Follow your heart. Do what you love. Because I was constantly struggling with that. If it's in your heart, go for it. Don't listen to other people.
Maz Jobrani
Stereotypes exist because there's always some truth to stereotypes. Not always, but often.
The fact is, there's good people everywhere. That's what I try and show in my stand-up: good people everywhere. All it takes is one person to mess it up.
I would say that while most Muslims take offense at the portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad in cartoons, they would never resort to violence. It is a minority of extremist Muslims who take such actions, and they do it for political and tactical reasons far beyond just being offended.
I remember I was in a San Francisco nightclub, and I started talking to some girl, and it was like, 'Hey, what's going on, what's your name?' You know, 'Where are you from?' I go, 'I'm from Iran.' And literally, she just looked at me and walked away.
I took one acting class as an undergrad, and I loved it. I was in a very avant-garde play at UCLA about a closeted, married homosexual. I played his father.
I think comedy is a good way to help people change their minds. I think that if you're laughing and getting a message across, it's a lot easier than when somebody is screaming in your face.
Most comics point out what everyone else is thinking but hadn't thought of verbalizing. I guess, in a way, that makes most comics seers. It just depends in what category - some choose to be the seers of relationships, some are seers of racial issues, and some are seers of political issues.
As a Middle Eastern male, I know there's certain things I'm not supposed to say on an airplane in the U.S., right? I'm not supposed to be walking down the aisle, and be like, 'Hi, Jack.' That's not cool. Even if I'm there with my friend named Jack, I say, 'Greetings, Jack. Salutations, Jack.' Never 'Hi, Jack.'
I am a standup comedian who has performed comedy in the Middle East in front of thousands of Muslims. And believe it or not, they laughed at plenty, especially when we poked fun at local culture. The Lebanese loved it when you would make fun of their driving and how, in Lebanon, a red light is just a suggestion to stop.
When I told my parents I wanted to be an actor, my mom was, like, 'I think I heard you say lawyer.'
When you have demonization of a group of people, it's easy to clump them all together and not understand them.
I grew up in Northern California - Marin County, Tiburon. And it's interesting. It's a very rich place, but a lot of the affluent people are - they're not as showy. So, like, they might have, like, a Saab or a Volvo. And then here comes my dad from Iran. He buys a Rolls-Royce.
A cultural thing that is funny to me is that every time I go out in D.C. after a show, all the nightclubs and restaurants are owned by Iranians and Afghans. It's funny to me how we lost our countries but we gained the nightlife.
I was in awe of my father. His generosity was beyond anything I ever could imagine. The reason I say he's like Don Corleone is he was always breaking off hundreds. I'd be like, 'Hey Dad, I'm going to McDonald's with my friends,' and he'd just whip out a hundred: 'Here, go, have fun.'
The first acting part I ever got was a guest spot on 'Chicago Hope' playing a security guard. I thought, 'Oh, this is going to be cool.' But a little bit later, I got a vague part on this short-lived show called 'Marshall Law' with Arsenio Hall and Sammo Hung. It was a poor man's 'Rush Hour.'
I've sold shows based on my standup twice to CBS, but they've never gone past the script stage. TV is very competitive.
Trump is good for comedy but bad for the world.
You know the Middle East is going crazy when Lebanon is the most peaceful place in the region.
I've grown so accustomed to my life in L.A., going to a Coffee Bean or getting breakfast at Kings Road Cafe. I've seen a lot of the world, but the diversity we have here is different. It's a mishmash, which is a nice comfort.
Don't get me wrong. I don't mind playing bad guys. I want to play a bad guy. I want to rob a bank. I want to rob a bank in a film. I want to rob a bank in a film but do it with a gun - with a gun, not with a bomb strapped around me.
I played Li'l Abner and Batman in school plays; I wanted to be an actor to play all these different characters.
You know how hard it's been to write material? Because to do stand-up comedy, it takes time for the material to develop. So you'll come up with a joke, you'll tweak it, you'll work it for six months, you really fine tune it, and now you've got a good bit. Well, with Trump, every day there's something new coming out.
My parents come from that immigrant culture that places a lot of emphasis on doing well scholastically. Being a comedian or an actor is such an American thing. The Iranian culture is not about dreaming. It's about taking over your father's business, falling into line.
Every time I see Trump on TV these days, I'm waiting for him to burst out, 'Live from New York, it's Saturday Night!' That would make sense to me - that this has all been one long 'Saturday Night Live' sketch.
I meet a lot of people when I do stand-up in the Middle East, and I don't know any terrorists, yet on TV and in the movies, 9 out of 10 are depicted as terrorists.
You have to laugh at yourself. I do a lot of humor about all ethnicities that are at the show - Latinos, Asians, Indians... What I say is, 'We're laughing together. I'm laughing with you, not at you.' Never say, 'Oh, I'm better than you.'
Once you start listening to the comics, be they Jewish, Muslim, Italian, Filipino or whatever, the material often springs from the same source - the overbearing mom, the parents who want you to marry from within your community. That's why the 'Ethnic Show' works so well.
I wish more Americans would travel here. I always encourage my friends: 'Travel. See the Middle East. There's so much to see, so many good people.' And it's vice versa, and it helps stop problems of misunderstanding and stereotypes from happening.
I was at UC Berkeley as an undergrad when my father lost a lot of money in real estate investments in Northern California. He wanted a change of pace, so in the early '90s, my family moved to L.A., right in the middle of Tehrangeles. It was a culture shock for me.
I've made enough jokes about Iran's leadership that I'm sure if I showed up that I would get a nice escort - to the main prison - and then I could do a show there.
As the weeks went on, I realized there was an important role comedy would play in healing the tragedies of September 11. Comedy can help people cope, and many people were coming to the clubs to laugh out the stress.
People think just because I'm from the Middle East, I'm an expert on the Middle East. So, like, I got a friend, like, any time the gas prices go up, he'll always ask my opinion about it.
Unlike the U.S., Iran has no problems with low-voter turnout in elections; the last time, the government got the support of 110 per cent of the population.
I have to say that deporting people and calling them 'bad hombres,' then kicking families out with visa violations, upsets me.
I've had people come up to me after the show and say, 'Why did you not make fun of Pakistan?' People are actually upset you didn't talk about them.
One of the jobs of comedy is to expose hypocrisy. When you look at countries like Iran or North Korea that don't have freedom of speech, we who do should push it as far as we need to.
I remembered, like, when 'Not When My Daughter' came out, I'm serious, I think dating for Iranian men became a lot harder. Dude's name, Shahrokh - became Tony. Mehsud became Mike.
Trump doesn't go a day without worrying me. It seems like every day there's something new.
I've basically grown up in America. Even if Iran were to change, I wouldn't see myself moving there. That feeling exists for my mother and people of her generation. They say, 'Hopefully, one day.'
The first time I flew after September 11, I honestly was a little paranoid. As I was going to the metal detector, I was looking at my duffel bag, and I'm like, 'Do I have anything that's like a weapon?' I was really paranoid they were gonna find something sharp, and I was gonna get in trouble.
I started acting in junior high. I was in 'Guys and Dolls.' I was Stanley Kowalski. In my head, before coming to Hollywood, I thought, 'I can play anything.'
The first time I performed at the Comedy Store in Los Angeles, I was in the back of the room doing vocal exercises. 'Me-me-me, my-my-my, mo-mo-mo.' And I'm looking around, and no one else is doing it. I'm like, 'They must have done it before they came to the club.' I came to realize that I was an idiot.
I am a political human being. I have - that's one of my interests. I studied political science in college. I was actually going to get my Ph.D. in poli-sci. And a lot of my material from early on in my career dealt with politics, so I've always considered myself as somebody who enjoys political humor. So I'm not going to stop.
One thing about D.C. that's funny to me is that you end up running into famous political figures who you've seen on television who you think are not real until you see them.
Comedy comes from tragedy, and being Iranian in America from 1979 on had been quite tragic. In stand-up comedy, I was able to take the reality and exaggerate it.
Coming from an immigrant background, where a lot of parents don't want their kids to be comedians, success was just showing my mom that I could make a living. I was like, if I can get my mom off my back, that was my success.
A lot of times in Hollywood, when casting directors find out you're of Middle Eastern descent, they go, 'Oh, you're Iranian? Great. Can you say, 'I will kill you in the name of Allah?'' I could say that, but what if I were to say, 'Hello, I'm your doctor.'
Definitely in the West, we're all cast as the same now. Whether you're Indian, Pakistani, Arab, Iranian, Afghan or whatever, you just get thrown into this category. And nine times out of 10, you're depicted as bad.
Coming from L.A. to D.C., I'm always impressed that in D.C., people are doing the things that the people in L.A. are pretending to do. Whenever I'm in D.C., I ask people what they do, and they say, 'I'm with the agency, or I'm with State.' In L.A., I ran into a guy who said, 'I'm working on an audition for a guy who happens to be with an agency.'
