April 10, 2018 • 38 mins
This week’s guest, Maz Jobrani, appears on CBS’ Superior Donuts and on his own Netflix standup special, Immigrant. As the father of two young children and one of the few Iranian-Americans on television, Jobrani consciously turns down terrorist roles...much to the dismay of Chuck Norris. Join us as Maz discusses bringing up his kids, his own father (“He reminded me of Vito Corleone”) and the right way to do ethnic humor.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
I don't want to use the word role models, but
but we have a power to change the image a
little bit, and so I think that that falls on
our shoulders, and I try to take that pretty seriously.
And and I'm proud of what my kids see me do.
They've seen my stand up and they seem to like it,
so that's good. Hello, and welcome to the Fatherly Podcast.
(00:30):
I'm your host Joshua David's time today. My guest is
Iranian American comedian and actor mas To BROWNI. You might
recognize him as far as Hamadani Flrani from CBS is
Superior Donuts, or maybe from his two thousand seventeen Netflix
stand up special Immigrant. As one of the few Iranian
American comics out there, and as a father of two
(00:52):
young children, Moles feels a special responsibility not to feed
into stereotypes. His memoir is called I'm not a Terrorist,
but I've played one on TV. That's a good place
to start. Stay tuned, Welcome to a folloy podcast. My
name is Jashla. David's died. I hope you en delay yourself.
(01:15):
You have a lot of things going on, and I
feel like, strangely triangulated to be extremely relevant for us,
from your work on Superior Donuts, your work and last
year's Immigrant, the Netflix special, and the world in terms
of being an Iranian American in this weirdo political climate,
(01:35):
and then as a dad of two, how you are negotiating,
you know, raising kids in this environment and also how
you balance setting an example for your kids in the
world and making a living. I was reading in your
autobiography you talked about turning down villainous roles. You're not
going to play the terrorist anymore. Did having kids play
(01:56):
into that at all? That you don't want to set
that image up of being a per An American or
Arianian American, that that came a lot earlier before the kids.
That came when I early in my career, I would
say just a few years in when I first started,
my agents was sending me out on auditions. And it
was interesting because one of the first auditions I actually
had was for the show Walker Texas Ranger, which was
(02:17):
Chuck Norris, and so, as you can imagine, it was
a bad guy, it was a villain. It was a
terrorist of like European descent or something. So I went
on audition for that then the second audition I got
was for a security guard in the TV show. There
was a show called Chicago Hope security guard in a
in a hospital. So I was like, okay, cool, once
in a while I played bad guy once to blay
(02:39):
a while, I'll play a security guard. That's cool. Um.
But then slowly it started looking like it was a
lot more terrorist auditions than any more cop or security
guard auditions. And so I started seeing that those are
the types of parts that were coming my way. And
I did a Chuck Norris movie of the week, not
(03:00):
that Walk in Texas Stranger, but another thing he had.
I played a terrorist in that, and um, and doing it,
I just felt bad. I felt off. It was first
of it was a Chuck Norris movie, so it wasn't
anything artistically um fulfilling. Yeah, you're right that everyone who
worked on the Chuck Norris movie is somehow related to
Chuck Norris. Yes, that was very much the case in that.
(03:21):
Just to explain what was happening with it, it was
it was a Chuck Norris movie. Where this was before
September eleven. At the time, Bin Lawden was public Enemy
number one and he they had not attacked the World
Trace Center yet but but he was on the most
Wanted list, and so Chuck Norris's screenwriters, wherever they are,
(03:41):
had written a movie of the Week for CBS where
there's a bin Laden type character who has a couple
of guys that he sent to America to blow up
a building in Chicago. And I played the physicist who
was putting the bomb together, who was gonna, you know,
help blow up that building in Chicago. At least you
are well educated. Yes, I was a well educated bum
(04:03):
blow upper. Even auditioning for that at that point it
felt goofy. It felt like selling out. The reason that
I convinced myself that I should do it was at
the time, I had a day job. I was working
as an assistant in an advertising agency, and I was
just looking for a way to get out of that
day job. And I thought to myself, if I can
put together enough TV gigs or movie gigs, then maybe
(04:28):
I can quit this day job and really go a
hundred percent onto my acting in my comedy. So that's
really how I convinced myself. And then I also said
to myself, you know what I'm gonna do is even
though its Chuck Norris, movie the week. I'm going to
bring some integrity to this character. I'm going to show
through my acting why this guy has so much vindictiveness
(04:50):
towards America. Why does he want to destroy the US?
And you know, as an actor, a lot of times
you're taught to do a biogra a fee for your character.
What happened to your character before the movie started, what's
his story? And so you're supposed to fill that in
yourself just as an exercise. So in doing that exercise,
I said, well, this character, he's an Afghan whose family
(05:14):
was killed at the hands of some American bombs years ago. Now,
logically speaking, if you know the history, given the timeline
of all this, this guy would have probably been a
kid in the early eighties in Afghanistan and that's when
the Russians were in Afghanistan. So really, if anything, he
should be in Moscow blowing up a building. But I
(05:35):
kind of looked pasty a little. But you know, maybe
Chuck Norris would have been forgiving right absolutely when you
sat down and explained this backstory to him in your
table read. First of all, there was no table reading.
There was no explaining anything to Chuck in the movie
It was funny because in this movie of the week
Chuck plays a professor. Uh yeah, that should have been like, Okay,
come on, I can't do this. But I thought to myself,
(05:57):
and actually what happened was by reading that he was
playing a professor teaching at some university and he's talking
about the Middle East. He's a professor in Middle Eastern
politics or something, and one of the students in the
class raises his hand and says something along the lines
of hey, professor Norris or whatever his name was, Um, exactly,
shouldn't we why don't we just bomb them all and
(06:19):
get rid of them? There are a bunch of animals
or whatever. And then Professor Norris goes, now, now, Thomas,
they're not all bad. There's some good, and we need to,
you know, get the bad guys. But we can't just
be dropping bombs. And when I read that, I go, oh,
there's a little bit of nuance in this Chuck Norris
movie of the week. Perhaps Chuck is coming around to
see the world and in my way, so I thought,
(06:40):
you know what, maybe I can go and be a
part of this and actually do this character with some integrity.
So I flew from Los Angeles down to Dallas where
they were filming it, and I went in from my
wardrobe fitting and the lady goes, here's your shirt, here's
your pants, and here's your turban. And I go, wait
a minute. I go, I'm sorry, miss wardrobe lady. I go,
(07:01):
Afghans in America don't wear turbans. If I wear a
Taliban in the mountains, maybe, if I were an Indian
seek in America, sure, but Afghans in America don't wear turbans.
I go, especially in Afghan in America, who's trying to
blow up a building, It's not gonna be walking around
the turban. She said, well, you know the producers wanted
you to wear the turban. I said, listen, let the
producers know. I've done my research. I know the Muslims
(07:23):
in America and how they look, and this guy would
look like a normal guy. Maybe maybe if you want,
he could button up his top button on his shirt. Maybe,
But other than that, I said, this turban is ridiculous.
She goes, okay, I'll tell them. And then the next
day I go to my trailer. There's my shirt, there's
my pants, and then there's a thing that looks like
a scarf, and I was like, oh, okay, I'll wear scarf.
It's also professor, you know, very professorial exactly. This is
(07:45):
a there's a tip of the hat to Professor Norris.
So so she goes, no, that's not a scarf, that's
the turban. You just gotta wrap it back up. And
I was like, oh, come on, and and she goes, no, really,
she goes, listen, they want the turban. And I put
on the turban and I went on set and blocking
the scene. And the director is Chuck Norris's son, Eric Norris.
I was able to catch him for a minute in
(08:07):
between blocking and said, hey, Eric, let me ask you
a question. I really think that it's pretty silly that
my character is wearing a turban. And he and he goes,
you know what, I agree with you. I didn't want
the turban. But my uncle, I believe his name was
Aaron Norris, who's a producer. He goes, he wanted the turban.
So I was quickly able to assess in my mind
(08:28):
that the uncle was probably an older school uh Norris.
He probably the old Norris of the old branch. He yes,
he he. I think was able to equate the turban.
Too bad guy. He figured our audience will see the turban. No,
that's the bad guy that will help get that point across.
(08:50):
Whereas Eric Norris is from the progressive wing of the
North Family, exactly where he knows bad guys will blend in.
So I wore the turban. I fell like an idiot.
And that was really where the seeds started of me
saying no to those auditions. And early in your career,
it's hard to say no because you think you're supposed
(09:10):
to take everything. Also, because I had a day job,
I still wanted to get out of it. I still
thought I should take everything. But I came back, I
talked to my agents, said, listen, guys, this I just
felt really bad playing this part and I don't want
to do this again. And what was interesting was from
the time we filmed this in early two thousand one,
then September eleven happened. I was really worried because people
(09:31):
were going around shooting Indian Sikhs who had turbans on
just because they had turbans. And so there was a
lot of stupidity going on in America at the time,
kind of like now. So I actually wrote a letter
to Chuck Norris and I believe to less Moon Visus,
the head of CBS at the time, and I said, listen, guys,
(09:51):
I really hope that you don't put this movie out
because people are shooting people mistakenly, and I would hate
for someone to see the move be and then think
that the actors who played the bad guys, if they
saw us out in the streets, think we're the real
deal and then come after us. And Chuck Norris had
could actually a little bit after September eleven, he had
written some sort of op ed piece where he just said,
(10:12):
you know, I really want to get this show on air.
I want to get this movie on air because in
this movie, the the terrorists get what they deserve and
we really show them. Yeah, you're appealing to the wrong party.
I know, I know. And it was funny because they
decided to run with the film. They totally ignored me
um and I watched that. I was nervous. I was like,
oh my god, I can't go to the coffee shop
(10:33):
to Marcus. Someone's gonna shoot me. As I'm watching the movie,
I swear as every minute went by, I just started
realizing how bad the movie was. It was just the
worst movie ever, Like because Chuck played the prefect oreal type,
there was a young guy who was now the ass
kicker guy, and I swear as the movie went on,
you started rooting against the ass kicker. It was done
(10:54):
so poorly, Like they were so bland and so bad
that it's at a certain point in the movie, I
was like, someone should shoot me, not for being a
terrorist in in this movie, just for doing this movie,
just for being in this movie, you know. So I
really wanted to get out of that world, and so
I told my agents and they said, Okay, we totally
support you. It feels very frustrating, and you want to
(11:15):
participate in the industry and there's positions and jobs open,
but they're so circumscribed by kind of a distilled version
of public fear. Absolutely. Yeah, It's kind of like I
used to do a joke where I said, when you
get into this business, they find out your Middle Easter
and they go, oh, your Middle East? And great, can
you say I will kill you in the name of Allah?
And then you go and you go, I could, But
what if I played this the doctor in this movie?
(11:37):
They go, oh, that's great, Yeah, then you can hijack
the hospital. So it's like, no matter what, you're gonna
be hijacking stuff that The Fatherly Podcast is brought to
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you And now back to the show. Here's what I've
been pointing out to people is that unfortunately I always
(12:24):
say it. You know, you could sit on the sidelines
and complain until you're blue in the face. So whether
you're Arab or Iranian or Pakistani or Muslim or whatever
you are, you can sit there and go look at
how they portrayers, look at how the portray as well.
The way to counter that is to start writing and
producing and finding funding for your projects and counter those things.
I mean a great example of that is the Big
(12:46):
Sick that Kamil Nan Johnny did, very straight, very you
know s a Pakistani guy and and it's a great
story and and uh and there you have it, or
or even looking at as he's im sorry you know
another one well, and both of those obviously they're Asian descent,
plays into the storyline, but in a way that feels
like it's from the inside out, not from the outside in. Absolutely,
(13:09):
And I think that's the that's the importance, is that
they are the ones telling the story. And so that's
what I mean. In my experience with Middle Easterners and
people from that part of the world, First of all
of them have not been terrorists. I mean I've never,
in all honesty, never in my life have I ever
met a terrorist. If I were to write a story,
I'd want to write a story of the Middle Eastern businessman,
(13:31):
the Middle Eastern lawyer, the you know, the Iranian real estate,
which is what you actually play on Superior Donuts. Yeah,
I play Iraqi real estate. It's like it's like so close,
so close, it's so far. I know. My manager called
me up. He goes, listen, there's a pilot this year
that they're doing for CBS and there's a Middle Eastern
(13:52):
character in it named Mas. I said, yeah, I mean,
come on, this is ridiculous, because if you're gonna do
a Middle Eastern characters, usually they named them Ali, Mohammed
or Amir or something, not Mas. Mas is not a
very common Middlistian name. They obviously took my name when
we were doing the pilot. I said to them, guys,
you have the name Mas, and I'm doing it and
(14:14):
I'm Iranian, so why need you just make him an
Iranian American as opposed to Iraqi American. And they said
that they wanted to have him come from a war
torn country and I said, well, Iran was in a
seven or eight year war with Iraq in the early eighties.
And then they said, well, unfortunately a lot of Americans
don't really know about that. And I said, okay, I said,
(14:36):
that's a good point, but maybe an argument for better education, Yeah, exactly,
And they settled on keeping him Iraqi American. And I said,
just I said, if that's the case, he's just gotta
change his name. And I thought they would come back
with a name like Mohammed and they could call me Mo,
but they came back with the name Faws, which I've
never heard in my life before. You have this aperture
of what the public cantolery in terms of subtlety, and then,
(14:58):
because entertainment is an entertainment, you have to appeal to that,
you're kind of, I don't want to say at the mercy,
but in some way at the mercy of what people
will accept from you. The level of complexity. You know,
I'm always a little wary of executive saying things along
the lines of the public isn't ready for this. There's
been times when I've sold a couple of TV shows
(15:19):
based on my stand up comedy where I felt that
probably one of the things that went into decision making
of the show's not going into the pilot stage or
into the series stage. There was at some point someone saying, well,
I'm not sure if it's gonna appeal necessarily to a
wider audience. I disagree with that, because I just stand
(15:40):
up all over the country, and when I do stand
up and I make a reference to something that might
seem esoteric, do you realize how much we have in common?
I mean, that's one of the reasons why when I
first started, when I would talk about my parents, I
would say, my Iranian parents were like this and like
that growing up, but this is this was experience of
being in Iranian in America. But then I quickly started saying,
(16:00):
so is the experience of being an immigrant in America.
A lot of us, if we have immigrant backgrounds, we
have similar experiences. If we didn't have firsthand experience in
immigrant backgrounds, we at least had friends or people around
us who had that immigrant background. And your special, the
Netflix special, the first like ten minutes. It's an enjoyable
(16:20):
kind of roll call of your audience, and you have
people from around the world, a lot of Iranians, a
lot of you have one Chinese lady named Stephanie, a
white guy named Ed. There was this level of nuance
that you have an immigrant where you're you make all
these distinctions and communities, which I think is part of
what comedy is. You're talking about protesting at l a X,
(16:42):
the immigrant band, and like how minorities protest or people
of color protests versus like the white guys. So you're
kind of dividing up the world in ways that two
very subtle parsing. I think of allegiances and not to
get like weirdly academic, but like intersectionality. Yeah, absolutely, I mean, listen,
it's uh. I've had the benefit of seeing both sides,
(17:04):
and I'm just as guilty as anyone from either side
when I make assumptions about the other side. So, for example,
when it comes to being an immigrant and Trump, I
assumed that nine percent of immigrants would be offended by
and opposed to Trump. But I came to learn quickly
(17:25):
that there's a lot of immigrants, even Iranians and others
who might have been affected by the travel band, who
support Trump. And so it's shocking to me. But I go,
oh wow, yeah, there's that. Or like you said, being
someone who lives in America and we're talking about gender
issues and Caitlyn Jenner and and sex changes and what
(17:45):
have you, we can speak at a very open level
and not feel any sort of disgusted at that subject.
And yet I did that bit at one point in
front of a Persian audience that was it was at
a synagogues, so was a Persian Jewish. So I think
I'm even more conservative. But when I brought up Caitlyn Jenner.
Some lady in the audience goes disgusting, and I'm going
(18:09):
what And I was shocked? Did she even had the
gall to express herself like that? And then then I thought, okay,
so she's a conservative Persian Jewish lady. All right, that's
to be expected. You, for better or worse, probably better,
are very famous Arounnie an American. I think in a
culture that there's not that many AROUNDI An Americans who
(18:31):
talk about being Aroundie an American as much. Although maybe
I'm wrong, maybe I'm not. You're right, you're pretty right.
So how do you think about your public persona? How
do you think about your stand up? How do you
think about being an image for other not only AROUNDI
An Americans but people of color, but as a dad,
as someone who's a role model. How tell me about
that process in your mind or how you weigh that
(18:53):
As a creative person, I try to get away as
much as I can from believing my self as a
role model. I just want to do things that interests me.
I want to do things that make me laugh. Now
within there there is a radar in my mind of
oh that's a little bit selling out, that's kind of
going in the wrong direction that I wanted to go in. So,
for example, let's take the character on on Superior Donuts,
(19:15):
where I playing Iraqi American immigrant. One of the issues
we had on that was does he have an accent
or not. I argued that he should have an accent
because he's someone who came over after the Iraq War
and so he's been here recently or you know, within
the past ten fifteen years, so he would have exactly
I got my backstory up. And so with that, on
(19:36):
the one hand, as an actor, I personally am ready
to play a part that's closer to myself, at least
with with the accent. Like I'd i'd love to play
a part. The next part that I play, I'd love
it to be accent less. That said, I also sit
there and I go, well, this character requires an accent.
So we did the accent. And then the way I
look at it, if you were to talk about role
(19:57):
model and portrayal of Middle Easterners or Arabs or what
have you, one could look at my character and say,
you know, he is this greedy businessman who's trying to
buy the donuts shop. And so once again, the Arab
American is portrayed as a economic terrorists. Yeah, economic terrorists
is the villain in this. But I counter and I go,
you know, every week that this runs, they give me
(20:18):
a lot of very inappropriate things to say. I'm kind
of like the the Danny de Vito character from Taxi
or the real permanent character from Cheers. So whenever this
runs on Twitter, quite often I see people saying, oh,
I love that line that you said, Like they're laughing,
and I sit there and I go, oh great, they're
laughing at lines delivered by an Arab American and it's
not a terrorist thing. So I go, in a way,
(20:41):
in a very subliminal way, it's making Middle America who's
watching this laugh and go oh this this character, as
much as some of the lines are a little to
the extreme, as much as he's kind of the bad guy,
sometimes he's not a bad guy in a way that
is explicitly tied to being Iraqi. And also he's not
(21:02):
a bad guy that is, there's never been a pitch
for oh he comes into the donut shop and he
takes a hostage. He's just this guy. So that so
that hopefully people that are laughing they go, oh, Wow,
these guys have a sense of humor. Oh wow, these
guys make me laugh. So I feel like in a
way that character is a step in the right direction. Again,
(21:22):
I don't want to use the word role models, but
but we have a power to change the image a
little bit. And so I think that that falls on
our shoulders and I try to take that pretty seriously.
And and um, and yeah, I feel I'm proud of
what my kids see me do. They've seen my stand
up and they seem to like it. So that's good.
It's getting laughs from your kid from dad jokes is
(21:43):
difficult anyways. Yeah, your characters are rocky in um Superior Donuts.
Do you have a separate Iraqi accent versus a Arsi
Iranian accent? Good one, good one. I'm not specific enough
to have actually found an Iraqi person who would then
give me training on an a rocky accent. I just
whenever I do Arabic accent, and I think a lot
of Arabs get upset at it, but it's the best
(22:05):
I can do. I just speed it up a little bit,
and I do kind of this like Middle Eastern accent
that talks like this. And you know that although in
the show. Actually I've started to make it less in
My wife noticed because did you lose your accent? I
was like, I don't know, just just watch the show.
But Iranians are they talk like this. Iranian is a
lot slower like these. The Iranian they talk they take
(22:26):
the award and they elongate the ward a lot, and
they talk like that. And Abic is a lot more
like this. They talk fast like this. They almost it's
almost like you pronounced every every little uh letter. I
always say it's Arabic sounds like you're doing cocaine. You
talk very fast and coo and Persian sounds like you're
on the heroin. You're just slowing down like that. That's
(22:48):
a good dialect. Pneumonic exactly, Yes, Arabic exactly. There you go.
And I kind of more serious note about raising kids.
So you're your wife is Indian, Indian American. Yes, you
are around an American and your kids are right what
did you call it in your act? Colored up? Colored up?
(23:08):
I think I said they're all colored up. Do you
feel more hopeful or less hopeful about raising them in America?
There's a couple of things. I think that that's going on.
I think Number one is as we have more interracial
kids are neighbor's kid, the fathers African American, mother's white.
Our kids are half and half. I think the more
(23:31):
we mix our races, I think that it becomes harder
to hate the other because your background comes from those
other groups. So I'm hopeful for our kids. It's amazing
how sensitive they are now too. A lot of these
even even language. I mean, I was at the house
one time and I was talking about the neighbors and
I said something along the lines of his dad's black
(23:53):
and his mother's white. And then I and then in
my little six year old daughter, her mouth just dropped
and she stared at my wife from and I go,
what's wrong where I say? And then my six year
old goes, Daddy, you're not supposed to say black, You're
supposed to say African American. I was like, oh, jeez, okay.
So I think they're more and more sensitive to these things,
and so I am hopeful for the future. I also
(24:15):
feel that with the Internet, people just get exposed to
a lot of other stuff. Now. At the same time,
we've seen the negative side of the Internet and how
people get on social media and they cuss each other out,
and your kids allowed on social media. Not on social media.
They you know, they'll go on YouTube and watch silly
little videos that I don't understand at all. Unboxing, Yeah,
(24:37):
unboxing and stuff like that, and I'm just like, oh
my god, this can't be good for the brain. And
then I think, well, you know, I used to sit
my parents used to sit me in front of a
TV for hours and hours watched Dallas, I watched I
saw I saw the Exorcist when I was a kid,
I saw that on TV. And one of the jokes
I do now is that the reason kids are more
exhausting today than we were when we were kids, because
as parents, we actually have to spend time with our kids.
(24:59):
You know, back in the day, if there was a
father who played catch with his son, then that was
an exceptional dad. You're like, oh wow, look at that.
What a great father. He goes out there and plays
catch with his son. Now, if you don't play catch
with your son, you might get child Services called on you.
I mean it's like you get shamed. You know, like
when your daughter wanted to do a tea party, you
didn't join the tea party. How dare you you know
(25:21):
your dad wasn't like that, though you write in your
book that your dad was a wealthy man of mysterious origin. Yeah,
my dad was a very He was a very gregarious
human being. He reminded me of Vito Corleone in The Godfather.
He was a man who had made his money um
in Iran. He owned an electric company. He had made
(25:42):
a lot of money through that. He had a lot
of friends in high places. He had friends that were
generals and mayors and police chiefs, and and he was
the guy that if you ever wanted to get some
of them done, you'd go to him. He'd take care
of it for you. So if you said, for example,
in Iran, military service was mandatory, and so if you
wanted your on not to be in the military, but
maybe you couldn't afford to pay the fee to get
(26:03):
him out of it, my father would either pay it
for you or he would just He took care of
a lot of people. And I was before the revolution,
and I would hear all these stories, and I thought
to myself, maybe my dad's just exaggerating. And then when
he passed away, I would run into people. I ran
into a guy I was doing a show in Dubai.
This man and his like whatever sixties or something at
the time, came up to me. He goes, your last
(26:25):
name is Joe Branni. Are you hostro Joe Brni's son?
And I was like yes, and he goes, your father
saved my life. And I'll go, what are you talking about.
He goes, you know, back in the day. He goes,
we'd go to these spas and we'd be hanging out
in the steam room, and you know, that's where people
men would go to talk politics and sports and what
have you. And he goes, we're there and I knew
him from the spa and I and I was telling
(26:47):
him how just getting married and I needed a I
needed to buy a place, and your father, at the
time owned a lot of property. So he told me
to meet him at a certain location, which was one
of his buildings. We go there. My father goes, you know,
pick a unit in this building and just move in
and pay me when you can. And he goes, he
(27:07):
was so generous, and I go, okay, I didn't. I
never knew he did that. And he goes, yeah, he
was doing that kind of stuff all the time. And
he goes, what happened was we moved in, and he goes,
eventually through time, I was able to pay your father back.
But he goes, the more important thing was if I
had not been able to get that place at that time, Um,
that was the unit that we were able to sell
to get enough money to flee the country when the
(27:28):
revolution happened, He goes, I wouldn't have had the money.
So he traced that all back to my dad. And
I was like, oh, wow, you kind of read about
by the time your dad was older and had settled
in the States, I guess towards the end of his life,
although correct me if I'm wrong, he didn't have the
economic power anymore. Like he wasn't like a big mocker
that he was back in Iran when you were a child.
(27:49):
What was it like to see your dad And what
was it like after he died to see that he
had been that powerful when you know, you didn't really
experience that here. He was just a big guy. And
so I always say, like my mom used to actually
hit us. My mom would get upset and come after
us with hangers and and like beat us as kids.
I thought it was real, man, she used to hit us.
(28:11):
It was accepted. It was it was like a spanking.
It wasn't like she was taking an iron and burning
our arms. It was whatever, she's napping and we're sitting
there and making a mess or whatever making noise, and
she'd be like, you, she starts chasing us. She would
do that, she pull our ears. I mean my mom,
Like now, my mom is really calmed down, like she's
super sweet, but back then, it's kind of like my wife.
(28:31):
I see, my wife spends a lot of time with
the kids and she loses her mind sometimes, and I
totally understand. So my mom would do the same with us.
And my dad never hit us. But he was this
big guy and he just had this deep voice, and
so if we were misbehaving, all he had to do
was yell your name really loud. He'd be like, mauls
you are and then you'd just be like you just
(28:52):
whimper away. So yeah, he was very intimidating, but at
the same time a very loving person. It's interesting because
we came to America lot of money. He was able
to get a lot of his money out. So when
we first my first foray into America, I was six
years old. It was late seventy eight, there was protests
in the streets of Iran, and I think a lot
of Iranians thought that the Shaw would squash the protests
(29:14):
and that we could go back. So my father was
on business in New York. He was staying at the
Plaza Hotel and a suite at the Plaza Hotel, and
he sent from my mom to bring my sister and
I to stay with him over our winter break two weeks,
and we even left my baby brother back in Iran.
I a would say we came for two weeks and
we stayed for forty years. My first experience with America
was staying in a a in a suite at the
(29:35):
Plaza Hotel across the street from F. A. O. Schwartz,
the biggest toy store in the world, and I'm going, Wow,
America is a great place. But eventually what happened was
my father lost most of his money in bad real
estate investments because he bought a bunch of properties when
we moved to California, bought a bunch of properties, and
in the early eighties, when the Reagan Recession hit, he
(29:57):
was left with those properties at high interest rates, so
he started bleeding money towards the I would say early nineties,
he went back to Iran because at that point Iran
opened up to people that had fled and said come back,
because a lot of people had fled and left money behind,
so they said come back. And so my father went
back to Iran to try and do stuff with the
properties he had in Iran that he had left behind.
(30:20):
And when he went back, they said, well, you haven't
been here for ten twelve years, so you owe all
of these back taxes. So if you want to do
any business, you've got to first pay us. And also
until you pay us, you're not allowed to leave the country.
So he was stuck. How old are you, I was
probably late teens, early twenties. I was at UC Berkeley
at the time. It was this quagmire for my father
because on the one hand, he had the potential to
(30:44):
make some money again and be the lion that he
had always been, which was this businessman. At the same time,
his hands were tied and he couldn't come back to America.
The last several years of his life, he sort of
grew accustomed back to that style in Iran, which was
a very it's a much slower lifestyle he came to
America a couple of times for different medical reasons. It
(31:08):
was hard to see the man who had been such
a lion really lose that. It was hard as a
son to see that. At the same time, I felt
it was also empowering to be there to help take
care of him, So that was that was a good feeling.
I think in two thousand and five or so, he
came to America as well for another health thing. Seeing
(31:30):
this man who had been so vivacious suddenly have trouble walking.
And at the end of his life, we had him
in a in a nursing facility, and we would go
visit him in the day and we go have lunch
with him, and and he would be walking with a cane,
and then he just wanted to go back to the
nursing facility and get his meds for the day. He
passed away at the age of seventy six, and that
(31:51):
was in two thousand and nine. It's hard as a
son to see that and experience at the same time,
it was a caution ary tale. My father throughout his
life had been a big drinker. He'd really gone hard
in his life. He also, like I said, he helped
a lot of people financially, but never really planned for
(32:12):
his retirement. And so with that in mind, I am
someone who tries to as much as I can, put
away money for a retirement, put away money for my
kids education. I don't know if you ever read Candid
Voltaire's Candide in College, but it's all about college. I
read it last week. Last week. There you go. But
it's all about these people in a palace and how
(32:34):
they it gets rated and then these people that were
living a noble life then end up out in the world.
You realize that in life, no matter how you plan.
I mean, look, I could put all this money away
as much as I want. If the stock market crashes,
there goes the money. Yeah, I mean I struggle with
that too. But I think just because it's not a
short thing doesn't mean you don't act in a virtuous way. Absolutely.
(32:54):
I think that you need to. You know, my father
one thing he used to say that I liked. He said,
if you learn from other people's mistakes, then you're a
lot further ahead. And so he goes, he goes, I'm
seventy years old, but I've lived seven hundred years. He
really experienced a lot. I mean, he did everything. He
traveled the world. He, like I said, had friends in
high places, He helped people, He did a lot, a lot,
(33:15):
a lot of stuff. I need to take his experience
and learn from it. That's what we can do. And
as and as sad as it is to see when
your parents get old and sick, it's something that many
of us have to deal with. You just step up
and you take care of it. When you have issues happen,
it's your day to day. You you you're so in it.
You're dealing with this. So every morning you're up, you're
(33:35):
going to the nursing facility, then you're back with the kids.
Then the next day you're back to the nursing facility,
then you're at work, then you're here, and you don't
give yourself time to decompress and process it. I would
say that recently, you know, this past year, I actually
had a big tragedy happened. My sister passed away from
breast cancer. She was one of the closest people to
me in my life. And yeah, and again it's you know,
(33:57):
I was so go, go, go go, and I've learned
that I need to give myself time to reflect upon it.
So I went and saw a grievance counselor, and now
I'm going to go see a therapist. And part of
it is just to talk and to and to say,
you know, like you just said, how does this stuff
affect us? Let's let's reflect on it for a minute.
And then I think the key is then to see
(34:18):
if you can take those emotions, process them, and then
find ways to honor those people. Um Like I said,
in a way, learning from my father's mistakes is kind
of honoring him as well, because you know, I'm passing
on hopefully better things to my children. It does occur
to me, for having watched your stand up, is there
(34:38):
ever a negotiation between you and your wife, or you
and your mom, or maybe even you and your kids
about Hey, is this material I can use in my act?
Is this something that you feel comfortable with? Or is
it that you as a comedian is the creative person
everything you touch become sort of yours. There's not a
negotiation before, so I'll do bits and but there have
(35:00):
been times where they have brought stuff up my wife
early on, when we first started dating, I used to
do a joke about boyfriend girlfriend stuff in general, it
wasn't about her at all. It wasn't even inspired by her.
And she goes that bit, people could look at it
as if you're talking about me. It wasn't that I
stopped doing the bit because it really, again was very
(35:21):
It was a very silly bit. It killed There was
a good bit. What are you talking about? So when
my sister passed away, I was trying to find some
material that honored her but also helped deal with that passing.
And so one night my mom was at the show
and I did a couple of those jokes and my
mom didn't like them, and she said, you know that,
(35:41):
I think that's kind of a bad taste and I
and I kind of reflected on and I said, you know,
the honest truth is the jokes weren't really that funny.
So I was like, if I really want to honor
my sister, there's definitely deeper ways to do it. So
I saw eye to eye with her on that. When
my kids are in the audience, I try as much
as I can if I'm saying something like, for example,
I'll do a lot of her about like, you know,
the kids are exhausting, Oh my god, they're breaking my
(36:03):
balls or whatever, whatever, whatever I try to emphasize to them, guys,
because even in the act, I'll say, you know, we
love them. I love my kids, but this is how
exhausted I am because of them. It's a very treacherous
line to navigate. I feel even as a writer myself,
I read about having kids and my relationship with them,
and I feel so you know, they don't have a
(36:26):
say really over what I write or not write, what
I expose about them or not exposed about them, and
it's my job to do that. And that's what pays
for everyone to survive. Absolutely, and you've got to be
true to your voice. And so the only thing you
can do is if you know that they're going to
read it, or you know that they're gonna see it,
you just go out of your way to give them
(36:48):
a nod and go listen. This, I might be saying
that I'm exhausted by you, guys, but just know that
I would never trade that for anything in the world.
I love you, guys, and this is just me being
a human being who gets tired the same way you guys.
Maybe love to play on the trampoline, but at a
certain point you get exhausted about it, the same way
you love your mom and your dad, but if we
tell you to clean your room, you roll your eyes.
(37:09):
You're a little frustrated by us. Or alternatively, I'm just
not teaching my kids how to read exactly. Well, Mams,
thank you for chatting with us. It's been a pleasure.
Thanks for having me, josh I appreciate it. Okay, I'll
talk to you later, all right, buddy, take care. Well,
(37:30):
that's it for this season of The Fatherly Podcast. This
season was executive produced by Sandy Smallens, engineered by Dave Savage.
Our theme music was by Kyle Forster with a little
help from Aggie Here and Stein. I'm your host, Joshua
David Stein, and I'll see you next time when you're
all a little older and wiser, or at least older.
Before I go, hey, Achilles, you've got a good joke
(37:52):
to go out on. Um, what do what? Cloth eight
n
I don't want to use the word role models, but
but we have a power to change the image a
little bit, and so I think that that falls on
our shoulders, and I try to take that pretty seriously.
And and I'm proud of what my kids see me do.
They've seen my stand up and they seem to like it,
so that's good. Hello, and welcome to the Fatherly Podcast.
(00:30):
I'm your host Joshua David's time today. My guest is
Iranian American comedian and actor mas To BROWNI. You might
recognize him as far as Hamadani Flrani from CBS is
Superior Donuts, or maybe from his two thousand seventeen Netflix
stand up special Immigrant. As one of the few Iranian
American comics out there, and as a father of two
(00:52):
young children, Moles feels a special responsibility not to feed
into stereotypes. His memoir is called I'm not a Terrorist,
but I've played one on TV. That's a good place
to start. Stay tuned, Welcome to a folloy podcast. My
name is Jashla. David's died. I hope you en delay yourself.
(01:15):
You have a lot of things going on, and I
feel like, strangely triangulated to be extremely relevant for us,
from your work on Superior Donuts, your work and last
year's Immigrant, the Netflix special, and the world in terms
of being an Iranian American in this weirdo political climate,
(01:35):
and then as a dad of two, how you are negotiating,
you know, raising kids in this environment and also how
you balance setting an example for your kids in the
world and making a living. I was reading in your
autobiography you talked about turning down villainous roles. You're not
going to play the terrorist anymore. Did having kids play
(01:56):
into that at all? That you don't want to set
that image up of being a per An American or
Arianian American, that that came a lot earlier before the kids.
That came when I early in my career, I would
say just a few years in when I first started,
my agents was sending me out on auditions. And it
was interesting because one of the first auditions I actually
had was for the show Walker Texas Ranger, which was
(02:17):
Chuck Norris, and so, as you can imagine, it was
a bad guy, it was a villain. It was a
terrorist of like European descent or something. So I went
on audition for that then the second audition I got
was for a security guard in the TV show. There
was a show called Chicago Hope security guard in a
in a hospital. So I was like, okay, cool, once
in a while I played bad guy once to blay
(02:39):
a while, I'll play a security guard. That's cool. Um.
But then slowly it started looking like it was a
lot more terrorist auditions than any more cop or security
guard auditions. And so I started seeing that those are
the types of parts that were coming my way. And
I did a Chuck Norris movie of the week, not
(03:00):
that Walk in Texas Stranger, but another thing he had.
I played a terrorist in that, and um, and doing it,
I just felt bad. I felt off. It was first
of it was a Chuck Norris movie, so it wasn't
anything artistically um fulfilling. Yeah, you're right that everyone who
worked on the Chuck Norris movie is somehow related to
Chuck Norris. Yes, that was very much the case in that.
(03:21):
Just to explain what was happening with it, it was
it was a Chuck Norris movie. Where this was before
September eleven. At the time, Bin Lawden was public Enemy
number one and he they had not attacked the World
Trace Center yet but but he was on the most
Wanted list, and so Chuck Norris's screenwriters, wherever they are,
(03:41):
had written a movie of the Week for CBS where
there's a bin Laden type character who has a couple
of guys that he sent to America to blow up
a building in Chicago. And I played the physicist who
was putting the bomb together, who was gonna, you know,
help blow up that building in Chicago. At least you
are well educated. Yes, I was a well educated bum
(04:03):
blow upper. Even auditioning for that at that point it
felt goofy. It felt like selling out. The reason that
I convinced myself that I should do it was at
the time, I had a day job. I was working
as an assistant in an advertising agency, and I was
just looking for a way to get out of that
day job. And I thought to myself, if I can
put together enough TV gigs or movie gigs, then maybe
(04:28):
I can quit this day job and really go a
hundred percent onto my acting in my comedy. So that's
really how I convinced myself. And then I also said
to myself, you know what I'm gonna do is even
though its Chuck Norris, movie the week. I'm going to
bring some integrity to this character. I'm going to show
through my acting why this guy has so much vindictiveness
(04:50):
towards America. Why does he want to destroy the US?
And you know, as an actor, a lot of times
you're taught to do a biogra a fee for your character.
What happened to your character before the movie started, what's
his story? And so you're supposed to fill that in
yourself just as an exercise. So in doing that exercise,
I said, well, this character, he's an Afghan whose family
(05:14):
was killed at the hands of some American bombs years ago. Now,
logically speaking, if you know the history, given the timeline
of all this, this guy would have probably been a
kid in the early eighties in Afghanistan and that's when
the Russians were in Afghanistan. So really, if anything, he
should be in Moscow blowing up a building. But I
(05:35):
kind of looked pasty a little. But you know, maybe
Chuck Norris would have been forgiving right absolutely when you
sat down and explained this backstory to him in your
table read. First of all, there was no table reading.
There was no explaining anything to Chuck in the movie
It was funny because in this movie of the week
Chuck plays a professor. Uh yeah, that should have been like, Okay,
come on, I can't do this. But I thought to myself,
(05:57):
and actually what happened was by reading that he was
playing a professor teaching at some university and he's talking
about the Middle East. He's a professor in Middle Eastern
politics or something, and one of the students in the
class raises his hand and says something along the lines
of hey, professor Norris or whatever his name was, Um, exactly,
shouldn't we why don't we just bomb them all and
(06:19):
get rid of them? There are a bunch of animals
or whatever. And then Professor Norris goes, now, now, Thomas,
they're not all bad. There's some good, and we need to,
you know, get the bad guys. But we can't just
be dropping bombs. And when I read that, I go, oh,
there's a little bit of nuance in this Chuck Norris
movie of the week. Perhaps Chuck is coming around to
see the world and in my way, so I thought,
(06:40):
you know what, maybe I can go and be a
part of this and actually do this character with some integrity.
So I flew from Los Angeles down to Dallas where
they were filming it, and I went in from my
wardrobe fitting and the lady goes, here's your shirt, here's
your pants, and here's your turban. And I go, wait
a minute. I go, I'm sorry, miss wardrobe lady. I go,
(07:01):
Afghans in America don't wear turbans. If I wear a
Taliban in the mountains, maybe, if I were an Indian
seek in America, sure, but Afghans in America don't wear turbans.
I go, especially in Afghan in America, who's trying to
blow up a building, It's not gonna be walking around
the turban. She said, well, you know the producers wanted
you to wear the turban. I said, listen, let the
producers know. I've done my research. I know the Muslims
(07:23):
in America and how they look, and this guy would
look like a normal guy. Maybe maybe if you want,
he could button up his top button on his shirt. Maybe,
But other than that, I said, this turban is ridiculous.
She goes, okay, I'll tell them. And then the next
day I go to my trailer. There's my shirt, there's
my pants, and then there's a thing that looks like
a scarf, and I was like, oh, okay, I'll wear scarf.
It's also professor, you know, very professorial exactly. This is
(07:45):
a there's a tip of the hat to Professor Norris.
So so she goes, no, that's not a scarf, that's
the turban. You just gotta wrap it back up. And
I was like, oh, come on, and and she goes, no, really,
she goes, listen, they want the turban. And I put
on the turban and I went on set and blocking
the scene. And the director is Chuck Norris's son, Eric Norris.
I was able to catch him for a minute in
(08:07):
between blocking and said, hey, Eric, let me ask you
a question. I really think that it's pretty silly that
my character is wearing a turban. And he and he goes,
you know what, I agree with you. I didn't want
the turban. But my uncle, I believe his name was
Aaron Norris, who's a producer. He goes, he wanted the turban.
So I was quickly able to assess in my mind
(08:28):
that the uncle was probably an older school uh Norris.
He probably the old Norris of the old branch. He yes,
he he. I think was able to equate the turban.
Too bad guy. He figured our audience will see the turban. No,
that's the bad guy that will help get that point across.
(08:50):
Whereas Eric Norris is from the progressive wing of the
North Family, exactly where he knows bad guys will blend in.
So I wore the turban. I fell like an idiot.
And that was really where the seeds started of me
saying no to those auditions. And early in your career,
it's hard to say no because you think you're supposed
(09:10):
to take everything. Also, because I had a day job,
I still wanted to get out of it. I still
thought I should take everything. But I came back, I
talked to my agents, said, listen, guys, this I just
felt really bad playing this part and I don't want
to do this again. And what was interesting was from
the time we filmed this in early two thousand one,
then September eleven happened. I was really worried because people
(09:31):
were going around shooting Indian Sikhs who had turbans on
just because they had turbans. And so there was a
lot of stupidity going on in America at the time,
kind of like now. So I actually wrote a letter
to Chuck Norris and I believe to less Moon Visus,
the head of CBS at the time, and I said, listen, guys,
(09:51):
I really hope that you don't put this movie out
because people are shooting people mistakenly, and I would hate
for someone to see the move be and then think
that the actors who played the bad guys, if they
saw us out in the streets, think we're the real
deal and then come after us. And Chuck Norris had
could actually a little bit after September eleven, he had
written some sort of op ed piece where he just said,
(10:12):
you know, I really want to get this show on air.
I want to get this movie on air because in
this movie, the the terrorists get what they deserve and
we really show them. Yeah, you're appealing to the wrong party.
I know, I know. And it was funny because they
decided to run with the film. They totally ignored me
um and I watched that. I was nervous. I was like,
oh my god, I can't go to the coffee shop
(10:33):
to Marcus. Someone's gonna shoot me. As I'm watching the movie,
I swear as every minute went by, I just started
realizing how bad the movie was. It was just the
worst movie ever, Like because Chuck played the prefect oreal type,
there was a young guy who was now the ass
kicker guy, and I swear as the movie went on,
you started rooting against the ass kicker. It was done
(10:54):
so poorly, Like they were so bland and so bad
that it's at a certain point in the movie, I
was like, someone should shoot me, not for being a
terrorist in in this movie, just for doing this movie,
just for being in this movie, you know. So I
really wanted to get out of that world, and so
I told my agents and they said, Okay, we totally
support you. It feels very frustrating, and you want to
(11:15):
participate in the industry and there's positions and jobs open,
but they're so circumscribed by kind of a distilled version
of public fear. Absolutely. Yeah, It's kind of like I
used to do a joke where I said, when you
get into this business, they find out your Middle Easter
and they go, oh, your Middle East? And great, can
you say I will kill you in the name of Allah?
And then you go and you go, I could, But
what if I played this the doctor in this movie?
(11:37):
They go, oh, that's great, Yeah, then you can hijack
the hospital. So it's like, no matter what, you're gonna
be hijacking stuff that The Fatherly Podcast is brought to
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(12:00):
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you And now back to the show. Here's what I've
been pointing out to people is that unfortunately I always
(12:24):
say it. You know, you could sit on the sidelines
and complain until you're blue in the face. So whether
you're Arab or Iranian or Pakistani or Muslim or whatever
you are, you can sit there and go look at
how they portrayers, look at how the portray as well.
The way to counter that is to start writing and
producing and finding funding for your projects and counter those things.
I mean a great example of that is the Big
(12:46):
Sick that Kamil Nan Johnny did, very straight, very you
know s a Pakistani guy and and it's a great
story and and uh and there you have it, or
or even looking at as he's im sorry you know
another one well, and both of those obviously they're Asian descent,
plays into the storyline, but in a way that feels
like it's from the inside out, not from the outside in. Absolutely,
(13:09):
And I think that's the that's the importance, is that
they are the ones telling the story. And so that's
what I mean. In my experience with Middle Easterners and
people from that part of the world, First of all
of them have not been terrorists. I mean I've never,
in all honesty, never in my life have I ever
met a terrorist. If I were to write a story,
I'd want to write a story of the Middle Eastern businessman,
(13:31):
the Middle Eastern lawyer, the you know, the Iranian real estate,
which is what you actually play on Superior Donuts. Yeah,
I play Iraqi real estate. It's like it's like so close,
so close, it's so far. I know. My manager called
me up. He goes, listen, there's a pilot this year
that they're doing for CBS and there's a Middle Eastern
(13:52):
character in it named Mas. I said, yeah, I mean,
come on, this is ridiculous, because if you're gonna do
a Middle Eastern characters, usually they named them Ali, Mohammed
or Amir or something, not Mas. Mas is not a
very common Middlistian name. They obviously took my name when
we were doing the pilot. I said to them, guys,
you have the name Mas, and I'm doing it and
(14:14):
I'm Iranian, so why need you just make him an
Iranian American as opposed to Iraqi American. And they said
that they wanted to have him come from a war
torn country and I said, well, Iran was in a
seven or eight year war with Iraq in the early eighties.
And then they said, well, unfortunately a lot of Americans
don't really know about that. And I said, okay, I said,
(14:36):
that's a good point, but maybe an argument for better education, Yeah, exactly,
And they settled on keeping him Iraqi American. And I said,
just I said, if that's the case, he's just gotta
change his name. And I thought they would come back
with a name like Mohammed and they could call me Mo,
but they came back with the name Faws, which I've
never heard in my life before. You have this aperture
of what the public cantolery in terms of subtlety, and then,
(14:58):
because entertainment is an entertainment, you have to appeal to that,
you're kind of, I don't want to say at the mercy,
but in some way at the mercy of what people
will accept from you. The level of complexity. You know,
I'm always a little wary of executive saying things along
the lines of the public isn't ready for this. There's
been times when I've sold a couple of TV shows
(15:19):
based on my stand up comedy where I felt that
probably one of the things that went into decision making
of the show's not going into the pilot stage or
into the series stage. There was at some point someone saying, well,
I'm not sure if it's gonna appeal necessarily to a
wider audience. I disagree with that, because I just stand
(15:40):
up all over the country, and when I do stand
up and I make a reference to something that might
seem esoteric, do you realize how much we have in common?
I mean, that's one of the reasons why when I
first started, when I would talk about my parents, I
would say, my Iranian parents were like this and like
that growing up, but this is this was experience of
being in Iranian in America. But then I quickly started saying,
(16:00):
so is the experience of being an immigrant in America.
A lot of us, if we have immigrant backgrounds, we
have similar experiences. If we didn't have firsthand experience in
immigrant backgrounds, we at least had friends or people around
us who had that immigrant background. And your special, the
Netflix special, the first like ten minutes. It's an enjoyable
(16:20):
kind of roll call of your audience, and you have
people from around the world, a lot of Iranians, a
lot of you have one Chinese lady named Stephanie, a
white guy named Ed. There was this level of nuance
that you have an immigrant where you're you make all
these distinctions and communities, which I think is part of
what comedy is. You're talking about protesting at l a X,
(16:42):
the immigrant band, and like how minorities protest or people
of color protests versus like the white guys. So you're
kind of dividing up the world in ways that two
very subtle parsing. I think of allegiances and not to
get like weirdly academic, but like intersectionality. Yeah, absolutely, I mean, listen,
it's uh. I've had the benefit of seeing both sides,
(17:04):
and I'm just as guilty as anyone from either side
when I make assumptions about the other side. So, for example,
when it comes to being an immigrant and Trump, I
assumed that nine percent of immigrants would be offended by
and opposed to Trump. But I came to learn quickly
(17:25):
that there's a lot of immigrants, even Iranians and others
who might have been affected by the travel band, who
support Trump. And so it's shocking to me. But I go,
oh wow, yeah, there's that. Or like you said, being
someone who lives in America and we're talking about gender
issues and Caitlyn Jenner and and sex changes and what
(17:45):
have you, we can speak at a very open level
and not feel any sort of disgusted at that subject.
And yet I did that bit at one point in
front of a Persian audience that was it was at
a synagogues, so was a Persian Jewish. So I think
I'm even more conservative. But when I brought up Caitlyn Jenner.
Some lady in the audience goes disgusting, and I'm going
(18:09):
what And I was shocked? Did she even had the
gall to express herself like that? And then then I thought, okay,
so she's a conservative Persian Jewish lady. All right, that's
to be expected. You, for better or worse, probably better,
are very famous Arounnie an American. I think in a
culture that there's not that many AROUNDI An Americans who
(18:31):
talk about being Aroundie an American as much. Although maybe
I'm wrong, maybe I'm not. You're right, you're pretty right.
So how do you think about your public persona? How
do you think about your stand up? How do you
think about being an image for other not only AROUNDI
An Americans but people of color, but as a dad,
as someone who's a role model. How tell me about
that process in your mind or how you weigh that
(18:53):
As a creative person, I try to get away as
much as I can from believing my self as a
role model. I just want to do things that interests me.
I want to do things that make me laugh. Now
within there there is a radar in my mind of
oh that's a little bit selling out, that's kind of
going in the wrong direction that I wanted to go in. So,
for example, let's take the character on on Superior Donuts,
(19:15):
where I playing Iraqi American immigrant. One of the issues
we had on that was does he have an accent
or not. I argued that he should have an accent
because he's someone who came over after the Iraq War
and so he's been here recently or you know, within
the past ten fifteen years, so he would have exactly
I got my backstory up. And so with that, on
(19:36):
the one hand, as an actor, I personally am ready
to play a part that's closer to myself, at least
with with the accent. Like I'd i'd love to play
a part. The next part that I play, I'd love
it to be accent less. That said, I also sit
there and I go, well, this character requires an accent.
So we did the accent. And then the way I
look at it, if you were to talk about role
(19:57):
model and portrayal of Middle Easterners or Arabs or what
have you, one could look at my character and say,
you know, he is this greedy businessman who's trying to
buy the donuts shop. And so once again, the Arab
American is portrayed as a economic terrorists. Yeah, economic terrorists
is the villain in this. But I counter and I go,
you know, every week that this runs, they give me
(20:18):
a lot of very inappropriate things to say. I'm kind
of like the the Danny de Vito character from Taxi
or the real permanent character from Cheers. So whenever this
runs on Twitter, quite often I see people saying, oh,
I love that line that you said, Like they're laughing,
and I sit there and I go, oh great, they're
laughing at lines delivered by an Arab American and it's
not a terrorist thing. So I go, in a way,
(20:41):
in a very subliminal way, it's making Middle America who's
watching this laugh and go oh this this character, as
much as some of the lines are a little to
the extreme, as much as he's kind of the bad guy,
sometimes he's not a bad guy in a way that
is explicitly tied to being Iraqi. And also he's not
(21:02):
a bad guy that is, there's never been a pitch
for oh he comes into the donut shop and he
takes a hostage. He's just this guy. So that so
that hopefully people that are laughing they go, oh, Wow,
these guys have a sense of humor. Oh wow, these
guys make me laugh. So I feel like in a
way that character is a step in the right direction. Again,
(21:22):
I don't want to use the word role models, but
but we have a power to change the image a
little bit. And so I think that that falls on
our shoulders and I try to take that pretty seriously.
And and um, and yeah, I feel I'm proud of
what my kids see me do. They've seen my stand
up and they seem to like it. So that's good.
It's getting laughs from your kid from dad jokes is
(21:43):
difficult anyways. Yeah, your characters are rocky in um Superior Donuts.
Do you have a separate Iraqi accent versus a Arsi
Iranian accent? Good one, good one. I'm not specific enough
to have actually found an Iraqi person who would then
give me training on an a rocky accent. I just
whenever I do Arabic accent, and I think a lot
of Arabs get upset at it, but it's the best
(22:05):
I can do. I just speed it up a little bit,
and I do kind of this like Middle Eastern accent
that talks like this. And you know that although in
the show. Actually I've started to make it less in
My wife noticed because did you lose your accent? I
was like, I don't know, just just watch the show.
But Iranians are they talk like this. Iranian is a
lot slower like these. The Iranian they talk they take
(22:26):
the award and they elongate the ward a lot, and
they talk like that. And Abic is a lot more
like this. They talk fast like this. They almost it's
almost like you pronounced every every little uh letter. I
always say it's Arabic sounds like you're doing cocaine. You
talk very fast and coo and Persian sounds like you're
on the heroin. You're just slowing down like that. That's
(22:48):
a good dialect. Pneumonic exactly, Yes, Arabic exactly. There you go.
And I kind of more serious note about raising kids.
So you're your wife is Indian, Indian American. Yes, you
are around an American and your kids are right what
did you call it in your act? Colored up? Colored up?
(23:08):
I think I said they're all colored up. Do you
feel more hopeful or less hopeful about raising them in America?
There's a couple of things. I think that that's going on.
I think Number one is as we have more interracial
kids are neighbor's kid, the fathers African American, mother's white.
Our kids are half and half. I think the more
(23:31):
we mix our races, I think that it becomes harder
to hate the other because your background comes from those
other groups. So I'm hopeful for our kids. It's amazing
how sensitive they are now too. A lot of these
even even language. I mean, I was at the house
one time and I was talking about the neighbors and
I said something along the lines of his dad's black
(23:53):
and his mother's white. And then I and then in
my little six year old daughter, her mouth just dropped
and she stared at my wife from and I go,
what's wrong where I say? And then my six year
old goes, Daddy, you're not supposed to say black, You're
supposed to say African American. I was like, oh, jeez, okay.
So I think they're more and more sensitive to these things,
and so I am hopeful for the future. I also
(24:15):
feel that with the Internet, people just get exposed to
a lot of other stuff. Now. At the same time,
we've seen the negative side of the Internet and how
people get on social media and they cuss each other out,
and your kids allowed on social media. Not on social media.
They you know, they'll go on YouTube and watch silly
little videos that I don't understand at all. Unboxing, Yeah,
(24:37):
unboxing and stuff like that, and I'm just like, oh
my god, this can't be good for the brain. And
then I think, well, you know, I used to sit
my parents used to sit me in front of a
TV for hours and hours watched Dallas, I watched I
saw I saw the Exorcist when I was a kid,
I saw that on TV. And one of the jokes
I do now is that the reason kids are more
exhausting today than we were when we were kids, because
as parents, we actually have to spend time with our kids.
(24:59):
You know, back in the day, if there was a
father who played catch with his son, then that was
an exceptional dad. You're like, oh wow, look at that.
What a great father. He goes out there and plays
catch with his son. Now, if you don't play catch
with your son, you might get child Services called on you.
I mean it's like you get shamed. You know, like
when your daughter wanted to do a tea party, you
didn't join the tea party. How dare you you know
(25:21):
your dad wasn't like that, though you write in your
book that your dad was a wealthy man of mysterious origin. Yeah,
my dad was a very He was a very gregarious
human being. He reminded me of Vito Corleone in The Godfather.
He was a man who had made his money um
in Iran. He owned an electric company. He had made
(25:42):
a lot of money through that. He had a lot
of friends in high places. He had friends that were
generals and mayors and police chiefs, and and he was
the guy that if you ever wanted to get some
of them done, you'd go to him. He'd take care
of it for you. So if you said, for example,
in Iran, military service was mandatory, and so if you
wanted your on not to be in the military, but
maybe you couldn't afford to pay the fee to get
(26:03):
him out of it, my father would either pay it
for you or he would just He took care of
a lot of people. And I was before the revolution,
and I would hear all these stories, and I thought
to myself, maybe my dad's just exaggerating. And then when
he passed away, I would run into people. I ran
into a guy I was doing a show in Dubai.
This man and his like whatever sixties or something at
the time, came up to me. He goes, your last
(26:25):
name is Joe Branni. Are you hostro Joe Brni's son?
And I was like yes, and he goes, your father
saved my life. And I'll go, what are you talking about.
He goes, you know, back in the day. He goes,
we'd go to these spas and we'd be hanging out
in the steam room, and you know, that's where people
men would go to talk politics and sports and what
have you. And he goes, we're there and I knew
him from the spa and I and I was telling
(26:47):
him how just getting married and I needed a I
needed to buy a place, and your father, at the
time owned a lot of property. So he told me
to meet him at a certain location, which was one
of his buildings. We go there. My father goes, you know,
pick a unit in this building and just move in
and pay me when you can. And he goes, he
(27:07):
was so generous, and I go, okay, I didn't. I
never knew he did that. And he goes, yeah, he
was doing that kind of stuff all the time. And
he goes, what happened was we moved in, and he goes,
eventually through time, I was able to pay your father back.
But he goes, the more important thing was if I
had not been able to get that place at that time, Um,
that was the unit that we were able to sell
to get enough money to flee the country when the
(27:28):
revolution happened, He goes, I wouldn't have had the money.
So he traced that all back to my dad. And
I was like, oh, wow, you kind of read about
by the time your dad was older and had settled
in the States, I guess towards the end of his life,
although correct me if I'm wrong, he didn't have the
economic power anymore. Like he wasn't like a big mocker
that he was back in Iran when you were a child.
(27:49):
What was it like to see your dad And what
was it like after he died to see that he
had been that powerful when you know, you didn't really
experience that here. He was just a big guy. And
so I always say, like my mom used to actually
hit us. My mom would get upset and come after
us with hangers and and like beat us as kids.
I thought it was real, man, she used to hit us.
(28:11):
It was accepted. It was it was like a spanking.
It wasn't like she was taking an iron and burning
our arms. It was whatever, she's napping and we're sitting
there and making a mess or whatever making noise, and
she'd be like, you, she starts chasing us. She would
do that, she pull our ears. I mean my mom,
Like now, my mom is really calmed down, like she's
super sweet, but back then, it's kind of like my wife.
(28:31):
I see, my wife spends a lot of time with
the kids and she loses her mind sometimes, and I
totally understand. So my mom would do the same with us.
And my dad never hit us. But he was this
big guy and he just had this deep voice, and
so if we were misbehaving, all he had to do
was yell your name really loud. He'd be like, mauls
you are and then you'd just be like you just
(28:52):
whimper away. So yeah, he was very intimidating, but at
the same time a very loving person. It's interesting because
we came to America lot of money. He was able
to get a lot of his money out. So when
we first my first foray into America, I was six
years old. It was late seventy eight, there was protests
in the streets of Iran, and I think a lot
of Iranians thought that the Shaw would squash the protests
(29:14):
and that we could go back. So my father was
on business in New York. He was staying at the
Plaza Hotel and a suite at the Plaza Hotel, and
he sent from my mom to bring my sister and
I to stay with him over our winter break two weeks,
and we even left my baby brother back in Iran.
I a would say we came for two weeks and
we stayed for forty years. My first experience with America
was staying in a a in a suite at the
(29:35):
Plaza Hotel across the street from F. A. O. Schwartz,
the biggest toy store in the world, and I'm going, Wow,
America is a great place. But eventually what happened was
my father lost most of his money in bad real
estate investments because he bought a bunch of properties when
we moved to California, bought a bunch of properties, and
in the early eighties, when the Reagan Recession hit, he
(29:57):
was left with those properties at high interest rates, so
he started bleeding money towards the I would say early nineties,
he went back to Iran because at that point Iran
opened up to people that had fled and said come back,
because a lot of people had fled and left money behind,
so they said come back. And so my father went
back to Iran to try and do stuff with the
properties he had in Iran that he had left behind.
(30:20):
And when he went back, they said, well, you haven't
been here for ten twelve years, so you owe all
of these back taxes. So if you want to do
any business, you've got to first pay us. And also
until you pay us, you're not allowed to leave the country.
So he was stuck. How old are you, I was
probably late teens, early twenties. I was at UC Berkeley
at the time. It was this quagmire for my father
because on the one hand, he had the potential to
(30:44):
make some money again and be the lion that he
had always been, which was this businessman. At the same time,
his hands were tied and he couldn't come back to America.
The last several years of his life, he sort of
grew accustomed back to that style in Iran, which was
a very it's a much slower lifestyle he came to
America a couple of times for different medical reasons. It
(31:08):
was hard to see the man who had been such
a lion really lose that. It was hard as a
son to see that. At the same time, I felt
it was also empowering to be there to help take
care of him, So that was that was a good feeling.
I think in two thousand and five or so, he
came to America as well for another health thing. Seeing
(31:30):
this man who had been so vivacious suddenly have trouble walking.
And at the end of his life, we had him
in a in a nursing facility, and we would go
visit him in the day and we go have lunch
with him, and and he would be walking with a cane,
and then he just wanted to go back to the
nursing facility and get his meds for the day. He
passed away at the age of seventy six, and that
(31:51):
was in two thousand and nine. It's hard as a
son to see that and experience at the same time,
it was a caution ary tale. My father throughout his
life had been a big drinker. He'd really gone hard
in his life. He also, like I said, he helped
a lot of people financially, but never really planned for
(32:12):
his retirement. And so with that in mind, I am
someone who tries to as much as I can, put
away money for a retirement, put away money for my
kids education. I don't know if you ever read Candid
Voltaire's Candide in College, but it's all about college. I
read it last week. Last week. There you go. But
it's all about these people in a palace and how
(32:34):
they it gets rated and then these people that were
living a noble life then end up out in the world.
You realize that in life, no matter how you plan.
I mean, look, I could put all this money away
as much as I want. If the stock market crashes,
there goes the money. Yeah, I mean I struggle with
that too. But I think just because it's not a
short thing doesn't mean you don't act in a virtuous way. Absolutely.
(32:54):
I think that you need to. You know, my father
one thing he used to say that I liked. He said,
if you learn from other people's mistakes, then you're a
lot further ahead. And so he goes, he goes, I'm
seventy years old, but I've lived seven hundred years. He
really experienced a lot. I mean, he did everything. He
traveled the world. He, like I said, had friends in
high places, He helped people, He did a lot, a lot,
(33:15):
a lot of stuff. I need to take his experience
and learn from it. That's what we can do. And
as and as sad as it is to see when
your parents get old and sick, it's something that many
of us have to deal with. You just step up
and you take care of it. When you have issues happen,
it's your day to day. You you you're so in it.
You're dealing with this. So every morning you're up, you're
(33:35):
going to the nursing facility, then you're back with the kids.
Then the next day you're back to the nursing facility,
then you're at work, then you're here, and you don't
give yourself time to decompress and process it. I would
say that recently, you know, this past year, I actually
had a big tragedy happened. My sister passed away from
breast cancer. She was one of the closest people to
me in my life. And yeah, and again it's you know,
(33:57):
I was so go, go, go go, and I've learned
that I need to give myself time to reflect upon it.
So I went and saw a grievance counselor, and now
I'm going to go see a therapist. And part of
it is just to talk and to and to say,
you know, like you just said, how does this stuff
affect us? Let's let's reflect on it for a minute.
And then I think the key is then to see
(34:18):
if you can take those emotions, process them, and then
find ways to honor those people. Um Like I said,
in a way, learning from my father's mistakes is kind
of honoring him as well, because you know, I'm passing
on hopefully better things to my children. It does occur
to me, for having watched your stand up, is there
(34:38):
ever a negotiation between you and your wife, or you
and your mom, or maybe even you and your kids
about Hey, is this material I can use in my act?
Is this something that you feel comfortable with? Or is
it that you as a comedian is the creative person
everything you touch become sort of yours. There's not a
negotiation before, so I'll do bits and but there have
(35:00):
been times where they have brought stuff up my wife
early on, when we first started dating, I used to
do a joke about boyfriend girlfriend stuff in general, it
wasn't about her at all. It wasn't even inspired by her.
And she goes that bit, people could look at it
as if you're talking about me. It wasn't that I
stopped doing the bit because it really, again was very
(35:21):
It was a very silly bit. It killed There was
a good bit. What are you talking about? So when
my sister passed away, I was trying to find some
material that honored her but also helped deal with that passing.
And so one night my mom was at the show
and I did a couple of those jokes and my
mom didn't like them, and she said, you know that,
(35:41):
I think that's kind of a bad taste and I
and I kind of reflected on and I said, you know,
the honest truth is the jokes weren't really that funny.
So I was like, if I really want to honor
my sister, there's definitely deeper ways to do it. So
I saw eye to eye with her on that. When
my kids are in the audience, I try as much
as I can if I'm saying something like, for example,
I'll do a lot of her about like, you know,
the kids are exhausting, Oh my god, they're breaking my
(36:03):
balls or whatever, whatever, whatever I try to emphasize to them, guys,
because even in the act, I'll say, you know, we
love them. I love my kids, but this is how
exhausted I am because of them. It's a very treacherous
line to navigate. I feel even as a writer myself,
I read about having kids and my relationship with them,
and I feel so you know, they don't have a
(36:26):
say really over what I write or not write, what
I expose about them or not exposed about them, and
it's my job to do that. And that's what pays
for everyone to survive. Absolutely, and you've got to be
true to your voice. And so the only thing you
can do is if you know that they're going to
read it, or you know that they're gonna see it,
you just go out of your way to give them
(36:48):
a nod and go listen. This, I might be saying
that I'm exhausted by you, guys, but just know that
I would never trade that for anything in the world.
I love you, guys, and this is just me being
a human being who gets tired the same way you guys.
Maybe love to play on the trampoline, but at a
certain point you get exhausted about it, the same way
you love your mom and your dad, but if we
tell you to clean your room, you roll your eyes.
(37:09):
You're a little frustrated by us. Or alternatively, I'm just
not teaching my kids how to read exactly. Well, Mams,
thank you for chatting with us. It's been a pleasure.
Thanks for having me, josh I appreciate it. Okay, I'll
talk to you later, all right, buddy, take care. Well,
(37:30):
that's it for this season of The Fatherly Podcast. This
season was executive produced by Sandy Smallens, engineered by Dave Savage.
Our theme music was by Kyle Forster with a little
help from Aggie Here and Stein. I'm your host, Joshua
David Stein, and I'll see you next time when you're
all a little older and wiser, or at least older.
Before I go, hey, Achilles, you've got a good joke
(37:52):
to go out on. Um, what do what? Cloth eight
n
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