Mo Amer Has Survived by Being Funny

During our conversation, which has been condensed and edited, Amer talked about his reasons for accepting the gig in Saudi Arabia, his friendships with Jon Stewart and Jimmy Kimmel, and why he has no fear of being cancelled.

What time is it where you are?

10 P.M. I was still editing, actually, before I hopped on here, because the special is still not done. Now it’s just the final touches and tweaks—the coloring, the A.D.R., whatever. I’ve been touring like crazy the whole month—really, all year—so I’ll do a show, then hop in and start editing until like 5 A.M. or 6 A.M., then sleep, wake up, do a show.

Are you touring with your wife and baby?

Yeah, I took him everywhere. It’s been, like, a dream come true. I got a tour bus in Europe, a double-decker with a little office upstairs, with Wi-Fi and Apple TV and everything. So that’s how I was able to do it—go upstairs, edit the special, go downstairs, get into bed with my son and wife, wake up in the next city, next country, and do the whole thing again. It’s been very, very special. I’ll show you pictures. [He holds up his phone, showing off photos of his toddler.]

Aww. How old is he?

Twenty-one months.

Beautiful.

The whole family is all together, man. It’s the best thing I’ve ever done in my life, bro. Nothing is close to this.

So the occasion for our conversation, obviously, is your new special. I want to get to that. But, before we get there: your audience knows you through your previous specials and through your Netflix show. But maybe let’s establish, for people who are new to your story, where you come from. If someone’s coming in cold, what do you want them to know about your life story?

It’s very interesting, because the first special, “The Vagabond,” was intended to fill this information gap. That’s what the whole special was about—like, me not having this conversation again. It’s so interesting—not this interview in particular but my entire existence has been this. And it was kind of naïve on my part, maybe, on some level, to think, I have a special explaining where I come from—all right, that’s enough.

I see what you’re saying. So you felt, like, “I’m tired of having to explain myself from scratch every time. Let me just put something out in the world that will do that for me.”

Every time. People are, like, “Oh, you were born in Kuwait? You’re Kuwaiti.” I’m, like, “No, I’m not Kuwaiti. It’s not the same thing in the Middle East—it’s where your lineage comes from.” “O.K., where is your lineage from?” “Well, originally, I’m Palestinian.” “O.K., why aren’t you there?” “Well, that’s a whole ’nother story.” [Laughs.] “Where do you live now? You’re in Houston? Oh, so you’re a Texan.” Yeah, I’m a Texan. Of course I’m a Texan. I’ve been there all my life, basically. So I am Texan. But then you go overseas and they’re, like, “Oh, you’re American.” You come to America and they’re, like, “Oh, you’re from overseas.” I want to be like, “You know what? Fuck both of you.”

[Laughs.] Yeah. There’s an amazing joke in “The Vagabond” about the logistics of that—kind of slipping through the cracks in that way, going to an airport and the guy behind the desk asking, “Where’s your Kuwaiti passport? Where’s your American passport? Where’s your Palestinian passport?”

Right, that’s one bit. That’s one bit. I would say it’s much more complex than that. Meaning, you know, it’s navigating my whole life as this person. Doing standup for U.S. troops before I was even a U.S. citizen, which was really unprecedented. Going to see it with my own eyes, being a product of war and being displaced because of that, generationally displaced. For those reasons, I thought it would be really good for me to do it—almost therapeutically, or on a spiritual level—to be able to perform in front of U.S. troops in particular, and to be myself. And that’s the essence of standup, right? To be yourself. And the opportunity for me to do that was really quite unique—I don’t think anybody else has ever done that, certainly under the danger that I was under. I mean, they cancelled me one time, right after 9/11. They said, “Don’t go, for your own safety.” But then I thought it was even more important to go, so that’s what I did, and that’s when I realized that there’s so many military bases around the world, and there’s a much bigger geopolitical game that’s being played—bigger than all of us.