If one event has shaped Mawaan Rizwan’s approach to comedy to date, it was receiving advice from a clown, eight years ago on the outskirts of Paris. “I’d been doing quite straight standup until then,” the 30-year-old comic explains, “but I was bored. Then I got myself a place on a course run by this ancient clown teacher, Philippe Gaulier.”
Without industry contacts or time at drama school, Rizwan had long taken every opportunity that might help him carve out a creative career. So he turned up at the prestigious École Philippe Gaulier, unsure what awaited him. “There were 30 students. We were taught how a circus is full of acts with skills and props, but the clown can only turn to their own idiocies and vulnerabilities. And Gaulier would always turn specifically to me and say: ‘Mawaan, you don’t have to pretend to be stupid to make us laugh. You are naturally very, very stupid.’”
Some might have taken offence, but not Rizwan. Physicality and silliness quickly became key components of his comedic craft: zany walks, funky dancing and gyrating along to a mango chutney-based original song are central both to the videos he uploads to a dedicated audience online, and to the standup he performs to ever-growing crowds. “I’m still resentful at having to be an adult,” he says of this approach to comedy. “But I also think it’s a coping mechanism. As a kid, I was exposed to lots of adult stuff,” he says, “so taking adult themes, and exploring them in a childish way, is how I deal with things.”
Now, he’s bringing that same sensibility to the BBC, with his own much anticipated debut sitcom – Juice, which he both wrote and stars in – set for broadcast this September. Following a young gay Londoner often overwhelmed by the world, Juice embraces a magical, surrealist style. “When my character’s emotions peak, the world around him physically changes. If the bed turns into a blanket tunnel, or the walls literally start shrinking in, it’s happening as a physical manifestation of his heightened emotions.” For a show on this scale, it’s hugely ambitious. “The remit to work on Juice was: think like a kid, have the skills of an adult.” He laughs. “It’s the ethos we all came with. It gets trippy. A lot of sitcoms aren’t very physical, sensorial or visceral. But to me, that’s what’s exciting.”
It’s late July, and Rizwan is speaking to me from a hotel near Sheffield via Zoom. He’s about to perform at a nearby music festival, before heading to the Edinburgh Fringe. Pre-Covid, he did the Festival Fringe nine times on the trot. In 2018, he took up an hour-long stage version of Juice, an early iteration of the TV show. The central themes remain consistent through both stage and screen versions: “It’s about a guy struggling to commit to a relationship with someone who is older. The perfect partner, actually, but in 10 years’ time.” In the telly version, Russell Tovey plays Rizwan’s on-screen boyfriend. “In relationships, there’s often one partner who is pushing for the next chapter – to take things up a notch – and another pressing on the brakes, like,” and there’s faux panic in his voice, “um, I don’t know? I can barely make toast without burning it… can we slow down? I’m not sure about meeting your parents!”
This romance, however, isn’t the only relationship to take centre stage. It’s the pitch-perfect exploration of family dynamics that makes the show so special. That’s hardly surprising, given both his TV mother and brother are played by his real life mum and sibling (actor Nabhaan Rizwan). “It’s cheap therapy, innit,” Rizwan says with a smile, when I ask about this casting call. “Working through all your family trauma in front of the camera? Such a healthy approach.” In fact, he simply couldn’t imagine doing it without them. “It’s been really emotional to make the series,” he says. “The first day we showed up and there were three trailers in a row, each with one of our names on. We all looked at each other. Not in disbelief, really; we’ve all put in the graft. But to know where we’d come from, to where we are now? We just stood there in silence.”
Rizwan was three when his family moved from Pakistan to Ilford, east London. He doesn’t recall much from those early years. “Except for weird things,” he says, “like turning up to school in my sandals, and the teacher trying to explain that I had to wear shoes, and me not really understanding her, just thinking: what is this white lady shouting for?”
“It was a paradoxical childhood,” he thinks. “Mum was strict about education, but also organised community plays; we danced around the house, but it was also religious. She ran an after-school tuition club to earn money and be with us at the same time: we’d come home from school and there’d be 15 other immigrant kids sitting around our table learning English.” In retrospect, Rizwan believes her approach was all about exposing her children to anything and everything. “She said, ‘The more you see, the higher your IQ will be’. I was the tagalong kid: if anyone was going anywhere, I’d be fobbed off on them.”
Aged 16, he picked up one of his school’s camcorders. “I’d been editing video on the computers,” he says, “and the teacher said I was good. I liked the praise, so carried on – it all started for purely narcissistic reasons.” He took the kit home, and set out making videos for YouTube. This was 2012, when the site was at the peak of its popularity. “I tried everything: me and my mum do a rap battle; freestyle with my brother…” He sighs. “It’s hard to explain. Basically they were bad. Really bad.” He amassed a following. Plenty of those videos remain online. “I want people to see how shit I was,” he explains. “You grow. It’s not an overnight thing.”
These videos, Rizwan reckons, also played an important role in family life. “Growing up it wasn’t always easy,” he says. “There were financial pressures. Mum worked three jobs. And she was always telling us about the sacrifices she’d made; the stakes felt high.” Young Mawaan asked her to participate early on. “I expected her to say absolutely not: ‘I’m not working three jobs and paying thousands of pounds in immigration battle fees so you can be a clown.’” (When Rizwan was eight, his family was threatened with deportation.) “But she said yes, and as soon as I pressed record, she was hilarious, relaxed and charismatic.” His mum had been a child actor back in Pakistan. “She’s incredibly creative, but just had all this life stuff thrown at her. We used the videos as a bit of a coping mechanism, really; the camera gave us permission to smile and be silly.” It also helped launch her very own Bollywood career, but that’s another story.
University didn’t feel right for Rizwan. He worked in Sports Direct while signing up to any arts course that would pay for his travel. On an early trip to the Fringe, he found alternative comedy. “These Footlights kids were doing surreal humour,” he recalls, “comedy made without the pressure of making money, so I tried to make art from a place in which I had a trust fund. I didn’t, but I pretended.” He started uploading more experimental videos right away. “Then everyone hated it and unsubscribed. It was punk. I was on the right track.”
At 24, he presented a BBC documentary: How Gay Is Pakistan?, where he explored queer life back in the country he’d been born in. “I remember thinking: if I only ever get to make one thing, which I really thought might happen,” he says, “Then I want to make something that counts.” He also thought it was best to get the topic out of the way and dealt with. “I couldn’t believe how hung up the world seemed to be on the fact I was born in Pakistan, grew up Muslim, and am gay. Like, I grew up having to make identities coexist that were – on paper – impossible. It was normal to me. And I just needed it to be out there, so I could move on and make art.”
In the documentary’s trailer, Rizwan spoke bluntly: “Earlier this year, I told my family I was gay… to a Pakistani parent it was the worst news ever.” He set out how he’d travel to Pakistan to learn what life’s like for LGBTQ+ people there. “I’m trying to lift the lid on something… I’ve been told to totally suppress and hide.”
“I don’t talk about the film much,” he says now, “ I don’t want to be a journalist, and was stabbing in the dark. Looking back, I’m like: ‘Oh my God kid, slow down.’ I should have played it way safer. The abuse I got online… The death threats. But once you’ve done that? It’s out the way. Nothing is scary. I know it really helped people, even if they were less vocal than the death-threat contingent.” How did it go down closer to home? He pauses. “I didn’t have time to think about it. I was working seven days a week, a million things… And honestly I didn’t want to think about the personal repercussions. I was processing it all, too. I grew up very homophobic; that’s what we did. I was working through a lot with the projects I was making.” Today, Rizwan says, comedy and drama feel far more comfortable terrain for exploration: “You lose some of the nuance in the brash, confronting documentary format that you get to explore in six scripts’ worth of episodes.”
From there, Rizwan continued to hustle hard. Standup, acting gigs and writing work, too: he’s done Taskmaster, toured with Simon Amstell and Jonathan Van Ness, and performed on Live At The Apollo. Working in the writer’s room for Netflix juggernaut Sex Education felt like a turning point. “I learned so much about scripts and storylines,” he says. “Once it came out, it felt like my skill-set was at a level where people actually wanted me to make stuff.” (Laurie Nun, the series show-runner, can’t praise him highly enough: “Mawaan was a joy to work with and delivered some of our funniest and most moving scripts. I was a bit heartbroken when he said he was moving on to write his own show.”)
For years, Rizwan has been banging on TV executives’ doors. “Rejection became the default for a long time,” he says. “I don’t even believe Juice is going to come out, to be honest. Before the broadcast date, someone from the BBC is going to call and say: ‘Sorry, no, we’ve made a mistake.’ But in some ways I’m glad it has taken this long. When storylines aren’t mainstream, it’s important to have a backbone, know who you are and how to operate. To stand up for yourself and your ideas, so easily watered down. I’m proud to have taken the scenic route, even if I could’ve done with the money earlier.”
In Juice, Rizwan, his brother and mum co-star in an explicitly queer series with a British Pakistani at its heart; one where soon after an absurd family argument is acted out in Urdu, Mawaan’s character sneaks off to have sex with his partner in a pub loo, climaxing with confetti. He smiles as I point out that trajectory. “That’s the multi-dimensional life I have,” he says. “It doesn’t need to be a statement, just making something three-dimensional and contradictory that is true to my experiences. When you have a queer child, it’s a gift. Families have to face truths that they otherwise brush under the carpet.”
Standing on the steps to their trailers on the first day of filming Juice, the Rizwan trio took stock of all that’s changed since those early YouTube videos. “It was honestly mind-blowing.” It’s not lost on Mawaan how rarely two young performers – without close family ties to the biz – find success like the two Rizwan brothers. “It’s down to my mum,” he believes. “She instilled in us to fight for what we wanted. She came to this country as a single mum, literally coming out of the airport not knowing where she was going to go, where we’d sleep the night. We saw her do the undoable, so we had this deluded confidence we could, too. It’s a Rizwan thing: we do stuff beyond the realms of possibility.”
Juice starts this September on BBC Three and iPlayer
