HBO’s Sublime New Comedy Special Could Only Have Come From One Person
On a recent evening at the White Eagle Hall theater in Jersey City, there was a palpable sense of anxiety in the air. Ramy Youssef’s fans had lined up for his new stand-up set, and many wondered if he would broach the subject that had become exceedingly difficult for anyone with a public profile to address, let alone joke about. People have been punished for making virtually any proclamation about the war in Gaza in every industry and institution. With nerves at their peak, perhaps Hollywood’s most famous Muslim Arab American was in a tight spot.
“There was apprehension,” Youssef later told me of his feelings before taking the stage to film his new HBO special More Feelings, which debuts Saturday night. “There still is apprehension.”
But the energy in the room went electric as soon as Youssef made his entrance. He had become a bona fide star, and as he stood there holding the microphone, leaning off to the side and looking out at the packed hall, it was clear from the outset that he was going to be in control.
At first, I wasn’t sure if he would even bring up Gaza. A part of me didn’t want him to. Nobody would knock him for it if he didn’t. He talks openly about donating revenue from a slew of charity performances to humanitarian relief groups operating in Gaza, including the New York show where he met Taylor Swift. He also coolly represented Artists for Ceasefire, becoming an unofficial ambassador for Hollywood’s anti-war front at the Oscars, the very same night Jonathan Glazer, a Jewish director, spoke out, making himself the target of backlash that has not yet let up, weeks later. I was happy to see a few people wearing the black-and-white Palestinian kaffiyehs. I thought that might be representation enough if they made it into the background during the taping. But right on cue, like an imam at a minbar, Youssef went for it. And he also somehow made it funny.
“Here’s the thing. I actually don’t like doing charity shows,” he said right at the start. The room got quiet. “People always get upset at the charity you chose.” He said he felt good about himself after he did his first charity show for the victims of the earthquakes in Syria and Turkey but immediately got “cooked” by Muslims in his inbox. “ ‘Where were you when the floods happened in Pakistan?’ I was like, ‘I got to cover everything? We’re dealing with the earthquakes. I got to do the floods?’ Like, I got to be like the mayor of Muslim disaster?” The room exploded with laughter. And so it went.
The full set is about an hour long. Youssef told me it represented a cumulative body of comedy that aptly summarizes and records the way he’s feeling at the time it’s performed, hence the name of the specials: Just four months after he filmed his first HBO special, Feelings, in 2019, he got to work on More Feelings. “It’s material over the span of, give or take, four and a half years. But then a lot of the material was written, some of it in the months before, some of it in the weeks before, or some of it in the days before. A couple of things were in there that I tried for the first time that night. I like to have a combination of that to just make it feel like a real show as much as possible,” he said.
In the special, Youssef jokes about Muslim representation, calling hijabis “the troops” for the way they’re unavoidably identifiable and can’t escape stereotypes. I nearly fell out of my seat when Youssef said that Muslim men could always just revert to being Dominican. “Like, with everything going on, we’re just like, ‘Hamas? No, no, no, no. No mas.’ I’m not saying habibi till 2050.” He also critiques the weaponization of gay identity by some defenders of the Israeli military. “All this bombing is happening. And it always boils down to some random thing. Like, ‘Do you think Hamas likes gay people?’ ” he begins. “My gay friends don’t fall for it because it makes no sense. So you think everyone that you’re bombing is just straight? Like all of Gaza is straight? Like there’s not one Gay-zan?”
Youssef has grown a lot since his previous special. He appears more self-assured and less burdened by repeated questions about representing an underrepresented community. Right from the start of his performance, it’s clear he’s evolved out of his “fuckboy dating phase” (his words) and into his current life as a newly married man. He jokes about his parents, therapy sessions, and interrogating his new wife—who is Saudi Arabian—about Jamal Khashoggi.
Youssef wants to make comedy that doesn’t shy away from third-rail subjects but remains inclusive and considerate. “I have boundaries. I don’t want to hurt anyone,” he told me. He tries to make room to be “wrong, unclear, or even silly, and to be emotional and funny about things that might not seem that way.”
This might be why Youssef is at his best when tackling topics like Palestine. His approach is not exactly expected: “Are you ever so horny you’re like, ‘I can figure out Palestine’?” he asks out loud at one point. He jokes about coming face-to-face with an Israeli flag in a woman’s bedroom and experiencing the moral dilemma of what to do next: “I’m in there. I’m looking at this flag. And I’m horny, so I’m trying to justify it. Like, I’m looking at it. I’m like, She told me she was Jewish. It’s the Star of David. That’s their logo. It’s just Jewish—big.”
His crafts his jokes to make the audience more open-minded and less reactive. And unlike most people in his position, he was direct with me about how he’s managed his own feelings about the war. He’s been conscious of “navigating these relationships and feelings, and understanding that there are two levels to this. Being critical of governments and government structures. And then there’s another one of just being able to actually look people in the eyes and understand what they’re feeling and meet them where they’re at. And I think they’re both really separate things that often get lumped into the same conversation. And I think it’s really important to understand that they are different and that you can be incredibly critical while also being incredibly compassionate. And that’s always the space that I’m trying to find.
“I feel like we can toe the line, but it should feel like if I’m bringing you into a joke,” he added. “I think it’s allowed to be dumb. And I think a lot of the special is just dumb and just stupid and me talking about being dumb and me talking about not knowing how to read and me talking about horniness getting in the way of principles and anything—I think it’s allowed to be a few different things, which is what’s fun to me about doing stand-up.”
Youssef’s comedy isn’t just about making people laugh; it’s about empathy and understanding. As he put it, “I think anything that can get people to be inward, and release any sort of tension to maybe be a little bit more loving or look at things a little bit of a different way, that could maybe be cool. Maybe that could be something.”
