I'm Not a Terrorist, But I've Played One on TV

by Maz Jobrani

  My Dad the King

  My New York experience is also where I remember my dad being in his prime. At the time he was in his mid-forties, rich and on top of his game. He was a real manly man and to a six-year-old boy, nothing is cooler than watching someone like that in action. I remember going to restaurants and seeing my dad pay for everyone. It didn’t matter how many other families were with us, he would always pick up the tab. That’s something Persians have to do. We pay for everyone and will argue to make sure that we get awarded the bill. Whereas in America people split the check, that is unheard of in the Persian culture. You will never hear two Persians getting a check and breaking down the items.

  “Let’s see, I had the grilled cheese and the iced tea.”

  “That’ll be eight ninety-seven for you. I had the ham sandwich and a glass of water so I owe six ninety-eight. Plus tip, that’s ten dollars for you and eight dollars for me.”

  The conversation with Persians goes more like this:

  “Here, I pay.”

  “No, no. I pay.”

  “No! No! No! I insist! I pay!”

  “No! No! No! No! You pay last time. I insist, I pay!”

  “No! No! No! If you pay you insult me. I pay!”

  “If you pay, you insult me, my father, and my father’s father!”

  “I mean no insult to your ancestors. However, I insist, I pay!”

  “If you pay, I will never talk to you again!”

  “If you pay, I will be forced to report you and your family to immigration and have you deported so that you will never be able to pay in America again!”

  “If you pay, I will have you executed so you will never be able to pay on earth again!”

  “That settles it. I will see you in hell! How much tip do I leave on twenty-seven fifty-two?”

  My father was constantly going through these battles whenever we were dining with other Persians. When we ate with American friends, it was my dad saying, “I pay!” And the Americans responding, “Okay, sure, that works.”

  It was not that our American friends were cheap. It’s just a cultural thing with us Persians. I would watch as my dad would pay all the bills and it made me feel proud. I would celebrate most of these meals with my strawberry and whipped cream desserts and I would feel on top of the world. It was great being a six-year-old on a sugar high with a dad who paid for everything.

  When we were driving home from one of these New York dinners one night, my dad drank so much that he put his foot out the passenger side window and began to dance. He turned up the music and wiggled his leg at oncoming traffic. He didn’t seem to care if anyone noticed. He wasn’t even worried that the cops would see him and think he was acting belligerent. To me, a young boy, he looked like he was a king, enjoying life without worrying about repercussions. It was only later that I came to understand my father was a functioning alcoholic. Orange juice and vodka was to him what Starbucks macchiatos are to people today. “I will take a venti vodka orange juice please, no foam. And add a shot.” I was too young to know the difference, clapping along in the backseat and enjoying the show.

  This wasn’t the first time I had been in a car with my dad when he’d been drinking. In Tehran years earlier, we were on our way home from a party and came across a pack of wild dogs roaming our neighborhood. For no reason I can recall, my dad, who was driving this time, pulled the car over and got out, wearing a nice suit and dress shoes. He had been hitting the drink that night, so he was in king mode. He grabbed a rock and started chasing the dogs while yelling at them. He didn’t consider that these were wild dogs that might rip him apart for a meal. When you’re in king mode you can take on anything—even wild animals foaming at the mouth. I, of course, adored it—my brave father taking on a pack of dogs, in dress shoes no less!

  In hindsight, it was the vodka that made him so brave. He hadn’t thought through what he planned on doing if the dogs attacked him. When you’re that drunk you probably don’t spend a lot of time thinking about what comes next after they don’t run away. Either way, he managed to scare them off and survived that episode. Considering this story years later, it occurs to me there are several things wrong with it.

  First—and to point out the obvious—he was driving drunk. But in the early 1970s in Tehran that was not a big deal. I believe the rule then was that as long as you’re conscious, then you’re okay to drive. If the cops pulled you over they would administer the field sobriety test, which in Iran was basically the ability to stand on your own two feet and dance like you’re turning a light bulb. That’s the national Iranian dance. Try it. It’s a lot of fun. Just hold your hands in the air and act like you’re screwing in a light bulb. Now turn your hips as you do that and, voilà, you’re proficient at both dancing Persian and passing an Iranian field sobriety test. If you got out of the car and fell flat on your face, then that was it. They would take your keys from you. Of course, if you could touch your nose with your fingers while you were flat on your back then they would reconsider and give you a second chance at the test. If you could screw the light bulb while you were on the ground, they would turn up the radio and actually buy you a drink.

  Second, my dad was driving drunk with his young son and daughter in the backseat NOT buckled into seat belts. Again, in the mid-1970s in Tehran that was par for the course. Why would you put a seat belt on your kids? That would just make it harder to get them out if there was an accident. If you left them loose in the backseat then in case of an accident they would just fly out of the car and land on the sidewalk, or a cushiony crowd of bystanders. Also, back then and even today we didn’t have child seats in the Middle East. To us a child seat was grandma’s lap.

  Last, reflecting on Dad versus Wild Dogs, I realize there’s an issue PETA members might have with him chasing the dogs with a rock. For any animal activist planning a case against my father, let me assure you that the dogs were wild and possibly dangerous. Furthermore, I don’t think my dad actually threw the rock at them, but I can’t be sure of that. I was too busy wrestling with my sister in the back of the car to get a good look. In Iran, for the most part, dogs aren’t accepted as pets as they are in America. Pets are roosters and hens, and sometimes they get names, and sometimes they get eaten. This is bad news, of course, for the kids who grow attached to Rahim the rooster but good news for the parents who use Rahim to impregnate all the other hens, then eat the horny bird. Also, Iranians keep their parents and grandparents in their homes until they die, so we’re too busy cleaning up after our relatives to chase dogs. While in America people chase their parents out of the house, in Iran we chase dogs out of the house. Either way, someone has to go.

  Later in life, as my dad got older and lost most of his money in bad investments, he told me he had wanted to buy a building in Midtown Manhattan when we first came to America.

  “Today dat building is vorth von hundred fifty million dollars. I could have been king of New York, dancing vith my feet out the vindow every night on Fifth Avenue. But your mom vanted to go to California for sunshine. I never should have listened to her. Dat sun cost me a hundred and fifty million dollars.”

  When I told my mom this, she had a different take: “You know how cold deh vinters are in New York? He put his foot out deh vindow so much he vould have died from ferostbite. And you vere too eh-skinny to survive dat veather. That’s vhy ve fed you so much eh-strawberries and vhipped keream. Ve vere terying to make you pelump for the vinters. Anyvay, your father vould have lost dat money, too. It is a good ting I talked him out of it. At least he got a tan!”

  What Would Sofia Vergara Do?

  In 2006, I lived in New York during the taping of a short-lived TV show I did for ABC called The Knights of Prosperity. This was a show about a group of low-income workers who were down and out on their luck. In order to make some money, they decided to rob Mick Jagger. It starred Donal Logue as a janitor who had come up with the idea and it had
a cast of six people. I played Gourishankar Subramaniam, the Indian cab driver who was also a womanizer and served as the driver of the group’s getaway car. The female member of the group was a diner waitress played by Sofia Vergara. It was a very funny show, top-notch writing, great critical reviews, and subsequently canceled by the eighth or ninth episode.

  People don’t realize how tough it is to get on a hit sitcom. I’ve had people come up to me and say, “Maz, you should be on that show! You’d be great. You should call the producers and have them put you on it.” I wish it were that easy.

  “Hello? Is this the production office of Louie? Yes, I would like to submit myself to play the part of Louie. Oh, Louie is playing Louie? How about his brother? Cousin? Neighbor? Those parts don’t exist? Hmmm. Can I at least serve coffee at production meetings? Great, see you in the morning!”

  Here’s how it really works. Each year, from around the end of summer until early fall, the major networks ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX hear pitches for shows. I don’t know what the exact number is, but I know it’s a lot of pitches, probably in the hundreds. From those pitches they will order a bunch of scripts. From those scripts they will then order pilot episodes for a handful of shows. I think the year I did Knights of Prosperity, ABC ordered ten or twelve comedy pilots. A pilot is just one episode of the show that the networks will spend millions to make and then focus-group. From the pilots shot, they will then choose about four or five of those shows to put on the air in the fall. In 2006, The Knights of Prosperity had been chosen as one of the shows for ABC. I auditioned and got the part.

  The auditioning process is ruthless. You’re up against hundreds of people gunning for one part. The closer you get, the more the pressure builds. This culminates in something called a network test, where they will narrow the part down to three or four actors and have you all come in at the same time and audition in front of the show’s producers as well as the heads of the network and the studio. It’s especially nerve-wracking because before you go in for the final audition, they’ve already negotiated your contract, so you know that if you get the part you stand to make tens of thousands of dollars a week. Of course, should you end up blowing it, you’re back to making lattes at Starbucks.

  I remember other comedians congratulating me for getting the part. “Congrats man! You made it!” I would remind them that TV is very competitive and just because I was on a pilot that didn’t mean that I had made it. I didn’t really know how competitive it was until our show finally aired. The network premiered it in January 2007. The first night our show came on was during the college football bowl season; we were on at the same time as the Sugar Bowl, which took away a lot of our potential viewers. The second week, President Bush gave a speech just as our show began. That bumped us from our time slot and took away any momentum we might have built from the previous week. (Thanks again, George W., my constant nemesis. First you put Iran into your axis of evil, then you give a speech during my sitcom.) The third week we were on, FOX premiered American Idol, which at the time was attracting tens of millions of viewers each week. They killed us in the ratings. It occurred to me that if I had just learned to be a mediocre singer, it would have improved my career in television.

  As I watched us sink week by week, I grew more nervous. What was going to be next? I imagined seeing an ad on FOX: “Next week, the TV event of a lifetime. Jesus comes back. One night only!” Great! Now we had to compete with Armageddon? Jesus never came back, but neither did our show. We were canceled shortly after and I went back to auditioning. One step further from a hit show and one step closer to serving lattes at Starbucks.

  Back then, Sofia Vergara had not been on Modern Family, so she was not as well known as she is now. My experience with her and the whole cast was really great. Besides being beautiful, she was incredibly cool and fun to work with. Being a regular on the show, I had my mother come to visit one time from Los Angeles. She was impressed with the show and thought Sofia was charming and beautiful. Years later, after The Knights of Prosperity had been canceled and Modern Family became the biggest hit on TV, I got a call from my mother.

  “You need to change agents.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Your career. It eh-stinks I’m eh-smelling it from vay over here in Vestwood.”

  “Mom, why are you being so dramatic? I live fifteen minutes away from you. Besides, I’m doing fine.”

  “Just fine? Sofia isn’t doing just fine. She do amazing. I saw her on cover of Elle magazine. You should be on cover of Elle magazine.”

  “Elle is a woman’s magazine.”

  “So vhat? You need to tink outside the package. I bet Sofia’s agents tink outside the package.”

  “You mean outside the box.”

  “Box, package . . . same ting. You should be on Modern Family. You are modern. You have a family. Call and tell dem to put you on.”

  “It doesn’t work that way. You have to audition against hundreds of people, land the pilot, get picked up, and hope people watch it. It’s really competitive.”

  “How about American Idol? You are kind of a mediocre singer. Have you thought about getting on dat?”

  “No, Mom. I don’t want to be a singer.”

  “How about a lawyer?”

  “What?”

  “Plumber? American Plumber sounds nice.”

  “Mom! Stop giving me career advice.”

  “You have to ask yourself, ‘Vhat vould Sofia do?’ ”

  “So she’s Jesus now?”

  “Yes, but vith better hair. And a hit show.”

  Nearly Killed by a Cod

  I almost died in New York while filming The Knights of Prosperity. Not from a mugging or nearly getting hit by a cab, but by a fish. In 2006 when I was working on the show, I had a horrible experience one day with a cod. When you are on a film or TV show they provide lunch for you. That day the fish was cod. Later that night as I was being dropped off at my apartment, I began to feel a bit nauseous. I rushed to the bathroom to relieve myself, only to discover the impossible duality of also having to vomit. There is no worse feeling than having food poisoning and the poison insisting on leaving your body through multiple orifices. It’s a life-altering moment when you have to decide which end of your body gets to use the toilet first.

  As I was caught in this anatomical conundrum, underwear at my knees, I had the added sensation of suffocation. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was hyperventilating. Apparently, my lungs didn’t want to miss out on all the fun my intestines were having. If you’ve never hyperventilated, I highly recommend doing it in a crowded space, never alone in your bathroom. First, you get light-headed. Then just as you’re about to black out, you think, Oh hell no! No way I’m blacking out from breathing too heavy. Especially with my underwear at my knees. This is NOT gonna happ . . . And boom, you’re out.

  Next thing I knew, I awoke in my own crime scene—facedown on the bathroom floor, underwear now at my ankles, blood on the wall. I had hit the towel holder with the back of my head as I fell and it cut a gash. Luckily I had not hit it hard enough to cause serious bleeding. This was a major relief because the last way you want to die would be from eating the wrong fish. I can imagine my funeral.

  “Maz died in a fish accident.”

  “He was attacked by a shark?”

  “No, it was a cod.”

  “A cod ate him?”

  “No, he ate the cod.”

  “So then how did he die?”

  “I just told you. The cod killed him.”

  “A cop killed Maz?”

  “NO! COD! C-O-D!”

  “Cash on delivery? It was a drug deal? I knew it. He was always up to something fishy.”

  “No! It was a fish. Food poisoning. He died hyperventilating with his underwear at his ankles.”

  “Whoa. He was eating fish with his pants off? That’s some kinky s
hit.”

  My near-death-by-cod experience during The Knights of Prosperity filming may have been a sign from the heavens of how the show was going to do. But such cosmic signals did not land until years later. While driving in Los Angeles, I saw a homeless person wearing an orange T-shirt that we wore in the show with the words “The Knights of Prosperity.” Seeing a homeless woman with a T-shirt from the show that I had been on just a couple of years earlier reminded me just how fast life can go from promising to unfortunate. Maybe my mom was right. Maybe I did need new agents. “Vhat vould Sofia do?” I asked myself. I was never going to have her hair. Instead, I took mom’s advice and fired my agents.

  September 11

  The morning of September 11, 2001, I was in Los Angeles. Like many people, I could not believe what I was watching on TV. It was heartbreaking to see all the misery and even more heartbreaking because it was happening to New York, which will always hold a special place in my heart. At the time, my younger brother, Kashi, was working near the Twin Towers, so my first instinct was to call and make sure he was okay. Once that had been confirmed I drove around Los Angeles visiting my family, in shock.

  As the day went on, I seriously considered never performing comedy again. Not because I was of Middle Eastern descent, but because of the sadness that consumed me. How could anything ever be funny again? Life just seemed very tragic. Just a few days later I was scheduled to do a show at a private residence in Irvine, California. I thought for sure the show would be canceled, but when I called to check in, the host pleaded with me to perform. He told me that his wife was Turkish and that the guests were all very open-minded. He suggested that laughter was needed, now more than ever.

  Hesitantly, I confirmed my appearance. America had become so crazy in those days that I honestly feared for my life. What if one of the guests decided to attack me because I was Iranian? Was this some sort of setup? Was the guy’s wife really Turkish? Did Turkey even qualify as a Middle Eastern country? I thought they were trying to join the European Union. That would mean they’re European. Everyone knows Europeans hate Iranians. So by default the Turks must hate Iranians. This had to be a setup!