Most episodes of “#1 Blissful Household USA” open with a disclaimer within the fashion of a ranking display you may see earlier than a trailer on the movie show. In a purple banner throughout the display, the phrase “Illustration Warning” is written in huge, daring white letters. Beneath, the textual content continues with “Don’t use this animated present as cultural illustration for the next communities: Muslims, Arabs,” and a 3rd class that, relying on the episode, might be “Folks from New Jersey,” “White women named Courtney,” or “Males.” As an alternative of a ranking, the field on the backside reads “H” for “Haram,” with textual content that claims “Allah please forgive errors on this program.”
For collection co-creator and star Ramy Youssef, the thought behind that tongue-in-cheek opening got here from what he described as a “type of exhaustion.” When the comic’s break-out Hulu live-action collection “Ramy” — a dramedy exploring a fictionalized model of each Youssef and his Egyptian household in New Jersey — first premiered in 2019, he noticed headlines about it that he summed up like this: “‘Ramy’ on Hulu: Prepare Muslims, right here’s your man!’” For “Blissful Household USA” — a cheeky animated comedy about an Egyptian household caught between embracing their tradition and assimilating to American jingoism within the days after 9/11 — he needed to sidestep that strain completely.
“The very first thing you see is one thing that additionally type of simply takes the air out of the entire dialog,” Youssef tells IndieWire. “Please enable this to be dumb and silly. Please enable this to not need to be some emblem for the whole lot. And there will probably be lots of people who hook up with it, but additionally lots of people received’t. And that’s type of the entire level.”
Very similar to “Ramy,” “#1 Blissful Household USA” (which premiered on Amazon Prime on April 17) is just too particular and private to Youssef’s personal life experiences to function sweepingly basic “illustration.” Co-created with “South Park” vet Pam Brady, the collection options Youssef voicing each a stand-in for himself named Rumi in addition to a model of his father named Hussein Hussein, a halal meals cart proprietor, with the opposite members of the animated household — corresponding to Rumi’s closeted older sister Mona (Alia Shawkat) and sensible mom Sharia (Salma Hindy) — taking inspiration from their real-life counterparts.
Though the present is usually ridiculous — an out-there animated collection that loves a zany dick joke or a musical quantity — it’s core storyline comes from a painful place. Within the pilot, the household resides a reasonably typical early 2000s existence of their sleepy New Jersey suburb: Rumi’s grandfather died, placing a pressure on Hussein and Sharia’s relationship, whereas Mona grapples with popping out to her dad and mom. Then, the 9/11 terrorist assaults occur, and all of the sudden their neighbors keep away from them on the road and Rumi goes from simply one other child to a college pariah.
Followers of “Ramy” could be reminded of “Strawberries,” the standout fourth episode from the present’s 2019 first season. Like “#1 Blissful Household USA,” that flashback episode centered on a younger model of the fictional Ramy as he endured social rejection and sudden suspicion from others after 9/11 kickstarted a wave of Islamophobia in American tradition. In line with Ramy, the expertise of writing and filming that episode, mixed with the constructive suggestions from audiences, precipitated him to contemplate alternative ways to strategy the identical time limit. Whereas the thought percolated since 2019, he acknowledges it has even higher resonance at this explicit political second.
“We obtained a slice of it, however there’s a lot that continues to refract into just about each interplay we’re having as we speak. There’s the author a part of me that was like, ‘Oh, we already did one factor. However then the true character explorer in me was like, ‘That was only the start,’” Youssef tells IndieWire. “This present captures the start of heavy surveillance on particular person civilians and a sure strain to carry out patriotism. And I don’t know if we’ve ever been requested to carry out patriotism greater than this week. It nearly looks like in case you are on the airport with a brown identify, you’ve obtained to be saying ‘#1 Blissful Household USA.’”
Whereas Youssef had obscure concepts for the collection in 2019, growth kickstarted in earnest when he and Brady had a Zoom name in 2020. “Truthfully, I used to be flippantly stalking Ramy,” Brady says about their first assembly. “I beloved his present and his comedic voice a lot that I used to be begging my supervisor, ‘Are you able to please simply get me a gathering?’ And that’s all I believed was gonna occur. It was actually a fan assembly.” Nevertheless, the 2 hit it off, and their dialogue about Youssef’s concept helped result in a extra fleshed out pitch for an animated collection.
“In the easiest way, animation alerts, ‘Yo, we’re about to indicate you a bunch of dumb ass shit, let’s have a superb time,’” Youssef says. “And to have that be the tone as you tackle severe issues, particularly for a number of the issues we cowl, from funerals to nationwide safety, if it wasn’t animated, I believe we’d be making, ‘Homeland’ or one thing.”
The tip results of their work, “#1 Blissful Household USA,” seems (deliberately) prefer it may have been on TV on the identical time the collection is ready. Youssef says he needed the present to have a “nostalgia” and heat to it, and located the Malaysian firm Animasia to provide the artwork; the staff needed to downgrade their computer systems to match what the animation staff was utilizing. “We needed it to really feel nearly prefer it was DIY, that this present may have existed on Nickelodeon or one thing within the ’90s,’” Brady says. “So we simply needed to guarantee that it wasn’t polished. It felt prefer it was coming from a singular perspective.”
The medium of animation additionally allowed Brady and Youssef to create distinctive visible metaphors to get the viewers into the pinnacle of Rumi, a middle-schooler struggling painfully to slot in. Essentially the most outstanding, and the primary one which Youssef got here up with, is how code switching throughout the collection, as Hussein pushes his household to surrender their tradition and assimilate, is depicted: When the household leaves their dwelling, they expertise a static glitch of kinds, one which alters their look to align with the corporate they’re preserving. “I believe there’s a common feeling that anybody has, which is, ‘I gotta be completely different once I’m outdoors of my home and once I’m inside my home,’” Youssef stated. “Right here, the stakes are method larger. After which we get to really present that. We get to observe a beard disappear. We get to observe curly hair turn out to be straight. We get to observe a child attempt to bury his curls beneath a hat, which I used to do as a child.”
“We’re enjoying round with how scary it’s simply to be a child rising up anyway. And then you definately add this additional layer that the world is suspicious of you,” Brady says. “We simply need it to make individuals really feel what that was like.”
Though the complete animated Hussein household receives highlight episodes and storylines all through the primary season, the core of the present is Rumi and Hussein, and their separate struggles with their tradition and assimilation. Initially, Youssef was solely purported to voice Rumi, with Hussein being performed by one other actor.
Nevertheless, after seeing a number of auditions for the half and never being happy, Brady pushed Youssef to voice Hussein himself, believing that having him inhabit a model of his father added to the present’s distinctive perspective. To play each lead roles, Youssef took completely different inspirations for every character. His Rumi vocals got here from a video his sister Reem shared with manufacturing of him doing a “video e book report,” which helped him unlock the raspy voice he makes use of for his baby stand-in.
Hussein’s voice was an extended course of for Youssef to search out, and he says the top outcome doesn’t truly sound very like his precise father. To determine the character throughout a recording session at a studio, Youssef experimented with enjoying music in Hussein’s voice with a guitar. The songwriting course of led to 2 songs that Hussein sings all through the present that seize his complexities: One is the theme tune, a manic musical quantity the place he addresses his suspicious neighbors to guarantee them that the household is patriotic and harmless. The opposite, “Cash for the Meat,” is a tragic pleading dirge, as Hussein begs clients to eat at his halal cart.
“The voice was discovered organically oscillating between this type of introspective, haunting music, after which this like manifestation of a manic love for everybody in his life,” Youssef says. “After a few months, I used to be in a position to do an entire session or an entire scene going between the 2, as a result of I discovered how one can do them bodily.”
After a season centered squarely on the Husseins’ home lives, “#1 Blissful Household USA” pivots abruptly in its closing minutes. After having began an AOL chat message friendship with President George W. Bush, Rumi is kidnapped from his dwelling and thrown off a aircraft into Iraq, with the president himself directing the kid to assist the U.S. navy observe down and kill Osama Bin Laden.
Viewers left itching to know what is going to occur after that surprising cliffhanger can relaxation simple, as a result of Amazon gave the animated collection a two-season order. Discussing what’s to come back for the present, Youssef and Brady say the sophomore run will see the present increase previous its present scope, protecting the political publish 9/11 scenario with extra element than in Season 1, the place it serves extra as a backdrop for Rumi’s life.
“Our emphasis in Season 1 was this center faculty on the coronary heart of this massive international scenario. And we flipped the recipe for season two, the place we throw Rumi proper into the big international scenario,” Youssef tells IndieWire. “On this actually cool method, we get to dig deep and huge and faucet into a whole lot of stuff that you possibly can solely do in a second season. What you’re feeling there on the finish is actually a barometer of the place we’re going.”
“It will get pretty huge,” Brady says. “And Ramy performs a reasonably integral function within the Conflict on Terror.”
All eight episodes of “#1 Blissful Household USA” are streaming now on Prime Video.