Ramy Youssef

Ramy Youssef is an American stand-up comedian, actor and writer, known for creating and starring in the Hulu comedy series Ramy (2019–2022), in which he plays a millennial first-generation Muslim-American born to immigrant parents in the United States. ¹ For the role he won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Television Series Musical or Comedy in January 2020 and a Peabody Award, and was nominated for two Primetime Emmy Awards, as actor and as director. ¹ He co-created the Netflix comedy-drama Mo (2022) with Mo Amer, and in 2025 co-created the animated series #1 Happy Family USA. ¹

He was born on 26 March 1991 in Queens, a borough of New York City, to Egyptian immigrant parents, and raised in Rutherford, New Jersey. ^{1 2} Ten years after emigrating from Egypt, his father became a manager at the Plaza Hotel in New York City. ¹ The English article records that he was raised in a Muslim household, observing Islamic holidays, and remains a practising Muslim. ¹ He attended Rutherford High School, studied political science and economics at Rutgers University, Newark, and left before graduating to enrol at the William Esper Studio and focus on acting. ¹ He speaks Arabic and English, and his maternal grandfather was a French and Arabic interpreter at the United Nations. ¹

He made his acting debut in 2012 on the sitcom See Dad Run, where he also shadowed the writers' room, and performed stand-up on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in 2017. ¹ His series Ramy debuted on Hulu on 19 April 2019 with ten episodes and ran for three seasons, the third premiering on 30 September 2022. ¹ In June 2019 he starred in his first HBO stand-up special, Ramy Youssef: Feelings, and in 2023 he toured a second show, More Feelings. ¹ He had his first major film role in Yorgos Lanthimos's Poor Things (2023), and on 30 March 2024 he hosted Saturday Night Live. ¹ After Ramy he signed an overall deal with A24, and in August 2024 he entered a partnership with Netflix to develop projects through his production company, Cairo Cowboy. ¹ In 2025 he received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from Rutgers University and gave its commencement speech. ¹

This record names no school for Youssef, because no source names one: the sources describe his upbringing in a Muslim household and his continuing practice, and Wikidata gives Islam generically. ^{1 2} His work itself is his most public statement: the series Ramy follows its title character through questions of prayer, fasting, guilt and belonging as a young Muslim in New Jersey. ¹ Hosting Saturday Night Live on 30 March 2024, he prayed in his monologue for God to "please free the people of Palestine, and please free the hostages". ¹ The final twelve nights of his 2023 More Feelings tour raised funds for Gaza through American Near East Refugee Aid (ANERA), and his sold-out Brooklyn Academy of Music show donated all its proceeds to the same organisation. ¹ He also signed the October 2023 open letter by artists calling for a ceasefire and the release of hostages in Gaza, and wore an "Artists for Ceasefire" pin at the 2024 Academy Awards. ¹ These positions are carried here as his own, attributed, and are not a school attestation. ¹

He has been married since 2022 to a visual artist from Saudi Arabia, whom he met through his Ramy co-star May Calamawy; he is private about his personal life and does not disclose his wife's details publicly. ¹

• The defined source entities cited above, recorded in data/source/.
• Revisions of this article must be dated, and must name the source that changed each fact.