{"id":30004,"date":"2025-04-18T10:45:19","date_gmt":"2025-04-18T10:45:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/30004\/"},"modified":"2025-04-18T10:45:19","modified_gmt":"2025-04-18T10:45:19","slug":"ramy-youssef-show-1-happy-family-usa-looks-at-9-11-with-new-lens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/30004\/","title":{"rendered":"Ramy Youssef show ‘#1 Happy Family USA’ looks at 9\/11 with new lens"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What happens when the political satire of \u201cSouth Park\u201d collides with a Muslim kid\u2019s coming-of-age story in post-9\/11<\/a> New Jersey? You get the animated sitcom \u201c#1 Happy Family USA.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cocreated and coshowrun by Ramy Youssef and Pam Brady, the A24 production, which premieres Thursday on Prime Video, follows Rumi Hussein (voiced by Youssef) and his family as they navigate the \u201csee something, say something\u201d paranoia of the early 2000s.<\/p>\n

The semi-autobiographical story of Egyptian American comedian, actor and director Youssef is at the center of this period comedy where Michael Jordan, music piracy and Britney Spears still dominate the news. Everything is normal in 12-year-old Rumi\u2019s world on Sept. 10. He\u2019s crushing on his teacher Mrs. Malcolm (voiced by Mandy Moore<\/a> \u2014 who happened to rise to fame in the 2000s). He\u2019s tolerating the cluelessness of his Egyptian immigrant parents, father Hussein (also voiced by Youssef) and mother Sharia (Salma Hindy). He\u2019s fighting with his oh-so-perfect\/closeted sister, Mona (Alia Shawkat). His devout grandparents also live at home, always on hand to make whatever Rumi\u2019s doing feel haram.<\/p>\n

But within 24 hours, the Al Qaeda attacks turn the Husseins from an average dysfunctional family with unfortunate names into a suspected terror cell.<\/p>\n

\"A <\/p>\n

\u201c#1 Happy Family USA\u201d follows a Muslim boy\u2019s coming-of-age story.<\/p>\n

(Prime Video)<\/p>\n

Rumi\u2019s father, a doctor turned halal cart owner, goes into assimilation overdrive to prove his family is 110% American and absolutely not associated with anyone named Osama. Old Glory, Christmas decor and Easter trimmings suddenly pop up in their front yard. He shaves his beard off. He insists that his wife stop wearing her hijab, which makes Sharia, who is a receptionist for an eccentric dentist (Kieran Culkin), all the more determined to don her headscarf.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Rumi\u2019s classmates now eye him suspiciously despite his attempts to fit in with the other boys by wearing his new basketball jersey. But the bootleg \u201cBulls\u201d shirt reads \u201cBalls\u201d instead. It\u2019s also three sizes too big and looks like a dress. Clearly he\u2019s not like the others.<\/p>\n

Elements of the storyline mirror Youssef\u2019s childhood montages in his Hulu series \u201cRamy,\u201d but the medium of adult animation allowed him to \u201cgo wild\u201d with the story and characters. He also got to work with Brady, an authority on pushing animated satire to hilarious extremes.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnimation became the vehicle for how this idea should live. I wanted to look at a wholly unexplored period outside of the lens of a cop drama or the news \u2026 and go to the wildest extremes with premises,\u201d said Youssef. \u201cI definitely had the desire to make something stupid in a really great, sophisticated and almost Commedia dell\u2019arte way. Just dumb and loud [laughs]. You can put \u2018Ramy\u2019 in a dramedy category and you could, to an extent, put \u2018Mo\u2019 there, but here it\u2019s really bursting open in a medium with no limits. Then Pam\u2019s name came up and it was a no-brainer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brady collaborated with Trey Parker and Matt Stone on \u201cSouth Park\u201d from the show\u2019s start, going on to cowrite with them the film \u201cTeam America: World Police\u201d<\/a> and cocreating the Netflix comedy series \u201cLady Dynamite.\u201d \u201cAs soon as I saw \u2018Ramy\u2019 and I saw his stand-up, I was a fan,\u201d said Brady. \u201cI kept begging my manager: \u2018Please, can I meet Ramy?\u2019 So I came at it honestly as a fan, knowing that this guy\u2019s doing some next-level stuff. I keep joking with my friends that Ramy\u2019s a real writer. He explores characters. That\u2019s why this experience has been so amazing because it\u2019s pushed me. It\u2019s like, \u2018Oh, this is how you do it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Mona <\/p>\n

Mona Chalabi, Ramy Youssef and Pam Brady are the creative forces behind \u201c#1 Happy Family USA.\u201d<\/p>\n

(Christina House \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n

Illustrator and executive producer Mona Chalabi designed the characters, each harkening back to animation styles of the late \u201990s and early 2000s shows like \u201cFuturama\u201d or \u201cDaria.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted it to feel like a found tape,\u201d said Youssef. \u201cYou pop it in and it looks like it could have been on Comedy Central or MTV [back then]. It\u2019s hand-drawn animation and we made it with an animation studio in Malaysia [called Animasia]. It\u2019s an all-Muslim animation house, which is so crazy. They were so happy to draw hijabs and all these characters. They were like, \u2018We relate to it!\u2019 But we even downgraded our computers here in order to make it like it would have been made. Whatever we did took a while and it was like the opposite of AI.\u201d<\/p>\n

Adds Brady, \u201cWe wanted to make sure, especially with the visuals and the direction and the pacing, that the show felt familiar. That you\u2019d seen a show like this before. We didn\u2019t want to reinvent the form, but we also didn\u2019t want to make it look like \u2018Family Guy.\u2019 So it\u2019s like, \u2018Oh, this show existed in 1998. You remember it, right?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Though the show takes place some 25 years ago, it\u2019s not hard to see the plot\u2019s resonance today in the wake of the deportations and roundups of immigrants and students. The Husseins are up against a wave of Islamophobia, triggered by the 9\/11 attacks. They embody the very real fear of being profiled by the outside world, including FBI agent Dan Daniels (voiced by Timothy Olyphant), who happens to live across the street. A dark period, to be sure, but also one rich in comedic value if you\u2019re willing to go there as \u201c#1 Happy Family USA\u201d does. Its characters break out into song while on the verge of being swept up by Homeland Security, or inadvertently cause a widespread panic by dropping on the carpet at the airport to pray when they learn of the terror attacks.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were trying to kind of create this time capsule, like around the old DHS of this moment,\u201d said Youssef. \u201cBut right now is a time when an immigrant family, and surely a Muslim family, would feel the need to shout, \u2018We\u2019re No. 1! Happy Family USA!\u2019 Pam and Mona and I have all been looking at each other with like, \u2018Whoa.\u2019 Of all the times this thing could have dropped, it\u2019s dropping right now, when [it\u2019s hard] to joke about this stuff in any other medium.\u201d<\/p>\n

At a time when everything feels like a cruel joke, \u201c#1 Happy Family USA\u201d bites back with the satire we need.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What happens when the political satire of \u201cSouth Park\u201d collides with a Muslim kid\u2019s coming-of-age story in post-9\/11…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30005,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5311],"tags":[17950,17957,17951,17953,17948,17955,17952,17958,6149,17949,17946,17947,17956,3114,17954,49,978,659],"class_list":{"0":"post-30004","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-12-year-old-rumi","9":"tag-adult-animation","10":"tag-character","11":"tag-father-hussein","12":"tag-happy-family-usa","13":"tag-immigrant","14":"tag-medium","15":"tag-mother-sharia","16":"tag-new-jersey","17":"tag-pam-brady","18":"tag-ramy-youssef","19":"tag-show","20":"tag-south-park","21":"tag-time","22":"tag-unfortunate-name","23":"tag-united-states","24":"tag-us","25":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114358565318653851","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30004\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}