Comedian Maz Jobrani to ramp up Donald Trump jokes, after CBS cancels Stephen Colbert's Late Show

Australia Broadcast Center

3 days ago

Iranian-American comedy veteran Maz Jobrani believes US President Donald Trump is trying to censor free speech in America, and he intends to hit back.
With more jokes, that is.
Jobrani's been a long-time guest of Stephen Colbert's top-rating The Late Show, which was axed by CBS last month.
He believes the decision to end the show's three-decade run — which began with David Letterman in 1993 — was politically motivated.
According to the network's parent company Paramount, Colbert's cancellation was "purely a financial decision", and the US president has denied he had anything to do with the popular show's cancellation.
The axing came after Colbert criticised Paramount's controversial $US16 million legal settlement with Mr Trump over a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris.
In the same week CBS announced Colbert's show would be cancelled, Paramount was in the final stages of a multi-billion-dollar merger with Skydance Media. In July, the deal was approved by the Trump administration.
In Jobrani's mind, the axing of Colbert's show is no coincidence.
"I love Colbert — I get my news from Colbert — he makes the news fun," he told ABC News in a Melbourne interview last month, after landing from Los Angeles for the start of his latest Australian tour.
The tour across six Australian cities ended on Sunday, but Jobrani's been coming to Australia since 2008.
He says Melbourne, as home of the annual International Comedy Festival, has "good comedy audiences".
Colbert has vowed to continue speaking "unvarnished truth to power" and sharing "what I really think about Donald Trump".
Jobrani, who also regularly speaks out against Trump in his comedy skits — most commonly against the administration's deportation policies — says he intends to do the same.
"I thought Trump would maybe send the IRS out to audit them or something, just make their lives hard, because Trump unfortunately does not have a sense of humour, he doesn't know how to take a joke, which is what dictatorships usually are like."
Since CBS announced the axing in June, there's been much talk in the US entertainment and media industry about how far the Trump administration might go in censoring free speech.
Jobrani has united with some of the biggest names in entertainment and late-night television to show support for Colbert, and to fight for free speech.
"The job of the comedian is to reveal the emperor has no clothes. I think we need to keep doing that — if we don't, we're going lose our democracy," he said.
Jobrani has called on others in comedy and the wider entertainment and media industry to stand their ground.
"I always say the whole point of America is, I can make fun of the president in America. I couldn't make fun of the president of Iran, that wouldn't work," he said.
Jobrani's family left Iran for the US in 1978, when he was six years old.
It was just a year before Iran's Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi fell to Islamist rulers, and his family, like many others at the time, made the decision to flee.
In our interview he talks of how growing up as an Iranian in California at that time was a struggle.
But he says it framed the backdrop to much of his comedy, which focuses on the weird and often hilarious events that occur as a child of immigrants.
While his parents hoped the UC Berkeley graduate would become a doctor, lawyer, or engineer, he had other plans.
And now he's among several Iranian-Americans showcasing Iranian culture on stages around the world, and making audiences laugh with Iranians, instead of at them.
This was something Jobrani never envisaged back in November 1979 – when 52 Americans were taken hostage in the US Embassy in Tehran and held for 444 days.
"For my entire life in America, I've had to explain Iran … I just try to find funny ways to explain to people what I'm feeling. Like I say, 'I wish I were Swedish' because if you're Swedish, you wouldn't have to explain anything, right? You just talk about IKEA, ABBA.
"[Being Iranian] has been a challenge, but it also obviously is giving me plenty of material because I have been able to try and present people from Iran and other people from that part of the world, hopefully in a positive light versus what you see when they show us in the news."
Jobrani's career took off in the post 9/11 era.
He had first toured with other "brown comedians", including Ahmed Ahmed, Aron Kader and Sam Tripoli, on a show called the Arabian Nights, which was aimed at showcasing the voice of Muslim/Middle Eastern people a year before 9/11 happened.
But as they toured under that name, they decided to change the title.
At that time, then-US president George Bush had called Iran, Iraq, and North Korea an "Axis of Evil".
So the trio settled on "Axis of Evil Comedy Tour" as the show's name.
Since then, Jobrani has gained worldwide fame and in many ways paved the way for a new generation of comedians from Iranian backgrounds to make it to the world stage.
On his Australian tour, Jobrani was joined by another rising star, Iranian-African American comedian Tehran Ghasri.
"Comedy is part of the Iranian heritage," Ghasri tells ABC News.
Jobrani says when he started out, being a comedian was frowned upon by the Iranian diaspora, including his parents.
"I was of the generation where I should have been a doctor, lawyer, engineer, but I fell in love with comedy and performing at a young age," Jobrani explains.
He says he was an anomaly when he first started.
"Now 20-some-odd years later, there's Tehran and there's Max Amini, and there's Amir K … there's Melissa Shoshahi, and there's Peter the Persian, and there's Omid Djalili — and it really does make me happy to see all of these people in this business now.
"Once the next generations realise, 'Oh, you can make a living doing other things' or you should live your life doing what makes you happy, they start doing it.
"It's really something that's just great for our community … because until we're telling the stories, no-one's going to tell our stories the way we want to tell them. They're just going to keep making us the bad guy."
In recent years Jobrani's played a prominent role in diaspora activism against the Islamic Republic, particularly in the aftermath of the #Women, Life, Freedom protests spurred by the death in custody of Mahsa Jina Amini.
"I grew up in America, so I always say that I'm not in Iran, but Iran is in me. I feel an affinity towards the country of Iran. I feel an affinity towards the soccer team when they play," he said.
Jobrani says the various waves of massive protests inside Iran, the recent Israel-Iran war, and people's suffering under Iran's regime is "heartbreaking".
He points to the forced veiling of women, "discrimination against women, the discrimination against the LGBTQ community, the discrimination against religious minorities like the Baha'i's and others" as examples of that.
"I do feel that I want to support the people of Iran, and I do pray and hope for a day where Iran can become a functioning part of the world."
Jobrani fears Trump's America is becoming more like Iran's repressive regime.
He says comedy can be a unifying force and a way to fight rising anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.
"I think that there's people out there that are waiting to pounce" he said.
"Hate and hatred, it's easier to go that way and I think that comedy can counter that.
"Like when I do a show, I have people from all backgrounds, all religions in the room, we're laughing together and we're humanising each other. What war does is it dehumanises.
"You get a room where you have a Palestinian, and you have a Jew, and you have a Muslim — people from different backgrounds and we're laughing together — then people realise, 'Oh, he's human. I'm human.'"