Most sections of ”#1 happy family USA“Open with a disclaimer in the style of a rating screen you might before a trailer at the movie theater. In a red banner cross the screen, the phrase“ representation Warning ”is writ in big, bold white letters. Subs. For the Following Communities: Muslims, Arabs, “And a Third Category That, Depending on the Episode, Could Be” People From New Jersey, “” White Girls Is Courtney, “or” Men. “Instead of a rating, the box reads at the bottom” H “for” Haram “, with text that says” Allah, forgive mistakes in this program. ”
For series co -creators and star Ramy YoussefThe idea behind that tongue-in-cheek opening came from what he described as a “type of exhaustion.” When the comedian’s Break-Out Hulu Live-Action series “Ramy”-a drama that explores a fictional version of both Youssef and his Egyptian family in New Jersey premiere first in 2019, he saw headlines about what he summarized like this: “” Ramy “at Hulu! “Happy Family” -en Chey-Animy about a Chey-Animy about a Chey-Animy about a Chey-Animy about a Chey-Animy about a Chey-Animy about a Chey-Anima about a Chey-Animy about a Chey-Animy about a Chey-Animy Chey-Animy about a Chey-Animy about a Chey-Animy about a Chey-Animy about a Chey-Animy in the United States. The family was caught between embracing their culture and assimilating to American jingoism the days after 9/11 – he wanted to completely remove that pressure.
“The first thing you see is something that also just takes the air out of the entire conversation,” Youssef tells IndieWire. “Let this be stupid and stupid. Don’t let this have to be a emblem for everything. And there will be many people who join it, but also many people will not come. And that’s kind of the whole point.”
Like “Ramy”, “#1 Happy Family USA” (which premiered at Amazon Prime on April 17) is too specific and personal for Youssef’s own life experiences to serve as sweeping general “representation.” Collaborated with “South Park” veterinarian Pam BradyThe series contains Youssef who expresses both a stand-in for himself called Rumi and a version of his father named Hussein Hussein, a Halal Food Cart owner, with the other members of the animated family-like-Kloseted older sister Mona (Alia Shawkat) and practical mother Sharia (Salma Hindy) –tar.
Although the show is often ridiculous-a animated series that loves a Zany Dick joke or a musical number-the nuclear history comes from a painful place. In the pilot, the family lives a fairly typical early 2000s in its sleepy New Jersey suburb: Rumi’s grandfather died and puts a burden on Hussein and Sharia’s relationship, while Mona struggles to come out to her parents. Then the terrorist attacks occur on September 11, and suddenly their neighbors avoid them on the street and Rumi goes from just another child to a school par.
Fans of “Ramy” can be reminded of “Strawberries”, the fourth episode from the show’s first season in 2019. Like “#1 Happy Family USA”, the Flashback section focused on a young version of the fictional Ramy when he endured social rejection and sudden suspicion from others after 9/11 started a wave of Islamoph. According to Ramy, the experience of writing and filming that section, combined with the positive feedback from the audience, got him to consider different ways to approach the same time. While the idea that was percolved since 2019, he admits that it has even greater resonance at this particular political moment.
“We have a bit of it, but there is so much that continues to be broken into almost every interaction we have today. It is the author’s part of me who was like,” Oh, we already did one thing. But then the real character explorer in me was, “that was just the beginning,” says Youssef, IndieWire says. “This show captures the beginning of heavy surveillance on individual civilians and a certain pressure to perform patriotism. And I do not know if we have ever been asked to perform patriotism more than this week. It almost feels like you are at the airport with a brown name, you have to say”#1 Happy Family USA. ”
While Youssef had vague ideas for the series in 2019, development started in earnest when he and Brady had a zoom call in 2020. “Honestly, I easily persecuted Ramy,” Brady says about their first meeting. “I loved his show and his comic voice so much that I beg my boss,” Can you just get me a meeting? “And that’s all I thought would happen. But the two met it, and their discussion about Youssef’s idea helped lead to a more outflowed pitch for an animated series.
“In the best way, animation signals, ‘Yo, we are showing you a lot of stupid ass shit, let’s have a good time,” says Youssef. “And to have it the tone when you put on serious things, especially for some of the things we cover, from funerals to national security, if it was not animated, I think we would do,” Homeland “or something.”
The end result of their work, “#1 Happy Family USA,” sees (intentionally) as if it could have been on TV At the same time, the series is canceled. Youssef says he wanted the show to have a “nostalgia” and heat to it and thought that the Malaysian company Animasia would produce the art; The team had to downgrade their computers to match what the animation team was using. “We wanted it to feel almost as if it was DIY, that this show could have been on Nickelodeon or something in the 90s,” says Brady. “So we just wanted to make sure it wasn’t polished. It felt like it came from a simple point of view.”
The Medium of Animation Also Alsoded Brady and Youssef to Create Unique Visual Metaphors to Get the Audience Into the Head of Rumi, A Middle-Schooler Struggling Painfully to Fit in. The Most Prominent, and the First One That Youssef Came Up With, is How Code Switching Within The Series, as Hussein Pushes His Family To Give Up Their Culture and Assimilate, Is Depicted: When The Family Leaves, they have a static, they experimentae a static to the company they hold. “I think there is a universal feeling that someone has, which is,” I have to be different when I’m outside my house and when I’m inside my house, “Youssef said.” Here the efforts are much higher. And then we actually have to show it. We have to look at a beard disappear. We’ll see curly hair get straight. We may look at a child try to bury his curls under a hat, which I used to do as a child. “
“We play with how scary it is just to be a child who grows up anyway. And then you add this extra layer that the world is suspicious of you,” says Brady. “We just want it to make people feel what it was like.”
Although the entire animated Hussein family receives Spotlight sections and stories during the first season, the essence of the show is Rumi and Hussein, and their separate struggle with their culture and assimilation. Originally, Youssef would only vote Rumi, with Hussein played by another actor.
But after seeing several auditions for the part and not being satisfied, Brady Youssef pushed to express Hussein himself and believed to have him inhabiting a version of his father added the show’s unique point of view. To play both lead roles, Youssef took different inspiration for each character. His Rumi song came from a video that his sister Reem shared with the production of him who did a “video book report”, which helped him unlock the raspy voice he uses for his child stand-in.
Hussein’s voice was a longer process for Youssef to find, and he says that the end result does not actually sound much like his actual father. To find out the character during a recording session in a studio experimented Youssef by playing music in Hussein’s voice with a guitar. The Songwriting process led to two songs that Hussein sings throughout the show that captures his complexity: one is the theme song, a manic musical number where he addresses his suspected neighbors to assure them that the family is patriotic and innocent. The other, “Money for the Meat”, is a sad appealing Dirge, because Hussein asks customers to eat at his halal carriage.
“The voice was found organically swinging between this type of introspective, haunting music, and then this as a manifestation of a manic love for everyone in his life,” says Youssef. “After a couple of months I could do a whole session or a whole scene that went between the two, because I figured out how I would do them physically.”
After a seasonal square on Hussein’s domestic life pivot’s “#1 Happy Family USA” Pivots suddenly in the last minute. After starting an AOL chat message friendship with President George W. Bush, Kidnapped Rumi from his home and thrown off a plane into Iraq, with the president himself leading the child to help the US military and kill Osama Bin Laden.
Viewers left itching to know what will happen after the unexpected rock master can rest easily, as Amazon gave the animated series a two -season order. Discuss what will come for the show, Youssef and Brady say that the second run will see the show expand past their current reach and covers the political situation after 9/11 with more details than in season 1, where it works more as a background for Rumi’s life.
“Our emphasis in season 1 was this average school in the heart of this great global situation. And we flipped the recipe for season two, where we throw Rumi right into the great global situation,” Youssef tells IndieWire. “In this really cool way, we have to dig deep and broadly and take advantage of a lot of things that you could only do during a second season. What you feel there in the end is really a barometer for where we are going.”
“It’s getting pretty big,” says Brady. “And Ramy plays a rather integrated role in the war against terror.”
All eight episodes of “#1 Happy Family USA” now flow on Prime Video.
