‘The Interview’: Ramy Youssef Is Just Trying to Be ‘Emotionally Correct’

Magazine|Ramy Youssef Is Just Trying to Be ‘Emotionally Correct’

In the trailer for the new animated series “#1 Happy Family USA,” which premieres on Prime Video on April 17, there is a tag line that reads: “From the childhood nightmares of Ramy Youssef.” That might seem like a warning, but the show, which tells the story of the fictional Hussein family as they try to fit into a changing America in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, is actually very funny. There are big musical numbers and irreverent “South Park”-esque humor (Youssef’s co-creator, Pam Brady, was a “South Park” writer), and the characters’ appearances change depending on whether they are inside their home or out trying to navigate the world.

Youssef was 10, growing up in New Jersey in an Egyptian American family, when Al Qaeda attacked in 2001. He often refers to the dislocation and fear he experienced as a child in his stand-up comedy, and it has come up in “Ramy,” the Hulu show he created and stars in about a young first-generation Muslim American guy figuring things out in New Jersey. (Youssef told me he makes work about his own life because “it’s the only thing I can actually account for with genuine insight.”) This new series, though, is his most ambitious attempt yet to examine past events that are still very much with us. Again, it’s a really funny show.

Though much of Youssef’s work is rooted in his own experiences and worldview, he has lately been taking on roles in other people’s projects too. He had a part in Yorgos Lanthimos’s 2023 film, “Poor Things”; directed a memorable, dreamy episode of “The Bear” (the one set in Copenhagen); and when we spoke, he was in Utah filming “Mountainhead,” the first movie directed by the “Succession” creator Jesse Armstrong, in which he plays a billionaire during a financial crisis. (He couldn’t tell me much about the project, but he did say that “what’s happening and what we’re portraying — it’s been so surreal.”) Our conversation, like much of his work, ranged from the personal to the universal.

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Your new animated project is called “#1 Happy Family USA,” which is a great name. I found it almost hopeful, that something like this can now be made: a comedy about one of the most terrible days in American history from the perspective of a Muslim American family. Why did you want to make this show now? The thing that compelled me is: The family in this show, they already have a lot going on before 9/11 happens. Pretty much the entire pilot, it’s just this family comedy about a family you’ve never really seen in an animated space. To bring in the events of the early 2000s felt important in the sense that it’s something we talk about all the time. It’s part of what we’re currently experiencing. It’s never gone away. And when I think about how long these themes have been directly a part of my life and the lives of people that I know — to get to step into a period of time that I don’t think has escaped us in any way, unfortunately, and to do it in a style that is familiar in terms of trodding on political things that can feel a little difficult, and undercuts them and doesn’t make them feel so volatile — to give this kind of family that treatment is really exciting. And to go at this through a totally unexpected and very silly lens — maybe that’s where that hope feeling comes from, because it’s so unfiltered. It’s one of the most inappropriate things I’ve gotten to be a part of. Yet there’s a lot of love and care for the subjects involved.