And it's one of the craziest things I've gotten to be a part of and one of the most inappropriate things I've gotten to be a part of. Yet, there's a lot of love and care, I think, for the subjects involved, right?
Because it's meant to be something that finds the heart in the midst of kind of all the stuff.
I tell you what resonated for me as someone who also comes from an immigrant family, came to this country, you know, it speaks to something wider than the Muslim American experience because the dad in the show is sort of desperately trying to prove his loyalty to America. And it keeps literally in some cases blowing up in his face. Yeah.
And it's the theme I see in a lot of your work, the idea that a big part of the immigrant experience is trying to figure out what it means to be American. And I feel like every generation grapples with that differently. And I'm wondering if you saw that in your own family.
You know, I think that, you know, I'm really lucky that I grew up with, you know, strong parents who did have a sense of self. And it was almost because they did have a sense of self. I was able to see this piece of it that felt important. kind of scared and desperate, right? And I don't think that was the defining experience.
It's almost because it wasn't, I'm able to kind of look at it from the side and go, oh, wow, it's really interesting how pervasive that is in my community. I see it come up in my family. I see it come up mainly in myself. And I'm usually interested in making self-reflective work, you know, because it's the only thing I can speak for.
You know, making work about other people or joking about other people has never really been funny to me because it's like, I don't even know who you are, really. Like, I know who you present. And I know who I present and I know the gap, those gaps.
And I think this show, you know, one of my favorite things about wanting to do an animated thing is, you know, I initially had this idea that it would be amazing to see an animated family that looked different when they were inside the house and when they were outside of the house, which I think is just. universally human. I mean, like yourself being like, oh, reminds me of my immigrant family.
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Chapter 3: How does Ramy Youssef explore the immigrant experience in his work?
And I think, you know, putting the representation warning for me was a really cathartic thing of just being like, listen, I, this is not funny.
speaking in mass at all i'm not like i know you guys didn't elect me and there's no like i'm just this is this is stuff that you know makes me laugh in a way of of expression that a lot of people you know that i worked with all really dug um but putting that card there uh you know was very cathartic for me, almost to just be like, hey, I agree with you.
You know, I don't think this is not a slice of what it's like for everybody, but it is a slice of what it's like for some people. And it is the sense of humor that it is for some people. And I think part of the conversation that I'm trying to crack open a little bit here is like,
we have really great writers in my rooms and who bring amazing perspectives to the female characters, you know, on any of the shows that I've worked on. But it's also like, we haven't had media that's being fully driven by a female voice. That's going to crack open a whole other slice of this.
We haven't had media that, you know, happens mainly in, let's say the Gulf or mainly in the Middle East that cracks through into kind of like the Hollywood point of view in a meaningful way. And, And so I think those things are all going to continue to kind of foster a global conversation, you know.
And so part of the representation card is like, I'm really aware of how small the global conversation is when it is radiating from New Jersey.
You've talked a lot about specificity in your work, and it made me wonder about, because you're clearly saying, I do not speak for the Muslim American community, certainly not the global Muslim community, which I totally get, but is there something particularly Egyptian about your work that you feel people haven't quite picked up on? Egyptian American?
I mean, because the Cuban American experience, of which I am, is very different than the Mexican American experience.
You know what? I think it is pretty Egyptian. And I think that 100%. And actually, I don't think any of our representation warnings said that it doesn't represent Egyptians. So yeah, it probably does represent Egyptians. It's probably, there's a certain Egyptian sarcasm, dark humor that is all over my family that, you know, everything's Everything said through the lens of a joke.
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Chapter 4: Why is Ramy cautious about representation in his comedy?
No. It's more nerve-wracking to not say something. It's more nerve-wracking to try to shield yourself from whatever criticism is going to come. And plenty of it has come. But I get more tense if I'm sitting quietly trying to stay safe. And what I said is... Completely inoffensive.
That's the other thing is like people are sensitive about it or people might say, well, why didn't you say this or why didn't you do that? But on the whole, there's nothing controversial about any of it.
Well, to say free Palestine on live national television wasn't common. No, no, it's not common.
No.
Yeah. And talking about the hostages at the same time does anger some on the far left. I mean, one of the directors of the Oscar winning doc, No Other Land, recently got a lot of blowback for something similar. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, look, there are false equivalencies in terms of power. That's what people are talking about. They're talking about dynamics of power. And so when you look at Gaza, you're talking about a place where their water and electricity are controlled. So even the framing of the You know, I'm like, all right, whatever, call it whatever you want to call it.
It's like it's yes, there are two sides who are fighting, but there there's a massive power imbalance. And that is just unequivocally true. And so and even me saying.
How would you frame it? What would be the how would you describe it?
I mean, I just said it's literally literal power. Like they could literally turn off the electricity. They could turn off the water. They can turn off what aid is getting in. So so it's like, you know, it's like being in a wrestling match with someone where you're controlling the other guy's calories and how much water he gets.
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Chapter 5: What Egyptian influences shape Ramy's humor?
Hey, are you all right? I heard you were not feeling well.
There was a series of unfortunate events that ended up with me and my sister being operated on by the same surgeon. Whoa. Yeah, it was totally bizarre.
Oh my God, I'm so sorry. It's totally fine. I'm hoping it was elective surgery that was cosmetic that you both wanted.
Yeah, wouldn't that be lovely? We got matching nose jobs. So anyway... It was a lot.
Well, I'm glad you're better.
All right. I was thinking about you this week when I saw all the turmoil in the markets and I was wondering what it was like to have life imitate art because you're filming this story about billionaires in a crisis and we are seeing billionaires in a crisis IRL. I mean, does it help the performance? Were you talking about it? Like, were there any rewrites in real time?
What does that what does that do?
You're kind of like right on the money because it's like I think that without giving away too much, there's like this video tech on our on our shoot, Andre, who actually loads our phones. So they feel like real phones with real headlines. And I've been having this experience where it's like I go home at the end of the day and I'm looking at my phone and I'm like, wait, is this Andre's phone?
Are these headlines real? So much of, yeah, so much of what's occurring in real life and kind of how this confluence of, you know, government and tech and all these things, yeah, is, you know, again, without going too much into it, is like what's happening, you know, and what we're portraying. And so it's been so, yeah, so surreal. Yeah.
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Chapter 6: How does Ramy approach sensitive topics and tender comedy?
You know, I have friends in tech who've messaged me lately, you know, with some of the stuff saying, you know, dude, like, look at this, you know, AI movies, you can make the entire movie with AI. You know, I was like, I want to make the movie. Like I want to struggle with it and I want to reach, and I want to do it with a group of people because like,
You know, there's this spiritual connection that just does something totally different. And I think, you know, yeah, that link you're drawing, I don't know that I would have even framed it that way. But as you asked the question, I'm like, oh, yeah, there is this kinship in all of these things. And, you know, certainly this animated show that we're about to put out was...
maybe even the biggest group effort I've been a part of because so much of it was out of my hands in terms of, you know, the design stuff and the animation stuff.
You know, to get to work with Mona Chalabi, to get to work with all these animators who kind of, you know, so many of the best jokes we have are visual ones that I was surprised by when I was watching back things that they interpreted from the script. And so, yeah, that style of working is kind of the only way I want to work ever.
We didn't actually talk about this, but one of the collaborators you just mentioned on Number One Happy Family USA is Mona Chalabi, who I actually know is a journalist. She's a data journalist. I mean, she's won a Pulitzer, Illustrator, but she's also an executive producer on the show.
She takes very complicated ideas and she manages to make them entertaining and digestible and understandable to regular people. How do you feel like her journalism background shows up in the series at all?
Honestly, like there probably wouldn't be a project if she didn't say yes. Because I was like, you know, I had written, at that point I had written the pilot with Pam who came from the South Park world and is such a great comedic collaborator. And then I felt, okay, but as we go into making this, the visual world that we want, when I look at Mona Chalabi's work, she's so good at,
like you said, at breaking down these really wild statistics or questions and actually making them really poppy and colorful and something that you want to look at before you even know what you're looking at. It just kind of grabs your eye. And I felt there was already kind of this kinship with what she was doing to what I thought was the medium of animation could do for this particular story.
And so, you know, I try to really kind of As much as possible, be in a position of, okay, here's what I know. Here's the larger thing I'm trying to solve. And then honestly kind of like beg people to help me. Just be like, please, please help me. How do we do this? Can we do this together? That's actually how we even got the soundtrack for our show. There's this kid, Moaz Dawad.
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