Ramy Youssef is an actor, writer, and producer who got his start in stand-up comedy, giving him an ease and confidence in front of audiences (and a place to test jokes that later make it into his TV shows).
 
These skills were evident at this year’s SXSW, where he premiered the first few episodes of his new Prime Video series, #1 Happy Family USA. He spoke candidly to the audience about his intent with the show and the process of bringing it to fruition. He pitched it way back in 2020. During Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial.
 
“Remember the happy Trump?” he riffed on stage. “He’s sad now, by the way. I don’t know if you guys noticed.”
 
This, delivered during his intro of the series, with a charming approachability and the sense that he was giving us a look into how his brain works.
 
His new animated show is a portrait of a Muslim American family living in New Jersey in 2001. (And if you think you might know where that’s going, you’re right.) But beyond that, it’s a story about identity and fitting in within a society stacked against these characters. Youssef called it a “show about capitalism.”
 
It’s also just, you know, really funny. Each scene is crammed with sharp humor and blink-and-you’ll-miss-it visual gags.
 
Weeks later, Final Draft hopped on a Zoom call with him to learn even more from Youssef. How does he outline? How does he balance tone? What’s different about animation? Settle in for his lessons.

1. Build Multiple Writing Pathways

Youssef embraces flexibility in his approach to writing, using different audiences to test the work before he gets to the draft.
 
“I’ve done it a lot of different ways. I think that on one end, a lot of things I’ll try on stage, and I already know that the concept gets a laugh and connects with people. On another, it’ll be really getting together with the room and starting just with one character or with one problem, and then seeing where it goes.”
 
If he has a room, he said that’s often where he will find the beats of a narrative.
 
“And then I would write really thick outlines. I love long 12, 15 page outlines.”
 
Regardless of how long your outlines are, they can be a great place to start as you’re plotting a story.

2. Take advantage of collaborators

Obviously, on a show with a writers’ room, being a strong collaborator is important. The show was developed alongside Youssef’s other projects, so he was balancing a lot.
 
“This was way more of a room-heavy show in the sense that we were making this also while making Ramy and while making Mo. So there was a lot going on. I really leaned on Mona Chalabi and Pam Brady as we would find these initial drafts.”
 
Another way they would nail the direction in their early work would be to focus on characters.
 
“We would take these stories and really flesh out each character’s throughline and figure out, ‘Well, what do we want to see them achieve in the season? And then where do we want to have all these levers be pulled and dropped?’”

3. Exploit animation’s freedoms and expediency

As many creators have told us before, animation allowed Youssef and his team different creative priorities.
 
“We really emphasized animation. We got to emphasize bits even over arcs, which was really fun. It was just such a different experience for me.”
 
As they were starting to record dialogue for the show, they would have the flexibility to revise based on performances.
 
“So much [was] found in the booth … just getting through what the character actually sounds like. And then we pull out the script and rewrite a bunch of stuff based on what we found with how the voice was working.”
 
I commented that it might be somewhat freeing as a writer to be able to do that. He agreed.
 
“You watch the animatic, and then you’re like, ‘All right, let’s pull Final Draft back out.’”
 
Character introductions are key in any written work, but animation provides unique “expediency” in those moments, he said.
 
“You can get to know a character in truly one moment and one scene,” he said. “I think [it’s] really figuring out, what is everyone’s first moment, what is everyone’s first line? Our pilot has a bit of a structure where you see everyone in their own solo workplace or at school. You start with them as a family, you see everyone separate, and then you bring everyone back together. And that was different than how I’ve done other shows.”
 
The medium allows brevity and fast pacing, too.
 
“A scene could really be 40 seconds, and you get a lot.”

4. Balance tone via character

With the political nature of some of the show’s themes and storylines, Youssef said again that keeping the characters central helps guide the writing.
 
“It really is about making sure that any kind of political element is secondary to the real kind of relatable, universal human stress,” he said. “Yeah, it’s a character who’s crushed by paying bills, or it’s a character who’s trying to figure out their romantic life, or it’s a character who feels incredibly insecure. And then the political thing happens.”
 
This is true for him no matter the format of his writing.
 
“For me, whether it’s in standup or whether it is, anytime I’m just leading [and] talking too much about the issue itself, it starts to feel topical. I think that’s what late night shows are really good at, and I love that as its own format. But I think there’s then this responsibility, shifting into long-form narrative to say,’Okay, this isn’t about shooting off a bunch of topical jokes. It’s about getting to know a family. It’s about getting to know a woman. It’s about getting to know what she’s going through, whatever it is.’ And then you get to throw in all those pops and bits, but there’s a hierarchy of how you kind of approach it.”

5. Follow creative accidents

Throughout #1 Happy Family USA, there are moments of musicality. The theme song is delivered by the characters, for example. One episode even starts with a boy-band style ballad. These musical elements emerged unexpectedly, Youssef told us.
 
“I found the music really organically, just voicing the character of Hussein ... I was at the studio and there were a bunch of guitars, and I started to think, ‘Oh, what would he sound like writing a song about his halal cart?’”
 
This led to broader creative choices. “And then we were putting together our opening titles. I said, ‘Oh, he should sing the theme song.’ And then before we knew it, we kind of wrote this whole album.”

6. Switch tasks when creatively blocked

But what about the times when those creative ideas aren’t coming as easily? When stuck, Youssef recommends pivoting.
 
“Start writing something else,” he said. “I’ll be like, ‘Okay, if I can’t figure out something going on in the script, let me just jot ideas down on this other idea, or let me go do standup or let me just go for a walk.’”
 
He also advises distraction-free creation.
 
“No smartphone, no wifi, room with a door shut—as many hours as trying to replicate some sort of solitary confinement will usually lead to something at least in a couple of days.”
 
Focusing on another work and it’s challenges might make something click into place for the first thing.
 
“Sometimes other ideas help create a separation from the thing that you can’t quite solve yet,” he said. “So you start looking at the shape of something else, and then the shape of the thing that you were looking at becomes clearer just in contrast. So it’s always trying to just figure out contrast.”

7. “You are not your idea”

Youssef joked that most writers are pretty hardheaded (guilty, and he included himself, too) and hard to give advice to, but here was his.
 
“I will say the thing that took me a second to connect between standup and writing is just, you get really used to, doing standup, a joke not working for a really long time,” he said. “And I think the same thing is true of going at a script or pitching in a writers’ room. Just don’t take it personally. You are not your idea. You are you. And then you’re going to have all these ideas that are going to come in and go out, and some of them are going to work and some of them aren’t, but it’ll all kind of rise to the top if you’re genuinely trying to make something for the point of connecting.”
 
That should be your driving force, not just making something for the sake of it.
 
“You’re working for the idea, and the idea is this symbol of a connection point that makes it worth even exploring,” he said. “I almost think if I was able to really take that in immediately, it would just create some ease, because sometimes you’re in it and it feels so stressfully serious, and then you’re like, ‘No, no. It’s not about you actually. It’s just about what you are, where you are trying to meet.’ And that’s where I really like writing in groups and working with people, so it’s very conducive for that too.”