Ramy Youssef's new animated comedy series, #1 Happy Family USA, is about an Egyptian American Muslim family living in New Jersey, after 9/11, trying to blend in and doing everything they can to avoid being seen as a threat. Youssef spoke with Terry Gross about the series and his own experience during that time. Also, Danny McBride talks with Tonya Mosley about his HBO series The Righteous Gemstones, about a wildly dysfunctional family of televangelists fighting for power, influence, and their father's approval.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: What is the story behind Rami Youssef's new series?
And so you kind of go, okay, we should be quiet or something. It's incredibly confusing. It's incredibly disorienting. And I think within my family, we were always proud of who we were and where we come from. And at the same time, you kind of don't want to rock the boat. And I think my father was very pragmatic about it all.
And I remember him kind of being like, you know, my family is really well read. They really you know, I grew up with books all over the house. And my dad was just like, yeah, Japanese people went through a lot after Pearl Harbor happened. He was already kind of saying almost there was this feeling of this might be our turn right now. And, you know, that was at the time.
And then now it's kind of like, so when does the turn end exactly? What's what's going on?
Yeah.
You know?
Yeah. Did you code switch a lot when you were 11 after 9-11, like the cartoon version of The Sun does? Part of the code switching is not just the way he talks. It's also like what he wears to try to look like all American, right?
Yeah, I mean, I grew up in New Jersey and there was this like burgeoning emo rock scene. And I was so jealous of my friends who had the straight hair and wore the tight pants. And I had this curly fro and I tried to hide it with a hat. I was always wearing hats. And, you know, even in my older age, it's like such a holdover from being a kid and trying to just stuff it under a hat. But, you know...
The beauty of this series for me has been that I think everyone code switches, you know, and I think we leaned into this animated style where the family literally looks different when they're inside the house and when they're outside the house. And I think to an extent, everybody does that, you know, and what becomes...
The larger pressure cooker is that there is this performance that this family is literally doing for the FBI agent who moves in across the street. But at that core, underneath all of it, I think this is what everybody does. And I think it's certainly what kids do. And so in so many ways, it really feels like this quintessential just middle school experience.
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Chapter 2: How does Rami Youssef's series address post-9/11 experiences?
Now that I'm thinking about it, even that clip I play where you're like, bye, Felicia, as you're walking away, that is the George Jefferson walk, 100%. It totally is. Yeah. There's something in all of your characters. You know, you present as a really nice guy, but there's something in all of your characters. They're all kind of terrible.
And I'm just wondering what interests you about these types of people, the Kenny's of the world, the, you know, Jesse's of the world, you know?
You know what I think it is? I think it's trying to find the perfect clown for some of this comedy. I think if a character is too goofy, I don't identify with them as much or like that comedy doesn't like speak to me as much. And so then it's sort of like finding like how do you center a comedy around a clown but it's not just pratfalls or just like goofy behavior.
And so to me, character deficiency starts to be what seems like something fun to play around with. These are such exaggerated –
uh enlarged like versions of people around us you know that i don't know there's something about it that it's like by making fun of somebody who doesn't know how to express themselves or just wears their emotions on their sleeve to such an obnoxious level there's something there that as you make fun of them you can also kind of like poke at the truths of that of like why somebody would behave that way and what that ultimately probably means and so
I don't think it's like trying to create a defense for jerks, but it is just a way of, I guess, exploring jerks in a way that is comical and maybe a little enlightening.
David Green and Jody Hill, you guys have been longtime partners for a really long time. When did you guys know that you all had something special?
Oh, I can't, you know, I don't really know. I mean, it's like, you know, we all met at the North Carolina School of the Arts and we're, it was in Winston-Salem and it's just this kind of tiny film school at the time. And it was not in the cards for me to go somewhere like NYU or USC. And this was like in 1995 is when I was a freshman at school there.
And so I was really just trying to like calling around, trying to find a film school that I could A, afford and I could hopefully get into.
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