Ramy Youssef is having another big year.

To lay it all out: The actor-comedian-writer-director is part of the buzzy best-picture conversation with his role in Poor Things, a.k.a. his first real part in a feature film; he’s a first-time DGA nominee for directing the Copenhagen-set episode of The Bear; he’s juggling cocreator/EP duties on the Emmy-nominated Ramy and Peabody-winning Mo; and he also, for good measure, has a blossoming friendship with Taylor Swift.

Youssef humbly clarifies that not all of these things have happened simultaneously, only conversations about them have. “We shot Poor Things [in 2021], then I headed over to Mo, then started ’22 shooting [season three of] Ramy, and then the following year I did The Bear,” he tells Vanity Fair. “Everything kind of came out very similarly in time, but it was a bit more spaced out.”

The bilingual multihyphenate’s star has been on the rise for several years, beginning in 2019 when he wrote and executive produced his first comedy special for HBO and starred in the acclaimed Hulu series Ramy, on which he also served as a writer and director; the latter earned him a Golden Globe win and two Emmy nominations as well. (Ramy is semi-autobiographical, starring Youssef as a son of Egyptian immigrants who’s navigating life in New Jersey as a Muslim American.) Outside of his TV and film work, Youssef has used his platform to speak out about the Israel-Hamas war and raise funds for the humanitarian aid organization Anera—for which he ended up in the headlines with his new pal Swift.

We caught up with Youssef to hear more about his journey in Hollywood thus far, his perspective as a first-generation Egyptian American storyteller and performer, and how he’s wrapping his head around his rapidly rising profile.

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Vanity Fair: When did you first have an inkling you wanted to be in this wild business? 

Ramy Youssef: The idea of being able to do this professionally took a really long time to sink in for me. I always knew I wanted to make things. I started with making music videos and short films and learned how to video edit, but I thought it was just all going to be kind of this beautiful hobby. The idea of it being a real [career] was not an aspiration, just because I couldn’t imagine it.

Writing, directing, and starring in a hit show is a pretty remarkable feat in this business. Was there a particularly formative working experience you had along the way, outside of early TV work?

My father managed hotels, and the times that I would go with him to work and kind of see his style of working with people—it’s very show businessy. My dad had this combination of being firm and honest, but also incredibly diplomatic. He just seemed to love what he did, but was managing so many people. And I think that style, seeing that and understanding that, is the most formative thing that I could think of for the way that running a set works. 

How many languages do you speak, by the way?

I speak Arabic and English. My mother also speaks French, and actually my grandfather was an interpreter for the United Nations. That’s what kind of brought my mother’s family to America. That was his job for decades—everything that happened in the United Nations, my grandfather was there interpreting into Arabic, into French, and vice versa. I feel shame I didn’t pick up [French].

Was there a moment where you knew you were on the right path?

I was really lucky to move to LA with an acting job [on the Nick at Nite sitcom See Dad Run], but when it ended, I think I thought that because I had acted in one thing, that would kind of open the doors to other acting. And then you quickly realize that you’re always auditioning, whether you’re auditioning or not.

The thing that made me feel the most excited was finding my voice in stand-up. What I like about Hollywood is there’s this thing that’s unreliable about it in the way that life is too…if you can make the agreement [with yourself] that being here is going to be unstable, it actually is so beautiful because you’re really grateful for anything when it works. When I found stand-up, I thought, Okay, it doesn’t matter what’s going on. I can build an hour of stand-up and I can connect with people, and that doesn’t need a budget or too much approval from anyone, other than building an audience organically. So that was when I transitioned from doing sketch comedy and making short films to saying, Okay, I want to just build out my voice onstage. Seeing that grow made me feel like I could stay here and do this.

Jumping ahead a bit, it’s pretty amazing that Poor Things is your first film. How did it happen?

My manager had called and said, “Hey, there might be a couple scenes for you in a Yorgos [Lanthimos] film.” She was really excited to give me that call because she knew how much I loved Yorgos. And so I met with him, and he told me he had watched my show and watched my stand-up. We talked a lot about tone and comedy—we probably talked for an hour and a half or two hours—and by the end of the conversation, he said, “This is what I’m working on next. There’s this part that I think you would be great at, and so why don’t you read it and let me know what you think?” And I immediately said to him, “Dude, I don’t need to read it. I’ll be there.” And he was like, “Well, we’ll have to see the schedule because I know you’re filming your show.” And I was like, “Dude, f--k my show. Let’s do this.”

When I got the script, I loved how funny it was and I kind of understood, based on the conversation we had had around tone and comedy, that this is what he was going for, he [and writer] Tony McNamara. I felt, Oh, they’re going for an even bigger comedy. It’s still going to be Yorgos-[style]—crazy and messy and weird—but it’s also going to be really funny. 

Your character, Max, has this wide-eyed, lovable quality about him that we don’t know if we can totally trust or not. Was there any part of him that you really loved getting to do?

Max was an opportunity for me to do something I hadn’t done before, to build a character that truly has nothing to do with me. He has an accent. He has all these fascinations. The piece of him that I really loved, though, was that he puts himself in these situations that are inherently kind of challenging, and he somehow tries to be sincere within them. He’s incredibly curious, and he is also drawn to the things that would spike his curiosity the most, and I think for the right reasons. Building that character, there’s a real fine line [there]—he could have been weird and creepy. I think I understood that when I read it and I thought, Oh, this is why Yorgos wants me to do this, because there is a tightrope walk here.

One thing I’ve also enjoyed about watching you and your Poor Things cast is how affectionate everyone is. Is there one element of that that has been particularly fun?

It’s kind of a magical group. Everyone comes from such a different life experience. And then we were all together in Budapest for months on end [filming]. We had three weeks of rehearsal, really getting to know one another. And then I think we are all just fans of each other, and we all bring something incredibly different to the table…It’s that intangible thing that you can’t fully describe. But I think we all feel this thing of, we would like to be always in each other’s lives, and that’s hard to get.

Along with all of the current awards love for Poor Things, you also received your first DGA nomination for your episode of The Bear, “Honeydew.” Was there any cooking or food-related thing that you took away from that experience? 

On my first scouting trip, I basically just took all my work meetings from Copenhagen, and then because of the time difference, walked around during the day. I like to scout stuff with a film camera, so I was just walking around listening to music, and I probably took 300 pictures and then picked out the frames that I then shared with our DP, Adam Newport-Berra, and our location manager in Copenhagen. Looking at the script, there was something written in an apartment, but I’d be walking and I’d see all these houseboats and then kind of hit up [co-showrunner] Chris Storer and sent him a photo of a houseboat I took. I said, “What if we did it like that? And he said, “Oh, dude, f--k yeah, we gotta do that.”

I think the thing that I probably took the most from eating out every night—and then also me and Lionel [Boyce], we did one day of staging at Noma, which was really cool. You see how much of an art food is, how much thought goes into it, so much craft goes into it. I was really impressed and blown away by the level of discipline that it takes. One of the mornings, I went to Hart Bakery in Copenhagen and worked the early shift with them from 4 a.m. It’s such a system. Anything that I tend to appreciate in life that feels fun and spontaneous is actually incredibly systematic, whether it be a movie or whether it be a cinnamon roll.

Do you think you’ll get to direct an episode in season three?

I think Chris is allowing me to do more; we’re figuring out schedule stuff, but I’m excited. That’s one of those things where it’s an opportunity to go hang out with my friends for two weeks. A lot of that cast I’ve known for years and then a bunch are new friends. Seeing them win, it felt like I won, actually.

Speaking of new friends, the first time I saw your name linked with Taylor Swift’s was when she attended one of your comedy shows. What’s that been like for you?

She’s so cool and so funny. We met organically through Emma [Stone], and then kind of hit it off and hung out a bit…. I’m not used to that, and I couldn’t have anticipated it or even thought that [it would end up as a headline]. But then I think the funny thing, too, is even stuff at the Globes, there’s this really funny thing of seeing how things that feel incredibly friendly and small and kind of intimate then suddenly are headlines. She’s really smart, and it’s kind of wild how genuine and normal, I guess is the word to say, [she is] for someone who’s a global star.

And I think, too, the piece of this that has been really exciting, even kind of going out to all these awards things, even meeting someone like Taylor…when you’re making art, you kind of hope that people connect with it, and there is this extra layer when your fellow artists connect with it, because it’s this thing where it’s like, Wow, the fact that we like each other’s art is incredibly bonding. 

You’ve been sharing your voice and your perspective through your work, but you’ve also been using your platform to shine light on things like the Israel-Hamas war. What has that been like for you?

We’re constantly surrounded by failures of the human existence—we’re surrounded by successes, and then we’re surrounded by these massive failures and injustices. This moment that we’re in right now, when we see what’s happening in Palestine, what’s happening in Gaza—the third season of my show [Ramy] took me there, the creation of the show Mo took me there, my stand-up. Even if you look back at things I’ve posted, I spoke about a very formative stand-up comedy experience for me that happened in 2014 or 2015, when I first got to go and perform stand-up in Palestine. So I think what’s really interesting is, there’s nothing topical about this for me…. When you look at what’s on the conscious mind of artists, it tends to be what’s subconsciously boiling underneath what society’s currently looking at. And so you kind of get these pieces of work that almost look like they’re timely, but they’re not because they’re timeless, because it’s been there the whole time. So the fact that we have already done so much art that directly deals with Palestine, and now Palestine is in the headlines, isn’t really an accident because the headlines are always late and the art is always early. The good art is always early. The bad art is responsive to the headlines.

In continuing the work of wanting to point to the human condition, looking at not just representation of Muslims—which I never really claim—it is more like I’m interested in the things that emotionally touch me, and it’s often Muslims; it's often and has already been Palestine, and I think now the headlines kind of catch up to that, and it makes me feel like, Okay, we’re going to need everyone in order to solve the many injustices happening around the world. It’s not just government, it’s also artists, anyone who can just kind of learn. And so to be part of that, it feels like the bare minimum that I could do.

You’ve posted about supporting the humanitarian aid organization Anera, donating the proceeds of your stand-up tour to them. Can you talk a little about what they’re doing?

They’re an organization that’s been around for a really long time, helping refugees and helping in these critical situations. They have really strong relationships. They’re probably one of only two or three organizations that actually have people in Gaza and then people right outside, trying to deal with what is an incredibly limited, fu--ed-up pipeline…. They’re positioned to help people get their necessities, and then they will be crucial in whatever rebuilding looks like.

Poor Things is now playing in theaters, seasons one through three of Ramy are available on Hulu, and season one of Mo is available on Netflix.