You Gotta Have Faith

As he wraps 19 months of writing, directing, producing, and starring in the third season of his acclaimed eponymous TV series, ramy youssef looks back on the big questions that led him to big laughs

- By Nojan Aminosharei

In the era of peak TV, it can be hard to remember that television comedy once hewed to an almost-scientific formula: setup, setup, punch line, laugh track, repeat. Take the thoroughly modern Ramy, the critically acclaimed Hulu show by comedian Ramy Youssef and inspired by his stand-up. In it, a millennial Muslim American wrestles with religion, sexual politics, and identity (and usually finds himself outmatched). The show rejects the formulaic practically as a matter of faith. Or, rather, it explores matters of faith and finds them wanting of any tidy formula. In both form and style, Ramy is beautifully all over the map. It's meditative and raunchy. It's about a narrow set of experiences revealing universal truths. Its characters can be loving and messy and downright repugnant-and become all the more relatable for it. "For me, there are no rules to comedy, as long as you're doing the thing that's most unique to you," says Youssef, 31. "That's my favorite kind of art: You found your potential, you found the thing that you can do best on this earth, and then you're dancing in that potential."

Youssef and his writers began work on the show's third season (which premiered September 30) in February of last year. Here, Youssef reflects on how transforming his stand-up into "something tangible that a character could do and that we could watch on screen" is less about Zoom meetings, shoot schedules, and draft deadlines than about the intellectual, emotional, and, yes, spiritual process of seeking answers to life's big questions and then turning them into one big joke.