Pax Assadi has revealed the unlikely source of inspiration for his new memoir.
His new book, Mortified, is far from a highlight reel - it focuses on the shame, the cringe and all the stupid things that leave many wanting to die from embarrassment.
Assadi says he was in a 'creative zone' developing stand-up when the book concept came to him.
"I just thought it was cool, counterculture thing to do against the backdrop of our social media society that is obsessed with making sure we all look pristine - and I'm just kind of sick of it. I'm a little bit sick of us all pretending like we're all perfect."
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News Talks edb Right.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
For those of you who know comedian and TV host
Pack Society, it probably comes as no surprise he would
base his memoir on the times in life the rest
of us try to block from memory, not focusing on
the glossy highlights reel, but more the shame, the cringe,
and all those stupid things that leave us wanting to
die of embarrassment. In his book, Mortified, Packs is not
only embracing those moments, but asking what we could gain
(00:36):
if we were all to open up and share our
most awkward memories of ourselves. Pack Society joins me.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Now, good morning, good morning, Thank you for having me. Francesca, congratulations,
thank you.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
It's a page tenner.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
I read it.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
I've read it in two sittings, which is pretty good, isn't.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
It is exceptionally kind. Thank you so much. It's so
hard to know if you spend so long writing a
book and you put all these words down on paper,
and then you don't fully know if people are going
to like it, because you haven't given it to anyone yet.
When someone says they like it. It genuinely means a lot.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
But you had a really interesting experience when you came
to read the audio book. You suddenly was like, Okay,
how long did it take you.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
To write the book? I don't remember, six months, eight months,
I don't.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Know, Okay, while a bit of time went into it,
and then all of a sudden you're reading it out
that like, can I make changes?
Speaker 3 (01:26):
I also I wanted I tried to read it differently,
so my brain made me read it slightly differently in
a way that I preferred, And then the audio engineer
would keep buzzing in and going, no, no, you have
to read it the way you wrote it, man, and
I'm like why, but yeah, it's It was an experience
of wanting to change specifically like the way I wrote
(01:47):
because I didn't like the sentence structure I used or whatever.
And then also just like deep, deep regret for sharing
these terrific, harrowing stories of my life.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
So the memoir is about the embarrassing moments. Why did
you decide to take that approach?
Speaker 3 (02:03):
What did you want people to get out of that?
Good question? Why why I got approached by Penguin to
write more of a traditional memoir, like an autobiography, and
at thirty five I felt like it was well. When
they asked me, I was like thirty two, thirty three,
and I felt like it was a weird time. It
(02:24):
felt too early. So they said, hey, if you have
any other ideas, come back to us. And so a
couple of years later, I had a little bit more
breathing room creatively. I wasn't hosting Bakeoff anymore, and I
was kind of in a more creative zone writing stand up,
and ideas were coming to my head, and this idea
popped into my head, and I just thought it was
(02:46):
a cool counterculture thing to do against the backdrop of
our social media society that is obsessed with making sure
we all look pristine, and I'm just kind of sick
of it. I'm a little bit sick of us all
pretending like we're all perfect, and if we do we
want to show our mistakes, it's in a very curated
(03:11):
way that still makes us look like we come out
on top, that we're super humble, or that we're super gracious,
and that our embarrassing things still makes us look awesome.
And I just wanted to write a thing that was
like I did this stupid thing, and that's all.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
You do do quite a lot of stupid things. Yeah,
thank you writing about these moments, though from childhood through
to adulthood. They're not the moments that a lot of
us want to sit and reflect on too much. We
just want to we want to bury them. Did you
find being painfully honest with yourself though a good thing
because we get these little learnings out of all these
embarrassing moments.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
Yeah, I I it was a hard thing. Yeah, it
was a hard thing. And particularly it's so interesting when
you set the task for yourself to remember all the
bad things or all the things that you've tried to forget,
you actually have to go deep into the recesses of
your mind and find because your brain does a really
good job of putting them away, and you have to
(04:10):
actually sit down and dig and remember them. And it's
somewhat of a painful experience. But what happened was that
I realized that each one of these experiences was the
road map to becoming who you are today or who
I was. Specifically, you know who I am today because
(04:31):
you don't particularly learn much from your awesome experiences. We've
all met the super rich kid who's had an almost
perfect life and nothing really that bad has happened to them.
That rich kid usually is kind of a nothing person,
you know, like when you meet them and you go, oh,
you're a very thin human and that's kind of not
your fault. You just haven't been given the opportunity to
(04:52):
go through fire, which hardens you, which strengthens you, right,
And so I realized that, oh, that's why I operate
this way, because I had this experience and it's taught
me to treat people like this, or to be kind
in these situations, or to be this or that. And
you realize that this, these experiences are actually the lanterns
(05:13):
that light your path along life, but you don't even
realize it because you don't want to think about it.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
That's a really nice way of putting it. Because there
is a common theme that does run through these stories.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
Yeah, one of them is pooping my paints.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
There is the coke brown. Oh, I just have this
vision of this tiny little boy and it all happening
around you. I can visualize that. Will leave that to
the readers to enjoy that number. But there's a theme
running through all these stories, a need for acceptance and belonging. Yes,
And I'm wondering whether you still have those needs now, Yes.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
And I think we all do. I think we all
want to be loved. I think we all want to
be heard. I think we all want to feel like
there is a community out there that accepts us and
wants us to be part of that community. And I
think when you're and I don't. I don't want to
say this and imply that it is an experience exclusive
(06:09):
to migrant kids or children of migrants, because it's not.
It's an experience that everyone experiences, regardless of your background,
but we all just experience it in slightly different ways.
This desire to be accepted, right, But of course I'm
going to write it from a migrant perspective because that's
my perspective, or a child of migrants or refugees, and
so that context, being a child of refugees painted my
(06:32):
experience of wanting to be accepted. But I think that's
a universal experience. And a lot of these experiences that
we want to bury and that are so embarrassing do
revolve around us making choices that weren't quite the right choice.
But ultimately there were things that we did because we
just wanted people to care about us and love us.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
I loved getting to know your family in this book.
I love getting to know your parents. Tell me about
your parents, where they're from, and how they ended up
in New Zealand.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
Yeah, I mean speaking of parents, shout out to my
Happy Mother's Day. Happy Mother's Day to my mom and
my wife who was a mother. But yeah, my parents
are really just They're just really hard working people who
have been through a lot in their lives and have
(07:22):
really tried to not allow that a lot to get
in the way. And sometimes it does for lots of
migrant parents and refugee parents, and sometimes it doesn't. But
I think I'm really grateful that I had parents that
prioritized their kids, and I'm really grateful that I had
(07:42):
parents that prioritize creating a really great life for us.
But when you're raised by refugee parents, and I talk
about this in the book, you inevitably because when you're
seven or eight or nine years old, you're trying to
figure out society right, and they are too, So you're
doing this beautiful dance where both of you are trying
to figure out the world together. You don't have the
luxury of having parents that grew up in this country
(08:05):
and understand the con text beautifully, like my kids have
that luxury. I was born and raised here, so I
understand the New Zealand context like it's in me. It's
part of my being. So they don't have to worry
about their dad having to figure New Zealand out with them,
whereas that was my experience. I had to learn New
Zealand with my mum and with my dad, and that
(08:27):
is a beautiful thing and can also lead to embarrassing moments,
but it's part of it. It's part of it.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Yeah, absolutely, which are perfect for a book, which perfect
for a book. As you say, you're born here, but
you're half Pakistani, half you're half an from around half
Pakistani your parents. How do you reconcile that, I suppose
discomfort of being from a variety of different worlds when
you're growing up.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
Yeah, I mean, I think my life growing up and
this is an experience shared by a lot of kids
and young people growing up in New Zealand that share
my content with regardless of whether the countries are the same,
they share that duality and I think my context was
(09:14):
my experience was defined by that duality, not only the
Pakistani Iranian duality, but then also the son of refugees
slash New Zealand duality because I was born here and
raised here, so I know nothing more. I know nothing
else other than New Zealand. I don't know anything else.
But never fully felt accepted. For a while, I feel
(09:35):
fully do. I feel fully accepted now. I'll be honest
with I'll be honest. I would say I feel more
accepted now, I feel closer to fully accepted. But still
there's something that gnaws away and makes me sometimes feel
not fully accepted. That's a bigger topic that we don't
have to get into it.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
But I was wondering you no longer feel the need
to claim your tongue.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
In no, no, and yes. These are examples that show
that the desperate desire to feel accepted has quieter down. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
And so there's a great chapter in the book where
you talk about incorporating that into a comedy.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
Yes, a show of yours.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
And I'm wondering, was that the riskiest thing you did,
because you really hate to think hard about whether you
would include that and how it would be received.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
I don't know if it was the riskiest thing I've
done on stage, but it felt like it at the
time because I was talking about the idea of literally
just absorbing someone else's culture for my benefit, and I
didn't know if that was okay, and it kind of
isn't okay, but is okay. And I think the reason
it was accepted, and I think the reason the tongue
(10:42):
in community was like this guy's awesome, which I'm so
grateful for still to this day, is that it came
from real truth. It wasn't made up, it wasn't exaggerated.
It was like real honesty. It's genuinely what I did
as a kid because I hated being from Iran. I
hated the Middle Eastern connection to you know, terrorism was
(11:04):
something that was part of the news a lot in
the early two thousands for reasons that we all know,
and so Iran, you know, the assumption being middlest and
you were connected to those extremist groups immediately and you
had no choice. They would just connect you to them
as a joke. And so I dropped it and became
tongue in for real?
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Is that at school?
Speaker 3 (11:23):
That was at school, that was at primary, primary, intermediate, and.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
You started young.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
I started young. Yeah, deeply experienced, deeply experienced my lot
to all my tongue and listeners. So yeah, I think
it's because it came from a place of truth that that,
and I think audiences could feel that. But yeah, at
the time it felt risky. I did not know how
the Pacific community would respond. I did not know how
the tongue in community would respond. And doing it on stage,
(11:51):
this is not an exaggeration. I've never crushed harder on
stage than that moment, and my life has been a
series of me chasing that moment.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
Now, that was a really that was really interesting to
read because I think that I think to be a
stand up comedian, it's the bravest thing in the world.
I just think I can't think of anything more mortifying
than doing that. And as you say, there was this,
but you just had this wave of love and laughter
and you just went it worked on on fire and
(12:19):
it was brilliant. And then you have that and then
all of a sudden you realize how good it can
be to get that kind of feeling. And that's why
you keep getting back up on stage.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
I consume to just I mean, that's not the sole
reason I get back up on stage. Like I really
like to inject purpose into my into creating, like the
purpose to like challenge people's thought or bring people together
or talk about an interesting idea that could maybe change
someone's mind about something. But yeah, I'm not going to pretend.
I'm not going to lie and pretend like it isn't
part of it. It definitely is part of a little
(12:49):
bit of it. Yeah, it's a little bit of it.
And I've had a great career since then. I've had
some amazing gigs since then, but nothing has quite felt
like the first time you crush in front of two
thousand people. It's something different. I love it.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
And this is what I love about you that this
book is absolutely hilarious, but you're not afraid to kind
of talk about the difficult stuff. And I want to
ask you about how we're doing in New Zealand. How
racist are we. Are we better than we were when
you were growing up? For example?
Speaker 3 (13:16):
Oh, one hundred percent. I think we're much better than
we were when I was growing up. I think we
were much better than we were when my dad first
arrived in the eighties and my mom first arrived in
the eighties. I think we've advanced a lot I like
to use the word matured. I think as a society
we've matured a lot in New Zealand and we've come
into our almost like societal almost not adulthood, but it's
(13:39):
almost like as a society we're becoming like early twenty
year olds as a collective, where we're like starting to
understand who we are as a multicultural society. But I
still think that there's room for improvement. I still think
there's room for growth, and I want people. When I
say that, I really want and I'm going to say
white people for lack of a better term, but that's
(14:02):
a blanket statement. And I use that blanket statement because
I don't have time to be more nuanced than that.
But I really want the majority, let's say the majority
of people in New Zealand. Rather than saying white people.
I really would love for there to not be defensiveness,
but rather an understanding of what I'm saying. I'm not
(14:22):
saying when I say this room for improvement. I'm not
saying you're the bad guy. I'm saying when you, as
the majority, understand that this room for improvement, and you
try and improve, or you try and help to have
a conversation with other people. You as the majority. You
don't understand how powerful that is. When the majority is
on our team, the migrants, the children of migrants, The
(14:45):
support and the power that that gives us is unmatched.
And so when you're an ally, there is a wave
of development and advancement that happens that is far greater
than the brown people going please stop stop. You know
when when the majority go, hey, we hear you, understand
(15:07):
and we're here to support you, man, that's a that's
a different level of positive injection into society. And that
that's why I say that because sometimes I feel like
when I when I talk about this kind of stuff,
there potentially is a defensiveness. And if we move away
from defensiveness and go I want to hear you and
I want to help, it's magical. It's actually magical.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
There's one other thing I wanted to ask you about
from the book, and that is that you say that
it takes about eight years to get good at good
at stand up coming minimum. And I thought to myself,
did you know that when you started out? Because I'm
not sure that. I mean, that's a long time to
get good at something, but you hit a lot of
early success, So what what what is it when you go, yeah,
I'm good at this, what what have you nailed?
Speaker 3 (15:49):
It's interesting because you think early on in your career
you say I'm good at this, and you think you're
good at it, but you're not good at it, and
you realize you weren't good at it. You've got potential
and you and you're getting laughs. But eight years later
you look back at your material, for example, or you
look back at footage of yourself doing stand up and
you go, oh.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
Craft it is it? The way you craft the story
or know what.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
I'll tell you what it is. It's a very simple thing,
very hard to get. It takes a long time to get,
but very simple in concept. It's finding your voice and
feeling truly comfortable on stage. I think it takes seven
to tenish years to walk on stage and for the
audience to go, ah, we feel fully comfortable with this person,
(16:34):
because it doesn't when you first start, say you're two
or three years in or four years in. I'm not
saying you're a bad stand up from like a structure
perspective or from a craft perspective, you could be a
great joke writer. But it takes a while for you
to really settle into yourself on stage. And that's the
part that then when that flip, when that switch flips,
(16:55):
that's when you become a really potent comedian, when the
audience can fully relax with you on stage. Fascinating. I
love that.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
Thank you so much, Thank you for having me, thank
you for coming.
Speaker 3 (17:05):
In and for reading harrowing book.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
If you need a laugh, I can. I can guarantee
you'll definitely get one.
Speaker 3 (17:12):
The book I tried. I tried to fill it with gags.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
It's filled with gagsat No Mortified is the name of
the box, Things I Have to Laugh About, And it
is in stores now. It is twenty four past ten
year with Newstalks ATB.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
live to News Talks at B from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News Talks edb Right.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
For those of you who know comedian and TV host
Pack Society, it probably comes as no surprise he would
base his memoir on the times in life the rest
of us try to block from memory, not focusing on
the glossy highlights reel, but more the shame, the cringe,
and all those stupid things that leave us wanting to
die of embarrassment. In his book, Mortified, Packs is not
only embracing those moments, but asking what we could gain
(00:36):
if we were all to open up and share our
most awkward memories of ourselves. Pack Society joins me.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Now, good morning, good morning, Thank you for having me. Francesca, congratulations,
thank you.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
It's a page tenner.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
I read it.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
I've read it in two sittings, which is pretty good, isn't.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
It is exceptionally kind. Thank you so much. It's so
hard to know if you spend so long writing a
book and you put all these words down on paper,
and then you don't fully know if people are going
to like it, because you haven't given it to anyone yet.
When someone says they like it. It genuinely means a lot.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
But you had a really interesting experience when you came
to read the audio book. You suddenly was like, Okay,
how long did it take you.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
To write the book? I don't remember, six months, eight months,
I don't.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Know, Okay, while a bit of time went into it,
and then all of a sudden you're reading it out
that like, can I make changes?
Speaker 3 (01:26):
I also I wanted I tried to read it differently,
so my brain made me read it slightly differently in
a way that I preferred, And then the audio engineer
would keep buzzing in and going, no, no, you have
to read it the way you wrote it, man, and
I'm like why, but yeah, it's It was an experience
of wanting to change specifically like the way I wrote
(01:47):
because I didn't like the sentence structure I used or whatever.
And then also just like deep, deep regret for sharing
these terrific, harrowing stories of my life.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
So the memoir is about the embarrassing moments. Why did
you decide to take that approach?
Speaker 3 (02:03):
What did you want people to get out of that?
Good question? Why why I got approached by Penguin to
write more of a traditional memoir, like an autobiography, and
at thirty five I felt like it was well. When
they asked me, I was like thirty two, thirty three,
and I felt like it was a weird time. It
(02:24):
felt too early. So they said, hey, if you have
any other ideas, come back to us. And so a
couple of years later, I had a little bit more
breathing room creatively. I wasn't hosting Bakeoff anymore, and I
was kind of in a more creative zone writing stand up,
and ideas were coming to my head, and this idea
popped into my head, and I just thought it was
(02:46):
a cool counterculture thing to do against the backdrop of
our social media society that is obsessed with making sure
we all look pristine, and I'm just kind of sick
of it. I'm a little bit sick of us all
pretending like we're all perfect, and if we do we
want to show our mistakes, it's in a very curated
(03:11):
way that still makes us look like we come out
on top, that we're super humble, or that we're super gracious,
and that our embarrassing things still makes us look awesome.
And I just wanted to write a thing that was
like I did this stupid thing, and that's all.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
You do do quite a lot of stupid things. Yeah,
thank you writing about these moments, though from childhood through
to adulthood. They're not the moments that a lot of
us want to sit and reflect on too much. We
just want to we want to bury them. Did you
find being painfully honest with yourself though a good thing
because we get these little learnings out of all these
embarrassing moments.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
Yeah, I I it was a hard thing. Yeah, it
was a hard thing. And particularly it's so interesting when
you set the task for yourself to remember all the
bad things or all the things that you've tried to forget,
you actually have to go deep into the recesses of
your mind and find because your brain does a really
good job of putting them away, and you have to
(04:10):
actually sit down and dig and remember them. And it's
somewhat of a painful experience. But what happened was that
I realized that each one of these experiences was the
road map to becoming who you are today or who
I was. Specifically, you know who I am today because
(04:31):
you don't particularly learn much from your awesome experiences. We've
all met the super rich kid who's had an almost
perfect life and nothing really that bad has happened to them.
That rich kid usually is kind of a nothing person,
you know, like when you meet them and you go, oh,
you're a very thin human and that's kind of not
your fault. You just haven't been given the opportunity to
(04:52):
go through fire, which hardens you, which strengthens you, right,
And so I realized that, oh, that's why I operate
this way, because I had this experience and it's taught
me to treat people like this, or to be kind
in these situations, or to be this or that. And
you realize that this, these experiences are actually the lanterns
(05:13):
that light your path along life, but you don't even
realize it because you don't want to think about it.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
That's a really nice way of putting it. Because there
is a common theme that does run through these stories.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
Yeah, one of them is pooping my paints.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
There is the coke brown. Oh, I just have this
vision of this tiny little boy and it all happening
around you. I can visualize that. Will leave that to
the readers to enjoy that number. But there's a theme
running through all these stories, a need for acceptance and belonging. Yes,
And I'm wondering whether you still have those needs now, Yes.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
And I think we all do. I think we all
want to be loved. I think we all want to
be heard. I think we all want to feel like
there is a community out there that accepts us and
wants us to be part of that community. And I
think when you're and I don't. I don't want to
say this and imply that it is an experience exclusive
(06:09):
to migrant kids or children of migrants, because it's not.
It's an experience that everyone experiences, regardless of your background,
but we all just experience it in slightly different ways.
This desire to be accepted, right, But of course I'm
going to write it from a migrant perspective because that's
my perspective, or a child of migrants or refugees, and
so that context, being a child of refugees painted my
(06:32):
experience of wanting to be accepted. But I think that's
a universal experience. And a lot of these experiences that
we want to bury and that are so embarrassing do
revolve around us making choices that weren't quite the right choice.
But ultimately there were things that we did because we
just wanted people to care about us and love us.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
I loved getting to know your family in this book.
I love getting to know your parents. Tell me about
your parents, where they're from, and how they ended up
in New Zealand.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
Yeah, I mean speaking of parents, shout out to my
Happy Mother's Day. Happy Mother's Day to my mom and
my wife who was a mother. But yeah, my parents
are really just They're just really hard working people who
have been through a lot in their lives and have
(07:22):
really tried to not allow that a lot to get
in the way. And sometimes it does for lots of
migrant parents and refugee parents, and sometimes it doesn't. But
I think I'm really grateful that I had parents that
prioritized their kids, and I'm really grateful that I had
(07:42):
parents that prioritize creating a really great life for us.
But when you're raised by refugee parents, and I talk
about this in the book, you inevitably because when you're
seven or eight or nine years old, you're trying to
figure out society right, and they are too, So you're
doing this beautiful dance where both of you are trying
to figure out the world together. You don't have the
luxury of having parents that grew up in this country
(08:05):
and understand the con text beautifully, like my kids have
that luxury. I was born and raised here, so I
understand the New Zealand context like it's in me. It's
part of my being. So they don't have to worry
about their dad having to figure New Zealand out with them,
whereas that was my experience. I had to learn New
Zealand with my mum and with my dad, and that
(08:27):
is a beautiful thing and can also lead to embarrassing moments,
but it's part of it. It's part of it.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Yeah, absolutely, which are perfect for a book, which perfect
for a book. As you say, you're born here, but
you're half Pakistani, half you're half an from around half
Pakistani your parents. How do you reconcile that, I suppose
discomfort of being from a variety of different worlds when
you're growing up.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
Yeah, I mean, I think my life growing up and
this is an experience shared by a lot of kids
and young people growing up in New Zealand that share
my content with regardless of whether the countries are the same,
they share that duality and I think my context was
(09:14):
my experience was defined by that duality, not only the
Pakistani Iranian duality, but then also the son of refugees
slash New Zealand duality because I was born here and
raised here, so I know nothing more. I know nothing
else other than New Zealand. I don't know anything else.
But never fully felt accepted. For a while, I feel
(09:35):
fully do. I feel fully accepted now. I'll be honest
with I'll be honest. I would say I feel more
accepted now, I feel closer to fully accepted. But still
there's something that gnaws away and makes me sometimes feel
not fully accepted. That's a bigger topic that we don't
have to get into it.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
But I was wondering you no longer feel the need
to claim your tongue.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
In no, no, and yes. These are examples that show
that the desperate desire to feel accepted has quieter down. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
And so there's a great chapter in the book where
you talk about incorporating that into a comedy.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
Yes, a show of yours.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
And I'm wondering, was that the riskiest thing you did,
because you really hate to think hard about whether you
would include that and how it would be received.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
I don't know if it was the riskiest thing I've
done on stage, but it felt like it at the
time because I was talking about the idea of literally
just absorbing someone else's culture for my benefit, and I
didn't know if that was okay, and it kind of
isn't okay, but is okay. And I think the reason
it was accepted, and I think the reason the tongue
(10:42):
in community was like this guy's awesome, which I'm so
grateful for still to this day, is that it came
from real truth. It wasn't made up, it wasn't exaggerated.
It was like real honesty. It's genuinely what I did
as a kid because I hated being from Iran. I
hated the Middle Eastern connection to you know, terrorism was
(11:04):
something that was part of the news a lot in
the early two thousands for reasons that we all know,
and so Iran, you know, the assumption being middlest and
you were connected to those extremist groups immediately and you
had no choice. They would just connect you to them
as a joke. And so I dropped it and became
tongue in for real?
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Is that at school?
Speaker 3 (11:23):
That was at school, that was at primary, primary, intermediate, and.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
You started young.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
I started young. Yeah, deeply experienced, deeply experienced my lot
to all my tongue and listeners. So yeah, I think
it's because it came from a place of truth that that,
and I think audiences could feel that. But yeah, at
the time it felt risky. I did not know how
the Pacific community would respond. I did not know how
the tongue in community would respond. And doing it on stage,
(11:51):
this is not an exaggeration. I've never crushed harder on
stage than that moment, and my life has been a
series of me chasing that moment.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
Now, that was a really that was really interesting to
read because I think that I think to be a
stand up comedian, it's the bravest thing in the world.
I just think I can't think of anything more mortifying
than doing that. And as you say, there was this,
but you just had this wave of love and laughter
and you just went it worked on on fire and
(12:19):
it was brilliant. And then you have that and then
all of a sudden you realize how good it can
be to get that kind of feeling. And that's why
you keep getting back up on stage.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
I consume to just I mean, that's not the sole
reason I get back up on stage. Like I really
like to inject purpose into my into creating, like the
purpose to like challenge people's thought or bring people together
or talk about an interesting idea that could maybe change
someone's mind about something. But yeah, I'm not going to pretend.
I'm not going to lie and pretend like it isn't
part of it. It definitely is part of a little
(12:49):
bit of it. Yeah, it's a little bit of it.
And I've had a great career since then. I've had
some amazing gigs since then, but nothing has quite felt
like the first time you crush in front of two
thousand people. It's something different. I love it.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
And this is what I love about you that this
book is absolutely hilarious, but you're not afraid to kind
of talk about the difficult stuff. And I want to
ask you about how we're doing in New Zealand. How
racist are we. Are we better than we were when
you were growing up? For example?
Speaker 3 (13:16):
Oh, one hundred percent. I think we're much better than
we were when I was growing up. I think we
were much better than we were when my dad first
arrived in the eighties and my mom first arrived in
the eighties. I think we've advanced a lot I like
to use the word matured. I think as a society
we've matured a lot in New Zealand and we've come
into our almost like societal almost not adulthood, but it's
(13:39):
almost like as a society we're becoming like early twenty
year olds as a collective, where we're like starting to
understand who we are as a multicultural society. But I
still think that there's room for improvement. I still think
there's room for growth, and I want people. When I
say that, I really want and I'm going to say
white people for lack of a better term, but that's
(14:02):
a blanket statement. And I use that blanket statement because
I don't have time to be more nuanced than that.
But I really want the majority, let's say the majority
of people in New Zealand. Rather than saying white people.
I really would love for there to not be defensiveness,
but rather an understanding of what I'm saying. I'm not
(14:22):
saying when I say this room for improvement. I'm not
saying you're the bad guy. I'm saying when you, as
the majority, understand that this room for improvement, and you
try and improve, or you try and help to have
a conversation with other people. You as the majority. You
don't understand how powerful that is. When the majority is
on our team, the migrants, the children of migrants, The
(14:45):
support and the power that that gives us is unmatched.
And so when you're an ally, there is a wave
of development and advancement that happens that is far greater
than the brown people going please stop stop. You know
when when the majority go, hey, we hear you, understand
(15:07):
and we're here to support you, man, that's a that's
a different level of positive injection into society. And that
that's why I say that because sometimes I feel like
when I when I talk about this kind of stuff,
there potentially is a defensiveness. And if we move away
from defensiveness and go I want to hear you and
I want to help, it's magical. It's actually magical.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
There's one other thing I wanted to ask you about
from the book, and that is that you say that
it takes about eight years to get good at good
at stand up coming minimum. And I thought to myself,
did you know that when you started out? Because I'm
not sure that. I mean, that's a long time to
get good at something, but you hit a lot of
early success, So what what what is it when you go, yeah,
I'm good at this, what what have you nailed?
Speaker 3 (15:49):
It's interesting because you think early on in your career
you say I'm good at this, and you think you're
good at it, but you're not good at it, and
you realize you weren't good at it. You've got potential
and you and you're getting laughs. But eight years later
you look back at your material, for example, or you
look back at footage of yourself doing stand up and
you go, oh.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
Craft it is it? The way you craft the story
or know what.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
I'll tell you what it is. It's a very simple thing,
very hard to get. It takes a long time to get,
but very simple in concept. It's finding your voice and
feeling truly comfortable on stage. I think it takes seven
to tenish years to walk on stage and for the
audience to go, ah, we feel fully comfortable with this person,
(16:34):
because it doesn't when you first start, say you're two
or three years in or four years in. I'm not
saying you're a bad stand up from like a structure
perspective or from a craft perspective, you could be a
great joke writer. But it takes a while for you
to really settle into yourself on stage. And that's the
part that then when that flip, when that switch flips,
(16:55):
that's when you become a really potent comedian, when the
audience can fully relax with you on stage. Fascinating. I
love that.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
Thank you so much, Thank you for having me, thank
you for coming.
Speaker 3 (17:05):
In and for reading harrowing book.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
If you need a laugh, I can. I can guarantee
you'll definitely get one.
Speaker 3 (17:12):
The book I tried. I tried to fill it with gags.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
It's filled with gagsat No Mortified is the name of
the box, Things I Have to Laugh About, And it
is in stores now. It is twenty four past ten
year with Newstalks ATB.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
live to News Talks at B from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.
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