These are strange times for Ramy Youssef. On the one hand, he is about to appear in his first big movie role, in the delightfully surreal and sexed-up fantasia Poor Things. After his hit comedy drama series Ramy, it looks like the beginning of a new phase in his career. On the other hand, the Israel-Gaza war is dominating the news, and as one of the most prominent Muslim entertainers out there, Egyptian American Youssef is very much in the spotlight.
These two worlds are colliding the day we meet in December. Youssef is tangentially in the headlines as a result of Taylor Swift having attended his standup show in New York a few days previously, with celebrity friends Selena Gomez and Cara Delevingne. Youssef is donating all the proceeds from the remainder of his standup tour to the Palestinian NGO American Near East Refugee Aid. This was too much for the rightwing presenter Megyn Kelly, who declared that Swift “owes Israelis and Jewish Americans an apology”, and urged people to “boycott her events until she issues one”, telling Swift “when it comes to talking about those issues again, you clearly know nothing”.
