Ramy Youssef has spent the last several months of 2023 on a global stand-up tour, which is ending its U. S. leg just as he hits the big screen in one of the buzziest films of the year, Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor Things. It’s a movie, and a performance, that will change the way people talk about him. In between stand-up dates, Esquire photographed the 32-year-old in New York, wearing this winter’s smartest overcoats. Then we asked his close friend and collaborator, The Bear creator Christopher Storer, to have a series of conversations with him and send us the recordings. Storer is a producer and director on Youssef’s award- winning Hulu show, Ramy, and Youssef is the only person other than Storer and his co-showrunner, Joanna Calo, who has directed an episode (episode 4, “Honeydew,” which takes place in Copenhagen) of The Bear, also on Hulu. Their first attempt at sending us a tape failed. Thankfully, these two very creative men persevered. What you’ll find here are two conversations that happened in Chicago in October—one in the back of an Uber, the other backstage at Youssef’s show—combined, edited, and condensed for clarity. —the Editors
Ramy Youssef: Hold it like you’re interviewing me. That’s it. The mic’s up here in the top.
Christopher Storer: What do I press?
RY: Nothing. It’s rolling right now.
CS: Hi, buddy. This is take two. Yesterday was a tech fail, or a Chris fail.
RY: You can’t get Chris to do a tech thing. He’s a great director, but he doesn’t touch any of the buttons.
CS: Sorry, Esquire. So, we’re in Chicago, in an Uber, on our way back from Ramy’s show.
RY: What did you think of it?
CS: I thought it was great, dude. Tell me about your routine before a show.
RY: I start in the hotel. I light my incense. Pray, breathe, call my parents. Always got to call the parents before the show.
CS: Do you really do that?
RY: You got to because you’re going to make fun of them at the show. You have to tell them, “Hey, I might say a few things tonight. Are you okay with it?” And then they’ll say, “Will you show it to us?” And then I say no. And then they say, “Okay, have fun.”
CS: I feel like I should apologize to chefs who have told me stories that end up somewhere in The Bear: “I’m sorry your trauma’s coming back up.”
RY: You got to apologize to chefs. I got to apologize to my family.
CS: You still eating too much candy?
RY: I just had a couple of gummies, but now I’m going to eat dinner. Gummies first, then dinner, then gummies. Actually, I pretty much weaned off gummies. They just had them backstage, but I don’t ask for them anymore. Now I got kiwis, which I know you find a little strange.
CS: I’ve grown to love them. But you eat the skin, which texturally is weird at first. . .
RY: Love the texture.
CS: . . . then it kind of grows on you. I found it to be similar to a pear. So, I saw Poor Things, which is excellent, and you are excellent in it. I had a surreal moment seeing you and Jerrod Carmichael and Chris Abbott, friends of mine, all in this thing, continuing to work together and around each other. There's something really beautiful and inspiring about that. As you're getting into directing more, has that shaped you as an actor? Are you looking at it more like a filmmaker in addition to as a comedian?
RY: Getting to do a lot of what we're doing together has been really cool. There was this period of two years where we were at Blue Bottle on Beverly talking about maybe this, maybe that. Even on the first season of Ramy, we were both begging the network to let us direct. It took so long for them to let us direct that by the time they said yes, we had missed the Directors Guild inauguration and the DGA had to hold that special Saturday class for us.
CS: We had to go sit in a room. . .
RY: It was just you and me. . .
CS: . . . for six hours, reading the guidelines to the Directors Guild of America. A very nice gentleman sat with us and taught us all the fundamentals of directing for television.
RY: We remembered none of it. And then on Monday we got to shoot. You had been directing stuff before, and I’d been directing small stuff, but in terms of narrative, it felt like we were learning it together.
CS: It’s definitely informed everything I’ve done since. The vibe that you created on Ramy was conducive to the best possible work. People would walk by and think it was a student film, in the same way that people, when they walked by The Bear, they were like, “Why are there ten people here?” This is how we learned to make things.
RY: We learned how to make it with that smaller family vibe.
CS: Say what you said on yesterday’s tape. Give me a nice compliment.
RY: No, you gave me a great compliment, which helped me a lot. I directed only one episode of the first season of Ramy. When we were shooting it, you were there and then you were gone for a few hours. I was running the set totally by myself. Then you came back and I was like, “Dude, I didn’t see you, and did you see this thing that I had set up?” And you said, “Oh, dude, I left because it was so clear you knew exactly what you were doing, and you’re killing it.” You saying that to me was actually the thing that made me feel like, “I can do this.”
CS: Well, dude, I remember a very specific moment when we were shooting the pilot of The Bear. It was the second or third shot, and I was looking over my shoulder being like, “Where the fuck is Ramy?” With everything we did on your show, I was like, “Hold on, I got to see what Ram thinks.” So I thought, Oh, I’m a little frightened that I’m by myself. But now I got Matty Matheson. Where are you in development for Matty’s feature film?
RY: Oh, the Matty Matheson feature film. You were very gracious to bring me in on the second season of The Bear, which was probably one of my favorite experiences because I wasn’t in it, which is very fun. That’s where I met Matty. And Matty has immediately engaged me on writing a film for him. I’ve been thinking a lot about this, and I think every director has their . . .
CS: He’s your DiCaprio?
RY: Every director has their opus, their Killers of the Flower Moon. It’ll probably take me my whole career to find the right ending to this story with Matty. But I’m very excited about it.
CS: I look forward to the three-and-a-half-hour opus. What are you wearing during this tour? When you walked out tonight, you had on great Levi’s.
RY: These Levi’s are vintage, from the seventies. And then I’m wearing these dress shoes. I would only wear sneakers before, but I’ve been wearing more dress shoes. These are more adult.
CS: You’re more grown-up.
RY: These shoes are, what’s that brand called? Legacy? My . . .
CS: Our Legacy?
RY: Our Legacy. And then I’ve got a couple rings. One of them is my wedding ring.
CS: No shirt and tie on yet?
RY: I’m not on the shirt and tie. I don’t like looking too fancy onstage, because I don’t want the outfit to distract from what I’m trying to say. I want to feel like I’m dressed the way that I am when I’m at the diner with my friends. That’s really important for me with stand-up.
CS: Tell me about that watch.
RY: This is a late-eighties Cartier. It’s my prized possession. I had been looking for a small Cartier, and I had to hunt this down. I got it in London.
CS: Tell me why.
RY: It’s a women’s Cartier. I have small wrists.
CS: The band is beautiful.
RY: I know, it’s this green leather.
CS: Why Cartier?
RY: Bro, it’s my favorite face. And the women’s watch they make just works for me. It’s my shit. My other watch is also Cartier. It’s the only watch I wear.
CS: Are you a watch guy suddenly?
RY: I’m a Cartier guy.
CS: How are you feeling about the state of comedy right now?
RY: One thing that’s been nice about the shows is we do no phones, which is therapeutic on a level. Most of the shows don’t have an opener, so the audience has been sitting there for a half hour without their phones. It’s almost like they’ve been detoxing for a second. I come out to this raw energy. We’ve always joked that people have to put their shoes on when they come out to see you. They’re literally invested. It’s not passively at home watching. I feel grateful getting to do it. And right now there’s all this stuff that’s really hard to talk about, and it feels even harder to laugh about. And I always like a tightrope, in anything we’ve ever made together, and it feels like right now the rope is really, really tight. So of course there’s the part of me that’s always preparing to walk it and continue to walk it. That’s fun.
CS: One of the things I noticed tonight was how much people were interacting with you onstage. Obviously, we’re in a very difficult time. Everyone is looking at the news at all times, so there is a premium on anything life- affirming, which includes comedy. There was such a sense of comfort in the room—people were able to laugh and be part of a conversation. I thought it was really beautiful. How’d you feel about that show?
RY: Felt really good. Felt like good flow. And then the late show—the late show is always more fun. The weirdos come out to the late show.
CS: Is that true?
RY: Always.
CS: You prefer a late show?
RY: Got to. Everyone will tell you there’s nothing on earth like a Saturday, 10:00 P.M. show. That’s a portal to heaven.
CS: You got to earn that time slot, though.
RY: Of course. Saturday, 10:00 P.M. is not lightly bestowed. But once you get there, then you’re really making music.
Editor's note: The version of this story that appears in print omits their discussion of Poor Things, because the magazine went to press before the actor's strike had ended. It has been included in the digital version.
This article appeared in the Winter 2023 issue of Esquire
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