The Amiable Assassin

Conan O'Brien needs a fan. Want to talk to Conan? Visit team.co.co.com. slash call Conan. Okay, let's get started.

Hello, Conan.

Hi, Joe.

Hey hey hey Sona, how are you?

Oh, hey Yosef, is your name Yosef? or I was told it was Yosef.

Joseph, or Joseph, Joe, whatever you want to call me.

Okay, Sam, it's nice to, uh, as I say to you, 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, Yosef is in the house with you. Get out, you're in. Where are you right now? You're in Egypt?

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. So I'm guessing it is on the water. Where is it located in Egypt?

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're 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 Yosef and I feel pleased to be Conan O'Brien's fan. Oh, nice.

YOSEF 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 I'm honored, I'm honored to have you as a fan.

Well, actually, that's a very good pronunciation for it.

Well, I listened to you the first time and I copied it, yeah.

Okay.

That's how I survive in the world. Yeah, what do you do?

Well, I do many things. I work as a voiceover actor, I also work in marketing, I work in comedy, I work in translation, teaching.

Oh my god.

I work as a tour guide.

Oh, so much to ask you about. First of all, you're a voiceover 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, as God made it.

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?

Well, I can give it a try, for sure, that has been my motive my entire life. I can give it a try, so yeah.

Nice, Okay, 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, and your accent, yeah, but I'll try to sound like you.

Okay, would you try to sound like me? 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 if you want.

I can go very low. Nice. It's the second time today I've heard that, so it's a filthy joke. Please, I don't want to get you in trouble.

Anything, mostly books, books.

Mostly 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.

Okay, as long as you get paid, you'll do anything right, absolutely anything. Because, okay, there's someone in Egypt I want murdered.

Consider it done. Yeah, oh my God.

That's right.

You're such a chipper, amiable assassin, I love it.

Yeah, but I like writing more, I don't really like perform because I'm very shy.

Yeah, I can tell I don't know how to speak. Yeah, it's really hard to get you out of your shell. Yusef. Exactly, I can't shut you up, frankly.

I hate it, I hate it, hate it, very much hate it.

What are you talking about? It's a terrible city. My dream has been to visit Cairo, and you hate it. 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 what is so bad about Cairo? 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.

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, no, I'm chill, I would live like in Montebello, not in Manhattan.

Oh my God. Deep cut, deep cut, deep cuts left and right, losing fans by the second.

There you go.

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 religious affiliation?

No, I'm Christian, you're Christian.

Okay, that would put you in the minority, would it not in Egypt?

Oh yeah, baby, oh yeah.

It's a little difficult to be. Is there a prejudice against you sometimes because you're Christian? 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, yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. But let's call it microaggression. Like you would get someone say, hey after a meeting and say, Wow, man, you're a very good person despite being Christian.

Yeah.

Okay.

Well, to be fair, I get that, too. Yousef constantly people saying you seem okay despite the fact that you're Christian, exactly.

So you always get things like that, which kind of, I don't know like, you adapt to it. Yeah, because my name is very Muslim, like my name, my Arabic name, which is Yousef, is very Muslim. So it's actually like it can be Muslim and it can be Christian. But many, many, like Rami Yousef, for example, I think he has been on your show, Rami Yousef.

Yes, he has been on the show.

So he's Muslim, and of course, he's Yousef 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?

So, yeah, 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, absolutely, absolutely. It's actually my favorite hobby in the whole world. 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 hobby for a bit and no one was buying it.

No, no, I don't think they'll buy it. Not to exaggerate David, I'm serious.

Tell me what you know, 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 write comedy, tell us, you know, describe, you know, Egyptian people. For me, what are the kind of things about them that you find kind of fun?

Well, Egyptians, and again, I'm not going to say all Egyptians, right? I know, I know.

But, you know, the way 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 in the comment section. You know, the internet warriors are going after me.

I never read the comment section. It's kept me alive 30 years in the business.

So yeah, you're not like, and I'm included, I'm not like excluding 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. I think that's how we survive.

So 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.

Immediately, without any hesitation, like I wouldn't even think about it.

Let's go.

Let's fly.

So I should be very.

If I ever, if I, 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, you know, like I drove a car without knowing how to drive.

YOUSEF I hate to tell you that's half the people in Boston, just so, you know. 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 it's my first time on this car. I said, I'll just do this one and boom, and we bumped into a tree straight away two minutes later.

The first thing you did was hit.

But I drove it for two minutes.

Well, your accomplishment was, you went two whole minutes without hitting a tree, so I think for your first time....

Yeah, we were going towards it, so yeah, yeah about it.

And then did all of your Muslim friends say, Yep, that's a Christian for you, that's a Christian for you? Two minutes his 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.

YOUSef, Do me a favor if you could. If you were to dub my voice so that the Egyptian people could enjoy me, can you tell me how you would try? And sound? First of all? ...?

You can actually.

I think in Arabic would be.

Yeah, but give me your best, give me something hard, don't go easy on me.

What are you talking about? Give you something hard.

What are you talking about? Don't just say hi, my name is Conan O'Brien, so today you said, I'll go as low as you want.

And give me something hard, those are the two things you've come up with today so far. You filthy, filthy man.

And remember, I am watching another show. Yeah, I know.

I trust you, I can tell so all right, I'll say, hey everybody, welcome to Conan. O'Brien needs a friend.

Oh.

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.

Oh my God, that was so long.

Yousef, How dare you? Yousef? 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 not a big fear.

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 drag me down constantly. But I always persevere.

I always find myself surrounded by people who drag me down constantly.

Wow, you know what? I'm a huge fan of our podcast, if it's in Arabic. I didn't understand a word, he said, but I could still sense the bullshit that was coming from it. Just utter nonsense. YouSef I'm just going to give you one direction.

Five. Which episodes? Some episodes you try very hard?

No, just do the standard Conan five, four, three, two, one and go.

Yeah, that is you.

How? how is it like? Some of the episodes? you're like, hello, some of the episodes. Yeah, okay, hey Eduardo over here is laughing.

Eduardo 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.

I can go low, but I can't go high. Like you have a very high pitch, I can never reach it ever, but I can go very, very low. So it's actually a compliment.

I think it's called Yusuf, 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 friends that, believe me, have a high pitch. It's okay, it's okay. You did fine for yourself, you know, I've been working for like, 30 years in comedy, We're doing fine.

Okay, I'm sorry I snapped at 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? Can you do that? Why not?

Let's go, let's go.

I'll give you the first part.

She used to sing this lullaby to me.

In tunes so sweet and low.

No, I don't know this lullaby.

I love, 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.

I doubt it.

Well, at least you were honest with me. I highly doubt it. At least you were honest with me. Yousef. It was very nice talking to you. Yeah, it was.

I just want to say you really helped me in 2020, 2021, 2023.

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 I'm glad.

Thank you, thank you Conan, thank you all right.

Take care and be well. Bye Yousef, bye Yousef, bye-bye.

Conan O'Brien needs a fan with Conan O'Brien. Sonam Ovsessian and Matt Gourley produced by Me, Matt Gourley executive produced by Adam Sachs, Joanna Soloterov and Jeff Ross at Team Coco and Colin Anderson at Earwolf. Music by Jimmy Vivino.