Ramy Youssef on his personal journey with Islam

Ramy Youssef’s show Ramy started as a way to reflect his own personal journey, an Egyptian American growing up in the United States, navigating his way through his family, his country, and his faith.  In time, it became something bigger.

Ramy, which is in pre-production for a third season, is show that Arabs, Muslims, and any people who have grappled with who they are and how to be good members of their faith and community across the world has both argued about and saw themselves in. It’s a show that, even when it challenges or provokes, puts honesty above all else, allowing its viewers to have conversations they may never have had otherwise.

As personal as Ramy’s show, which just launched on Starzplay in the Middle East, has always been, he has rarely talked about his own personal journey with the faith.

As Ramadan was about to begin, Esquire Middle East got on a Zoom call with Ramy after a long day in the writer’s room for an open and honest discussion of where his show is headed, what he sees its role is, and more.

Read our full conversation below:

First off, congratulations on the two year anniversary since your show Ramy debuted.

You know, I’m looking at a calendar now and realizing I’ve been working on this show for four years. I don’t think I’ve really thought about it in that context.

Your schedule seems insane right now. Am I right in saying that you’re in the writer’s room for multiple shows at the moment?

Yeah we’re working on one show about immigration, and then we’re also working on Ramy season 3. The Steve Way show is still being developed—we’re figuring out a couple moves with that. But right now we’re moving in between those two rooms, and they go hand in hand.

How do you balance doing two shows in your mind? Is it difficult to switch back and forth?

Working on multiple things is always exciting. I definitely have a little bit of my dad’s immigrant mentality put into the TV-film space. Working is just embedded in me. And creatively, it helps to step away into a different project. It’s really energizing, especially because on the other projects, I’m not the lead. It’s not my face on the poster, you know? And that’s always really exciting. I can step outside of myself and contribute to fleshing out a different voice.

Now that you’re a few years into working on Ramy, do you find yourself less interested in certain subjects and more drawn to others?

We really laid the foundations at the start, and now it’s about getting to nuance and fleshing out those big themes and in a more interesting way. As we’re making season three, I’m actually looking back to some threads that we started in season one and adding on top of them, since so much of it has really just been an intro to our characters. It’s less a stepping away and more continuing to step in, and when you step in, you find different things.

What do you want to step into more with the character of Ramy?

I’ve been really interested in tapping into different things as a performer and a writer. For instance, we have seen this guy in a couple different shades, but have we really seen him, like, angry? Have we seen him really upset and vulnerable? And what does that look like? We have to ask ourselves, ‘how can we step into directions that feel really natural to the character, but will still feel the unexpected?’

Where is Ramy’s anger centered exactly? What is it about his anger you interested in exploring?

For me, it’s about some of the ways that he grew up and how that’s weighing on him. As someone who is a religious person, I have gone through a lot of phases in order to be able to say that with a straight look on my face. On an internal level, this character is differentiating between real faith and performative faith.

Some of his anger, I think, is rooted in being in the family unit and surrounded by so much performance. Where we’ve seen a lot of secrets that our characters have, and the secrets that families have in general. Funnily enough, I have been thinking a lot about The Truman Show. There is this element to growing up in a family, in any family, where on some level, you feel like you’re being Truman Show-ed.

I think for a lot of people, if you grew up in a restrictive household, your journey of self-discovery is completely silo-ed. You can’t show your family members the person you’ve become outside the family unit. At home, you’re always in a state of arrested development.

I think that’s a great way of putting it. A lot of what we’re looking at in the next season is watching them come together a bit more. We’ve definitely done a lot of the individual storytelling on a level and we’re going to see them get more in each other’s faces as a family this season. It’s really exciting because I feel like we can finally do that.

Is it difficult to stop yourselves from going into the realm of pure fantasy with those interactions?

As the characters have become their own people, the show has stepped away from my own life more significantly than I ever thought it would, while still retaining a lot of the philosophically emotional things that I think I’ve been through and that are important to me. But yeah, we’re almost in realm of fantasy. We’re going to see things that I wish happened, but don’t.

Do you feel a social responsibility, in that sense?

I’m always wrestling with what television’s place really is. I really don’t like the word change, but I do like the word introspection. It allows us to ask questions or give people a reference point for certain things. Any time, for good or for bad, if someone says, ‘like on Ramy!’—that’s really exciting.

I’m sure there are Imams who might cite my show in their Friday sermon as a problem, and I think that’s healthy for discussion. That’s part of why these stories are being told. It’s like, if something is an issue, why is it an issue? Is it an issue because what’s being said doesn’t happen, or is it an issue because it’s happening but not it’s being shown? With a show like this, you can open up things that lie dormant. The more that certain things lie dormant, the more we’re robbed of genuine connection.

I’m sure many Muslims out there reach out to you. Which of those conversations have stuck with you the most?

For me it’s the people who are like, ‘you made me want to reconnect with the culture. I’d stepped away and I’m realizing that there’s this missing part in me.’

Is that your target audience?

Yeah, in many ways, I think that the show is for the people who are a little weird. If you’re a fully practicing Muslim, and you’ve got your stuff on lock, maybe you’re not interested in the show. The show is really for anyone who has been struggling between who they want to be and who they actually are. That’s the type who reach out. The people who say, ‘I feel less alone because I watched what you’re making’.

How often do you consider your audience in the Middle East?

Oh man, when a place like Egypt really gets into the show, or Dubai, or even Saudi, that gets me really excited, because those are places where exploring Arabs or Islam on television is not such a novelty as it is here in the US. When you get that response and love, you know people are into it for the characters.

Do you see the show as an exploration of the faith?

That’s the thing, I think this show is more concerned with what these characters are trying to live up to as individuals. We don’t talk about Islam as much as we talk about these characters grappling with whatever their version of it is, and whatever their version of what they’re trying to achieve is. I’ve never been interested in criticizing the faith or even society at large. It’s about, ‘what are these people in particular going through? What is this family going through?’

How has doing the show affected your journey with Islam on a personal level?

When I set out to make this show, I made a pact with myself – I didn’t want to be out here just talking about the subject and not engaging with it actively as a human and in real life. It’s definitely pushed me to understand more and learn more. Being connecting to the faith as an adult is way cooler than getting it as a kid. And that’s definitely been something that’s been really exciting for me.

What’s that exploration like for you, exactly?

I’ve been reading a lot of Sufi poetry and philosophy. I read a lot of the philosophers Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali and Seyyed Hossein Nasr. It’s exciting to be able to make a show where I have to do that reading. So many people separate their spiritual life from their career. It’s wild that I get to read that stuff.

Is that more for the show, or for you?

Of course I’m driven to do it for the show, even if it doesn’t make it on screen. But so much of it is my personal fascination, and my own personal connection to it. It gets to be about this world in the way that you would want to know any world you were writing about. I feel very fortunate to get to meet the faith and think about my spiritual life as an adult very actively every day, which is something that has made has made all the difference.

Do the demands of the show make it impossible to make space, even in your own head, that’s just for yourself?

Obviously my spiritual life intersects with the show, but I never really leave my work behind. Even when we took a big break from writing the show, I was still working on it then. I mean, it’s just really important to me. Especially with variety of things I’ve been working on.

How are you spending Ramadan this year?

Oh man, this year is just going to be really fun, because last year was full quarantine. Because of the vaccine, at least I’m able to spend it with my family, which is really nice. So I’ve been with them the whole time. And so that’s going be a really interesting experience.

You started work on the first season during Ramadan, is that right?

Yeah actually, every season we’ve written the show during Ramadan. For the first season, the first day of the writers room was the first day of Ramadan, we’ve always had this element of writing the show during Ramadan, but season three will be cool, because it’ll be Ramadan, and I’ll be with my family the whole month. I’ve never written the show with them around and that I’m really looking forward to that.

What’s your personal relationship like with Ramadan, generally speaking?

Ramadan has always been like a marker of time for me, even more so than birthdays. I want to really feel the progress I’ve made. I ask myself, ‘okay, what was I doing last year? What am I doing this year?’ I’m always trying to grow, and that precedes working on the show.

When did you really start focusing on your progress?

I mean, that that’s definitely been a hallmark of my adult life since I moved to Los Angeles. It’s always about asking myself, ‘okay, how much?’ We used to go do prayers at the mosque, and we can’t do that this year, but usually I would ask myself, ‘how many nights am I’m able to go to do that, and what’s my reading looking like?’ Those are just little benchmarks and I’m always trying to grow that spiritual part of myself.

Are you proud of your own growth? Do you allow yourself to be?

I guess I don’t think about it that way. It’s an interesting framing. The overall number one hope is that what I’m doing is with the right intentions. That’s what I’m always hoping for myself. I don’t know if I would use the word proud, or maybe I just don’t know if I would allow this. I don’t think if I’d allow that.

If you’re not proud of yourself, then how do you take stock?

What I will say is that I’m very grateful. I’m grateful for the ability to have the opportunities that are in front of me. Grateful to be able to even work on any of this, be it creatively or spiritually. It’s so satisfying to be able to connect to the world. This work is pretty wild.

Yeah, I can imagine…

I mean, I’m talking to you, you’re across the world, and we get to connect. And any of the spiritual work is about connecting to the world around me in dope metaphysical ways that aren’t just about a streaming network. It’s all that stuff. I’m just really grateful for that that’s probably the word that I would use is just like, massive gratitude.

What advice would you give to the person you were before stand-up, before Ramy?

I always think that I would just tell myself to drink more water. It feels like that would help everything. Advice is just hard because anytime you had a piece of advice that you actually took to heart, it’s probably because you learned the lesson on your own. If I drank more water, I’d be more hydrated, and it would make whatever lessons I was learning more easy to internalize.

That’s solid advice. I think I need to take it myself.

Drink water. Breathe. Pray. Meditate. However you connect all those things. Then the rest tends to fall in the place.

Ramy season 1 is available to watch here.