Ramy Youssef Discusses His Hulu Comedy Series “Ramy”

HARI SREENIVASAN, CONTRIBUTOR: All right. So the character, Ramy Youssef, who is he?

RAMY YOUSSEF, CO-CREATOR, AND ACTOR, RAMY: Oh, man. Well, the character on the show is Ramy Hassan and he’s different from Ramy Youssef.

SREENIVASAN: OK.

YOUSSEF: Yes.

SREENIVASAN: You’re Ramy Youssef.

YOUSSEF: I’m Ramy Youssef.

SREENIVASAN: He’s Ramy Hassan.

YOUSSEF: That last name change makes everything fictional.

SREENIVASAN: Everything fictional.

YOUSSEF: Everything is fictional.

SREENIVASAN: So when everybody on set refers to you as Ramy, Ramy, Ramy, Ramy, you’re still thinking, “No, no, no, I’m Ramy Hasan now.”

YOUSSEF: Yes, I’m the character now and none of those things are real.

SREENIVASAN: OK. 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 and you’re thinking about how to kind of truncate this idea and explain to people what do Youssef say?

YOUSSEF: 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 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 It’s outdated. You know, 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. Whether it’s the faith you believe in or the idea you have of 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.

SREENIVASAN: Yes. 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.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAYSA HASSAN: Ramy, do you want to stay alone forever?

HASSAN: 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?”

HASSAN: Yes, why not?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SREENIVASAN: Did that happen to you in your life? Ever?

YOUSSEF: No, my parents have been pretty relaxed about pushing it. That’s a Ramy Hassan difference. I think his family on the show looks a little bit more like some of the Arab families that I grew up around, less so exactly my family.

SREENIVASAN: So this is kind of informed by conversations a hundred times with your friends and family members?

YOUSSEF: Yes, looking at the community. And it’s also kind of informs what is — I mean, even though I haven’t had that conversation with my mom, that 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 the sudden you have to right now. And watching the character deal with that and realize that he needs to, you know, be a leader, even whether it’s within a community or just his own family, he’s got to grow into himself.

SREENIVASAN: These are kind of sort of textured and nuanced insights into people that right now it seems that we lack when we are watching portrayals of Muslims broadly in Hollywood, on television. We seem to have the kind of generic trope of terrorists 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. You’re kind of not in either of those buckets. You’re sort of trying something new.

YOUSSEF: Yes, yes. 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 dialogue 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.

SREENIVASAN: There’s an entire episode kind of around 9/11 or at least 9/11 is one of the events in that episode. Is that kind of a demarcation line for most Muslim-Americans or even Muslims around the world? A pre- 9/11 era and a post-9/11 era?

YOUSSEF: Yes, 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 performatively watched and for people who lived close to New York not only felt with television performance of it but the real-life impact where you just know people. So that 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’m now growing into what is my adulthood, sexuality, puberty, all these things. And then the added layer of, oh, is the faith 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 how that shifts an entire community.

SREENIVASAN: 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 the weeks surrounding it and kind of teaching yourself about maybe how America has changed?

YOUSSEF: I remember most actually just the self-doubt. I remember just seeing people who look and are linked to your heritage and your belief. And when you are a kid who’s 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 those 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.

SREENIVASAN: You mentioned this earlier. 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. It’s not just your questioning but it’s almost like a character in all the episodes.

YOUSSEF: Yes. I think the presence of spirituality and 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. It really — 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. 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 or technical fouls. Wait, why aren’t we talking about like slam dunks and alley-oops? Like there’s all this cool stuff about the sport that we don’t even get to. 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.

SREENIVASAN: And it also lends itself to some very funny comedic moments. There’s a clip from a mosque I want to take a look at.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What are you wearing, bro?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What is this? I mean, seriously. I’m talking about you in this.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It’s a little bit short.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It’s like a Muslim skirt for a man. It’s really too much. Why are you wearing a tracksuit?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It looks dope. Don’t be jealous, OK? Run DMC, baby. Run DMC all day.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You look like a Russian basketball coach.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think I look good.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You look good, yes, for a 6-year-old girl. You’re going to ruin this whole meeting. It’s very frustrating.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What meeting?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Straighten the lines. Fill in the gaps.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SREENIVASAN: I mean it might go down in history as the first visualization of a joke that happened in a mosque, right? We’ve only ever seen people very religiously in this moment.

YOUSSEF: I never thought about it like that.

SREENIVASAN: I mean I’ve never seen — and even when you look at the portrayals of churches, it’s very austere and people are in penance.

YOUSSEF: 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. It used to open just at the mosque. And when it did, 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 it at the mosque speaking in Arabic, they thought the show was most like a drama —

SREENIVASAN: A foreign documentary.

YOUSSEF: — 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 could be a comedy. I mean it took that long. Because they saw a mosque, 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 to worship together is only framed in one other way because we’ve only ever seen someone say a lot burn and then a detonator go off. And so the reframing of that, 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 have seen it are like, I haven’t ever seen the inside of a mosque. And the fact that they get to see it this way is really exciting to me.

SREENIVASAN: One of my favorite episodes was around the mother’s character, who’s a fantastic actress. I mean she pulled that off brilliantly. And there’s another one that you have around the sister. And you discuss kind of, you know, there’s sexiness, what’s allowed culturally, their role. 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.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RAMY: Mom, where are the keys? I can’t find them.

MAYSA: Where are you going?

RAMY: I’m going out.

MAYSA: Eat Habibi.

RAMY: Yes, I got to go now.

MAYSA: At least take some with you, OK? You’ll be hungry later.

DENA: And that was filled with sugar.

RAMY: No, no way.

(CROSSTALK)

DENA: OK. I’m going tonight.

FAROUK HASSAN: Again, Dena? This is the second time this week.

DENA: I’m 25-years-old. Why is there a limit? Does anyone even care where Ramy goes? You guys never ask him where he is.

MAYSA: He just told me he’s going out.

FAROUK: Yes, that’s what I just said.

DENA: He literally gave you no information.

RAMY: Yeah, I’m going to go. Love you, mom.

MAYSA: Love you, Habibi. What time are you coming back?

RAMY: I don’t know.

MAYSA: OK.

DENA: I’m leaving.

FAROUK: OK, Dena. Just don’t be late.

MAYSA: Please, text me when you get there. Please, soft of the driving. Careful of the brakes.

DENA: OK, mom.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SREENIVASAN: You ever get pushback from the Muslim community at large? Because as an Indian, if you try to go to do stories in India, 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?

YOUSSEF: Yeah. I mean it’s difficult in general to even say the Muslim community because there’s so many. So we’re going at it from 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 that community in particular of oh, man, this is us, and being really excited. In other Muslim communities, feeling, well, this has nothing to do with me and this isn’t my story. 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.

SREENIVASAN: I’ve also read you’ve really worked hard on trying to, whether it’s the staffing of the writer’s 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.

YOUSSEF: 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, you know, 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.

SREENIVASAN: One of the most interesting characters that I see in the series is Steve Way, 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.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEVE: This is awesome. Dude, why did you swipe no on her?

HASSAN: Dude, she’s not my vibe.

STEVE: You’re [bleep] racist.

HASSAN: How is that racist? Headscarf is not a race. It’s something that people wear.

STEVE: I love when they’re all covered from their head to their toe. That mystery is sexy.

HASSAN: That’s disgusting.

STEVE: Have you ever dated a Muslim girl?

HASSAN: No, I haven’t. And that’s why I’m doing this. I’m trying to meet someone, you know, different.

STEVE: You’re such a racist.

HASSAN: How is that racist, dude? Islam is not a race. It’s something you believe in.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SREENIVASAN: It’s just one of these relationships actually that makes you realize that we don’t see people like Steve on T.V.

YOUSSEF: No.

SREENIVASAN: Hardly ever.

YOUSSEF: No, you don’t. I mean 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 give you a great 10-minute speech about it. But yes, it’s really obviously something that again the accuracy of putting people who are actually the thing when you do it on screen. And for me, this is a real-life relationship with Steve. Not that the things that happened in the show are real but he’s been a friend of mine for so long, and in many ways, our differences — and obviously there are different differences but being different together has been a huge part of our relationship. And so showing that on this show when I had this opportunity to have the 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. A walking patron. It’s these tiny little clubs. And they’re amazing, but someone like him doesn’t get there, you know, doesn’t get to do it. And so how can we give him a platform and how can we get in his story?

SREENIVASAN: Speaking of stand-up, when does your HBO special drop?

YOUSSEF: On June 29.

SREENIVASAN: And how long did that take to put together?

YOUSSEF: It’s a collection of stand-up 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 kind of a long form talking explanation of certain bits and certain things. 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 pretty fully.

SREENIVASAN: Ramy Youssef, congratulations.

YOUSSEF: Thanks, man.

SREENIVASAN: And looking forward to season two. Thanks for joining us.

YOUSSEF: Oh, man, thank you. And thanks for watching.