Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend - The Amiable Assassin

Episode Date: May 18, 2023

Conan chats with Youssef from Egypt about voice acting, living outside the city, and being Christian in a predominantly Muslim country.

Conan O'Brien needs a fan. Want to talk to Conan? Visit teamcoco.com slash call Conan. Okay, let's get started. Hello Conan. Hi Joe. Hey, hey, hey, hey, so how are you? Oh hey, uh, Yozef.

Is your name Yozef? Oh, I was told it was Yozef. Yozef or Joseph, Joe, whatever you want to call me. Okay, Sam. It's nice to, uh... I love your background. You took the background from my pandemic Zoom shows. That is so crazy.

Because I'm at your home right now, yes. I almost, I want to call my wife right now and say, Yozef is in the house with you, get out! You're in, where are you right now? You're in Egypt? Uh, I'm from Egypt. So, yeah, a small city that you haven't heard about it before. My city.

It's called Port Said. Oh, Port Said. Uh, so I'm guessing it is on the water. Where is it located in Egypt? Uh, yeah, it's located like, I don't know, it's a two-hour drive from Cairo. That's just on the Suez Canal. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. So it's near the Suez Canal. Okay. So you're on the water in Egypt? Yeah, just right there. That's very cool. Well, I'm guessing you must be a fan or know of our show because you're using my background

from my house to talk to me in Egypt. Can I say one thing? Yes. My name is Yozef, and I feel pleased to be Conan O'Brien's fan. Oh, no! I was about to say, Yozef, I like that.

That's so nice. It's really, you know, it makes me very happy when people from around the world listen to our silliness. So that, that, I'm honored. I'm honored to have you as a fan. Tell me about yourself, Yozef. What do you do for a living? You live in, you say Port Said, Egypt, and what do you do?

Well, actually, that's a very good pronunciation for it. Wow. Well, I listened to you the first time and I copied it. Yeah. That's how I survive in the world. Yeah. What do you, what do you do? Well, I do many things.

I work as a voice-over actor. I also work in marketing. I work in comedy. I work in translation, teaching. Oh, my God. I work as tour guide. Oh, so much to ask you about. First of all, you're a voice-over actor.

Would you be willing to do my voice so that people, if people heard me or could watch the show in Egypt, you could do the translation? Absolutely. It would be very, like say, Katakai. That's the God of Egypt. Well, let me ask you a question. Let's say I sent you a piece of my comedy or something.

Would you be able to put your voice over it? I can give it a try. For sure. That has been my mode to my entire life. I can give it a try. So yeah. Nice. Okay.

Mia, here's my other question. Would you try to sound like me or would you sound different? Yeah. The accent would be very different because as you can see, like my accent is very Egyptian than your accent. Yeah. But they all try to sound like you. Okay.

Would you try to sound like me or would, because you've got a very nice low voice. Would you give me a lower voice? Because I wouldn't mind that. I can go lower as you want. Nice. It's the second time today I've heard that. So it's a filthy joke.

Don't, please. I don't want to get you in trouble. Let me try and get this, the story straight here. You live in Egypt near the Suez Canal, Port Said, and you, you're a voiceover artist, which means you are in the habit of putting your voice over what? Cartoons. Have you done cartoons?

Anything. Mostly books. Books. Oh, I see you do books on tape, that kind of thing. Yeah, absolutely. Mostly books, but I do cartoon, I do comedy show, I do, like whatever actually pays me money, I do it. I would do the hell out of it.

Can I say something? You're a cheerful Charlie. I'll say that about you. So what happens is I work with comedians. I never do shows myself because I'm too afraid honestly. So I write their jokes and write their skits and everything and they say the jokes, they say everything. Like they can take their applause.

I don't care. I just care about like, pay me and I will be all right. That's it. Wow. Okay. As long as you get paid, you'll do anything, right? Absolutely. Because, okay, there's someone in Egypt I want murdered.

Okay. Will you do it? Consider it done. Yeah. Oh my God. That's right. You're such a chipper, amiable assassin. I love it.

Okay. But I like writing more. I don't really like performing because I'm very shy. Yeah. I can tell. Yeah. It's really hard to make you out of your shell, Yusef. Exactly.

I can't shut you up for frankly. You're a babbling brook. Yusef, so you don't, do you ever go to Cairo? I've always wanted to go to Cairo. I've never been there. Tell me about Cairo. I hate it. I hate it.

I hate it very much. What are you talking about? Terrible shit. Terrible shit. My dream has been to visit Cairo and you hate it? Don't. How long does it take you to get to Cairo if you're driving from Port Said? How long does it take?

Two nightmares. Oh my God. Yeah. Because I... What is so bad about Cairo? What about, what's so bad about Cairo? It has everything I hate about life in general. Oh.

Yeah. So that's Cairo for me. That's a lot of people and all of them are running. And I don't know why they are running. Like I was just like, why? Why are you running? And I was good to like the rest station and people are shoving each other. Get out of my way.

Yeah. Well, we call that in America, we call that Manhattan. You know, that's what we, we have Manhattan where we all go. We've all agreed. Let's meet there and shove each other and be in a hurry. No. I'm chill. I would live like in Montepel though, not in Manhattan.

Oh my God. Terrible. Deep cut. Deep cut. Deep cuts left and right. I'm losing my fans by the second. Listen, I, there'll be a meeting after this is over. Listen.

I just said to come on. What's that? I honestly don't care if it's here or not. Oh, could you do me a favor? Could you look in the camera? You said if you don't mind. Yeah, look straight ahead. There you go.

I would. Were you watching another television show while you were talking to me? Is that what you're doing? Exactly. Exactly. Okay. Well, that's terrific. Let's just call it a TV show.

Okay. Very nice. It's a very nice polite word for pornography. Now, let me ask you something, Yousef. And if it's not too personal, you can tell me, but are you Muslim? What is your, what is your religious affiliation? And I'm Christian. You're Christian.

Okay. Is that, that would put you in the minority. Would it not in, in Egypt? Oh yeah, baby. Oh yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. Egypt is a very religious country.

Like with either you are like Muslim or Christian, you are religious. Or in the raised tradition. Yeah. But if you're Christian, like that adds layers on it. And to me, honestly, because again, I love comedy. So I always like look at the fun part of it. So it has been, I don't know, let's say oddly funny. It's a little difficult to be, is there a prejudice against you sometimes because you're Christian

or I bet that's not always true. I bet you probably know plenty of people of the Muslim faith who accept that you're Christian, right? Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. But it's, let's call it microaggression. Like you would get someone say, hey, after the meeting you're and say, wow, man, you're

a very good person despite being Christian. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, to be fair, I get that too. You said constantly. You seem okay despite the fact that you're Christian. Exactly.

So you almost get like things like that. Which kind of, I don't know, like you adapt to do it. Yeah. Because like my name is very Muslim. Like my name, my Arabic name, which is Yusuf is very Muslim. So it's actually like, it can be Muslim and it can be Christian, but many, many, many, like Rami Yusuf, for example, I think he has been on your show. Yes.

Rami Yusuf. Yes. He has been on the show. So he's Muslim and of course he's Yusuf as well. So yeah, my name is very Muslim. So people assume that I'm Muslim once they ask about my name. So that's all like, ah, let's speak about these Christians and I say, let's, you know. Got it.

Exactly. So I play along like all day long baby, all day long. I never stop. Wait a minute. You play along. You pretend to be Muslim. Is that what you do? Absolutely.

It's actually my favorite hobby in the whole, you know. That's funny. That's so funny. I like mountain biking and you like pretending to be Muslim. I guess we each have our thing that we do. You know, I tried your, I tried your hobby for a bit. No one was buying it. No, no.

I don't think they'll buy it. Yeah. Not with this video. I'm serious. Tell me what, you know, I, I've never been to Egypt and I'm just curious. You must have observations about Egyptian people that you could share with us because you're a, you write comedy. Tell us, you know, to describe, you know, Egyptian people for me.

What's the, what are the kind of the things about them that you find kind of fun? Well, Egyptians, like, and again, I'm not going to say all Egyptians because I know. I know. But you know the way we, we have generalizations that we make. That's a lot of comedy is, oh my God. And so I'm just curious as an Egyptian living there, if you're thinking of comedy, what are your observations? Yeah, I'm going to get so much hate into the comment section, you know, the, I never read

the comment section. It's kept me alive. 30 years of business. So yeah, you're just like, and I'm included. I'm not like excluded myself or anything. We always say like, we know it, like we can do it. It's fine. Like we never say, no, we don't know, we'll say, yeah, we know it, like we can do it.

Oh, so that's how we survived. So, so, uh, if, if I were to say to you, if I bumped into you on the street and said, Hey, I need someone who can help me fly in a helicopter, I need to, and you would just say, let's go. I got it. Without any, without any hesitation, like I wouldn't even think about it. Let's go. Let's fly.

So, so I should be very cold off my cousins, you know, to fly, you know, if I ever, if I don't, that makes me wonder if I'm flying, if I'm on an airplane flight in Egypt, who's in the cockpit? It might be some guy who just said, I got this. I got it. No problem. Yeah, absolutely. I got it.

You know, absolutely, absolutely. We all got it. We all got in a car without knowing how to drive. You stuff, I hate to tell you, that's half the people in Boston, just to, just so you know. So you, so you just got in a car. You didn't have a license or anything. You just started driving.

I didn't have anything. I was like 14 years old and I got in a car and I said to my friend, I told me, you drive. And of course I didn't learn how to drive, but I didn't tell him that I didn't learn how to drive and I said, okay, just tell me how this car works because I, it's my first time on this car. I said, I just do this one and boom and we bomb it into a tree straight away. Two minutes here. So yeah, that's the first thing you did was drive it for two minutes.

Well, your accomplishment was you went two whole minutes without hitting a tree. So I think for your first time towards it, so yeah. And then did all of your Muslim friends say, yeah, that's a Christian for you. That's a Christian for you. Two minutes is first time behind the wheel and he hits a tree. Absolutely. That's a Christian for you. But my friend was Christian as well, so I didn't think he had this privilege.

You said, do me a favor. If you could, if you were to dub my voice so that the Egyptian people could, could, could enjoy me, can you, can you tell me how you would try and sound? First of all, you can actually, do you want to speak in Arabic or in English? I think in Arabic would be would, yeah, I think Arabic would be good. Absolutely. And just say hello, everybody. Welcome to the show.

My name is Conan O'Brien. Welcome to the podcast. That kind of thing. Yeah. But give me like, give me your best, like, give me something hard. Yeah. Don't go easy on me. Can you give me something hard?

Don't just say hi. My name is Conan O'Brien. So today you said hello as low as you want and give me something hard. Those are the two things you've come up with today. You fill with healthy man. And remember, I am watching another show. Yeah, I trust you, I can tell. So all right, I'll say, hey, everybody, welcome to Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend.

Oh, this is okay. And I'm here with my friend, Sona, of course, who of course is my assistant, but she's never done any work. I love this. That's cool. And I love the way you go after Sona, say, say, hey, say, I bet right now, Sona is high on gummies because that's the Sona I know. Oh my God.

That was so long. You said, how dare you. You said, what I said was so short and you just went to town is the word gummy like seven syllables. What the hell was that? How dare you. That's Arabic for you. Yeah.

Yeah, and just say, it's tough for me, Conan, because I'm a genius and I'm saddled with people around me who who drag me down constantly, but I always persevere. Wow. You know what, I'm a huge fan of our podcast if it's in Arabic. I didn't understand the word he said, but I could still sense the bullshit that was coming from it. Hey, you said, what if I'm just going to give you one direction, try one where you just introduce the podcast and hi, I'm Conan O'Brien, but try to match what my voice sounds like

as best you can, but still speak in Arabic. Can you try that? Five. In which episodes? Four. In some episodes, you try very hard. No, no, just do this. Do the standard Conan.

Five, four, three, two, one, and go. What? What? Was that me? Yeah, that is you. How? Like some of the episodes, you're like, hello, okay, hey, and more than what we're here is laughing at.

Shut up. That was spot on. That was pretty spot on. Yeah. That was very good. So you had my that's me trying to be professional. Is that it? Yeah, absolutely.

Wow. All right. Well, man, I can't go high. Like you have a very high pitch. I can never reach it. But I can go very, very low. So it's actually a compliment. I don't think it's high pitched.

I think it's called. You said it's called an Irish tenor. And for you to say it's high pitched is insulting to me. No, no, I have some Irish films and leave me have a high pitch. It's okay. You did fine for yourself. You know, I've been working for like 30 years in comedy. Fine.

Take it easy. Take it easy. Okay. Thank you for saying I had a high pitched voice. I think we should sing an Irish lullaby now. Can you do an Irish lullaby in Arabic? Did you do that? Why not?

Let's go. Let's go. I'll do the first part. I'll give you the first part. So many years ago, my mom would sing this lullaby. I love my new Arabic Irish lullaby. This is fantastic. I'm very happy.

You know what? We're going to record this and we're going to get this on the top of the charts. Okay. I doubt it. At least you were honest with me. It was very nice talking to you. You said it was really nice talking to you. You're a funny guy and I'm happy to know that you're out there listening to us.

Thank you. It's nice to have you. Honestly, I just want to say you really like helped me in 2020, 2021, 2023. I honestly listened to some episodes to sleep. You know? Yes. No offense. No offense.

No offense. It's okay. It's okay. It's okay. It's okay. If I put you to sleep every night, that's kind of what I'm... No, that's not what I'm here to do, frankly. No, but that...

I'm glad. I'm glad that... Yeah, we've had a lot of people that said that during the pandemic, they enjoyed listening. Absolutely. That makes me happy. It makes me very happy. Well, I hope our paths cross someday, Yusef. I really like you and I'm glad that you're my friend.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Take care and be well. Bye, Yusef. Bye, Yusef. Bye. Conan O'Brien needs a fan.

With Conan O'Brien, Sonam of Sessian, and Matt Gorely. Produced by me, Matt Gorely. Executive produced by Adam Sacks, Joanna Salateroff, and Jeff Ross at Team Coco, and Colin Anderson at Earwolf. Music by Jimmy Vivino. Supervising producer, Aaron Blair. Associate talent producer, Jennifer Samples. Associate producers, Sean Doherty and Lisa Berm.

Engineering by Eduardo Perez. Please rate, review, and subscribe to Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever fine podcasts are downloaded. This has been a Team Coco production in association with Stitcher.