Season 3 of Ramy tackles some big issues, with its return to Hulu Friday.
The critically acclaimed comedy is almost back, after a more than two-year hiatus, and show creator and star Ramy Youssef talked to ABC Audio about what he wanted to explore with his dysfunctional, but loving, Muslim-American family this season.
“Where are we at with the American dream, and what does it take to achieve it,” he explains. “And looking at the seeming kind of impossibility of a middle class family, and how difficult it is to kind of make good on the intentions of moving to this country.”
In episode two, Ramy visits the holy land and, in typical Ramy fashion, the visit doesn’t go so well. The actor says that his writers room, which contains several Jews and Muslims, had an interesting time trying to figure out how to be funny about a very serious region of the world.
“Going into this episode, I was kind of like, all right, so we’ve heard a lot about Israel and Palestine. How do we send Ramy there and somehow he’s the biggest d*** in the whole situation. That was kind of like, that will make it funny…it’s like somehow this guy’s pissing off everybody on every side. And there’s almost a unity in that.”
“We’re kind of talking about every moment, and we’re kind of trying to find the most human part of it, while also getting to be funny and also kind of like going near that button that you’re not supposed to touch.”
“I think that that’s always what’s really fun to me is that thing of like, you get to walk away and say, maybe I should be offended, but I’m not.”
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