When Ramy Youssef took home an Emmy for his performance in Hulu’s breakout comedy series last year, he joked that most of the audience hadn’t seen his show. That might’ve been true then, but as the series — appropriately titled Ramy because it follows the sort-of-true exploits of Youssef’s millennial Muslim, a kid trying to navigate the modern world while holding onto his sense of self – gears up for a second season, the vibe’s a bit different. Fans who have witnessed Ramy make pilgrimages to Egypt, hook up with married women, and survive the torture of living with his overbearing immigrant parents might be surprised to see a somewhat more serious version of the show: one that tackles Islamophobia, mental health issues, gender identity, and more.

That last bit is where May Calamawy’s character Dena comes in. As Ramy’s sister, she’s normally on the peripheral edge of the show’s plot, but halfway through season two, she’s recruited to help her mother Maysa (the terrific Hiam Abbass) track down a disgruntled Lyft passenger that might prevent her from gaining citizenship. It’s a wild, cringe-filled ride that touches on everything from mother-daughter bonds to what qualifies as “stalking,” and we chatted with Calamawy about season two expectations and playing a Muslim woman she can finally relate to.

Ramy’s first season did really well. I mean, you guys made it to the Emmys. And won.

Yeah, it felt really surreal. None of us knew what the reception would be. Nothing was expected.

Did that put any pressure on this second season?

I personally didn’t feel any of that pressure. [Laughs] But a couple of days ago, we posted some artwork for season two. That was the first time that I was like, “Oh my God, are people going to like this?” But I think the truth of the matter is we gave so much of ourselves to it, it almost doesn’t matter. I feel validated about our experience. If people’s expectations aren’t met, I almost don’t mind it. I really enjoy Ramy’s vision, and I trust it.

I think we all recognized how differently this show depicts Middle Eastern culture. Was that apparent to you when you first got the scripts?

Yeah, for a year, the only things I was auditioning for were Arab women who were in some sort of a struggle — who were veiled and in a fight for something. This one, she was just a girl. She felt like me. She was just figuring out who she is. It’s funny, there was nothing really to her that was going on, but that was what attracted me, because I was like, “Oh, wow, you can really get to see what someone is going through without all this other stuff on the outside.” I don’t know how to say “normal.” I guess I saw myself in her in a way. And I saw many women that I know in her.

In season one, Dena has one of the worst TV dates I’ve ever seen with a barista played by Jake Lacy. It’s a really uncomfortable interaction for her. Was it uncomfortable for you to shoot, too?

It’s funny because we were still working on that episode up to the last day, which was scary and also fun. I’ve never experienced anything like that before but I feel like, with Dena, she’s examining what she understands about womanhood. She wants to step out of that comfort zone, and redefine her identity. She’s also stuck in the pattern of constantly checking herself because of the system that she’s grown up in. She’s creating that control over her body, and her decisions. And in a way, even though the experience is the opposite of what she hoped it would be, just that act, or the choice, was liberating.

Yeah, she can’t help that the guy was a jerk.

I feel like she doesn’t wallow in that self-pity of it. Do you know what I mean? It’s more just like, “Are you f*cking serious? Okay. All right.” And that’s what makes it funny. And ironic. She finally decides to go do this, and then this is what happened.

That episode also opened up a bigger conversation about what Muslim women face. Do you think the show does a good job of trying to understand that struggle?

I think it’s an ongoing topic because no matter how much we talk about it we still don’t know what is right or wrong on this path, or in life. I mean, I grew up in the Middle East, but I’ve also spent time in America, and I have a mix of these views. I understand for women here, sex is really not a big deal, and it’s just intimacy, it’s beautiful and sacred. In the Middle East, it’s also considered sacred, but there’s so much shame around it and around trying to explore yourself before you’re married. I think the show did a good job of showing she’s stuck. Ramy is stuck, he’s sort of mirroring her in certain ways, but he’s allowed to make mistakes. He gets to be wild and explore whatever instinct he has. On the other hand, she has to think twice about going on a date with someone. I think that it’s so nuanced. I guess because I did it, maybe I’m like, “Yeah, I feel like we showed it.” For her, it’s this rite of passage to just get over with. I think that starts to happen to a lot of people who’ve grown up in conservative households when they start to come into themselves, and their logic doesn’t really match up with the logic that’s been put on them.

This season, we see Dena and her mom go through some things. There’s such a divide between those two. Is it more of a cultural gap or a generational one?

I think it’s both. In the West, you’re more exposed to certain things, so you can adapt really fast. Whereas, someone living in the Middle East will probably be really shocked watching this because some things that are common here aren’t common over there. It’s just the reality.

Right. Even when Maysa’s trying to understand, she ends up misgendering one of her Lyft passengers and makes the whole situation even more awkward.

Maysa sort of lived in her bubble. She wants to expand and wants to learn, but I guess our generation is just, again, it’s exposed faster — there’s more of a curiosity. Whereas, with the older generation, it’s like, “What are you doing? Why are you [a man] in a dress?” I feel like, for them, it’s just a harsher judgment because it doesn’t make sense in their head. I see similarities in my own dad. He’ll make comments, and I’m so shocked sometimes. I know how pure he is, he’s such an amazing human that I’m not mad at him, I’m just like, “Oh wow, that’s really where you’re living still?” Maybe full acceptance is still scary?

That particular episode with Dena and Maysa also exposes how hard women are on each other, and themselves. Do you think that’s another reason why their bond is so strained?

I guess sometimes women can feel alone. We put all these pressures on ourselves because they were put on us at a certain age, and unless we’re conscious of them at a certain point, we end up living with them, and they control us. You can be next to your own mom, and you’re both going through the same thing, and then you’re not able to connect, because you’re both trying so hard to, I don’t know, please. I feel like Dena looks at her mom and can see why she is that way at that moment and it really touches her heart. There’s a bit of an awareness, and a bit of compassion. And then that also opens Maysa’s eyes as well, because she really does want the best for her daughter, but sometimes it doesn’t feel that way. Maysa needs someone to just give her a break. They actually both want the same thing. And if they can at least give it to each other then that’s [a start].

Hulu’s ‘Ramy’ arrives for a second season on May 29.

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By now you’re probably sick of eating all the store-bought snacks and easy-to-make foods you’ve been living off of since quarantine hit. It’s undoubtedly getting old fast. But time is on your side, friend, which is exactly why you should be using these long days to start mastering the restaurant-level foods that you haven’t been able to enjoy as often in isolation (yes, we want to support independent restaurants as often as possible, but that still leaves us with plenty of nights to cook).

If you didn’t grow up in a household where Japanese food was being prepared, today might be your chance to gather some pointers on this diverse foodway. We offered some tips on ramen from chef Hiro Mitsui earlier in the pandemic; this time around, we’re talking about sushi. Our expert on deck is Rangel Suarez, the Chef de Cuisine at Miami’s Katsuya Brickell (which is currently closed due to coronavirus-mitigation efforts). Suarez has spent 30 years in the business focused on Japanese cooking, including working alongside Benihana founder Kudo Masuzo and Iron Chef competitor Makoto Okuwa — “Doing it the traditional way. No shortcuts — it’s step-by-step.”

We spoke with Suarez over the phone and he offered tips for making great sushi rice, gave us fish sourcing advice, and weighed in on when to put wasabi in your rolls.

What are some of the most common mistakes people make at home when trying to prepare Japanese food?

Well the first one is rice. If you can’t get the rice right, nothing else is going to turn out right. Also, maybe when they start making a sushi and they put too much water on their hands, it’ll soften the rice and it won’t become as sticky. Also, the vinegar that they pour in the rice for mixture — if it’s not enough, the rice won’t be sticky enough. If it’s too much, then it’ll be too vinegary.

Could you walk us through preparing great sushi rice?

There is new crop and old crop. There’s usually a sticker on the bag that’ll identify that. Once you have the rice you want to cook, you’re going to go ahead and clean it. You always want to measure the rice that you’re cleaning because you want to add the same ratio of water to it.

You want to move it around so it’ll peel the outside part of each grain of rice. Keep rubbing it down, throwing out water that’s really cloudy, then you bring in more water and you keep doing the same routine. It’ll take that outside layer of the rice that’s no good to cook. You want to do that about three times, till the water’s kind of clear.

Once you do that, put it in a Hitachi rice cooker. It’ll cook at a high temperature for about 15 minutes to boil and then you’ll leave it for about another 15 to 20 minutes just simmering there. Unless you use an automatic rice cooker, then it’ll do everything on its own.

Once the rice is cooked, you’re going to pull it out and you’re going to put it in a wood squarish bowl called a Hangiri. Hangiri are made out of wood. It has no nails to it. It’s all held with a metal strap. It’s all tied in. The Japanese are really unique about not using nails so nothing gets rusted out. So it’s all wood.

So this hangiri you need to fill with water. New crop rice tends to be drier and will need a little more water. The reason why you fill it with water is, the wood’s going to swell up and seal any cracks that water or any liquid might drain through. Once the wood soaks up all that water, dump out the water, clean the excess water on the inside, and put your steamed rice in there. And then for every three ratios of rice, you’re going to add one ratio of rice vinegar.

Pour the vinegar over the rice, and then you’ll start cutting the rice. So there are no balls of rice left that are not seasoned. Cut all the rice. And any of that excess vinegar that is too much for the rice to absorb, the actual wood will start absorbing it. So it won’t be all mushy type rice. That’s why it’s so important to use the wooden hangiri compared to like a plastic or a metal bowl because it won’t have that, where it’ll kind of suck in that excess seasoning.

Once it’s all cut, you’ll leave it out for, I’d say, about 10 minutes to cool. And then you flip it over, leave it for another 10 minutes to cool, and then you just can put it away and start using it.

What’s the best rice to use?

Well, you want to use short-grain rice. A lot of the short grain rice now that we use for all these Japanese restaurants are mostly coming out of California. But definitely a small grain.

If we want to make pro-level sushi rolls at home, what kind of tools do we need to invest in and how much money are we looking at?

Well, definitely you’ll need a cutting board. You’re going to need a nice sharp knife, a bamboo rolling mat — which is called a makisu — your ingredients, if you want to use any raw fish or any items like that, water to always keep your hands moist so the rice doesn’t stick, seaweed, sesame seeds if you like sesame seeds. You can also use a tofu paper, which is called mamenorisan.

If you don’t like the chewiness of the seaweed or the texture or any of the flavors, you can go with a tofu paper.

Do you have any fresh fish sourcing tips?

Well, usually the best is to go to a fish market that’s out on the water or something where the local fishermen bring in their catch. And you can buy something really nice and fresh there. Or if you know a local spot that you trust and it has a sushi-grade fish, you can go that route as well.

If you want to stay safe, most Asian markets have Saku blocks, which is frozen Saku tuna. You can defrost and use that. It’s not going to be the same quality as a fresh product, but definitely usable.

What are some of the easiest sushi rolls to make at home?

I would have to say rice on the outside, most Japanese restaurants will use the half-cut seaweed, which is a little more difficult to roll. But if you use the whole sheet and not apply rice to the whole thing, it’ll be much easier to roll sushi at home. And you can really put any ingredient in the inside, as long as it’s solid. Nothing, let’s say, ground, so that when you kind of press it and matte it out, it’s not going to squeeze out the ends.

Could you walk us through setting up the ingredients for a roll on the mat?

Let’s go with the California roll. You’re going to use your crab steak. So you’ll grab your crab steak and you want to squeeze the excess water out of it. Usually, it’s imitation crab, which is made from fish, but you can also use king crab.

You can apply the king crab, the rice over on top of your nori (seaweed), you’ll flip it over so the rice is on the outside, the space that has no rice on the end, that’s where you’ll begin to roll. You set it on your makisu, your bamboo mat. You’ll put your crab. You’ll want to cut your cucumbers, I’d say, probably the thickness of a pencil, maybe, the normal measurements in Japan is four fingers.

Four fingers will be the exact length of the seaweed. So everything that you cut for a roll, you measure with four fingers. So you would cut your cucumbers to a four-finger length, your tuna, whatever it is, your avocados. And then lay it out straight out. Push in that seaweed that has no rice, and then use the bamboo mat to help you out, and keep rolling further into the roll.

In the event that it becomes a disaster and you have to throw in the towel and make fish fried rice, how do you repurpose ingredients if it’s just not working out?

Well, a good way to do that is, it’s like a staple traveling food that the Japanese have, it’s called onigiri. It’s very simple. You grab your rice. You kind of make a ball shape out of it. You’re going to press in a type of a hole in the center of that rice. You’re going to put your ingredients in there. And then you’re going to cover it with the rest of the rice.

You shape it into a triangle, grab a piece of seaweed, and you cover that. And that’s what you call onigiri. And it’ll repurpose your ingredients and you can take it out on the road, picnic, anywhere you want.

In your opinion, should we do wasabi on the side, in the soy sauce, or directly on the sushi?

You can always put it inside the roll. That’ll give it a little heat. And then it all depends on if you’re out on a picnic, or you’ve got a table setting. If it’s something that’s out on the run and it’s maybe a road trip or whatever, you can put the wasabi inside the roll and then that way you don’t have to be mixing the wasabi in your soy sauce and maybe just put a little soy sauce over the roll.

What’s an easy home sauce you can make that pairs well with Japanese food that isn’t teriyaki?

A really easy sauce is a ponzu sauce, which is like citrus soy. So it’s, let’s say, one ratio of soy with the same ratio of vinegar. And that would be the Japanese vinegar. Also, you can squeeze some lemons and squeeze some oranges in there. And a nice touch of a little sesame seed oil and you’ve got a great citrus soy. That’s good with sashimi and with your rolls.

What are the key components to making a great teriyaki sauce?

Well, the key components are definitely — and most of all Japanese sauces are — soy, sugar, mirin, and sake.

Ginger isn’t essential?

Well, I mean, depending on what sauce you make. But your base of most of all your Japanese sauces are those four.

What’s an underrated Japanese food that Americans don’t show enough love to?

I would say the pickled vegetables, like pickled daikon, pickled eggplant, pickled cucumbers, those are really nice, refreshing. You can put them in your rolls, give it a nice crunchy texture to it.

Could you set us up with a good pickled sushi roll?

You could probably do something like regular cucumbers. Then you can put the takuan, which is the pickled daikon, the yamagobo, which is a pickled burdock root, the pickled eggplant, which is really nice. And that’s it. Maybe a little bit of umeboshi, which is a plum paste. Give it a nice little tang to it, and that’s a great roll right there.

What’s the average amount of ingredients we should be looking for to put in a roll? How much is the perfect amount and how much is just too much?

For rice, you probably want to use somewhere about a hundred grams of rice. Fish, I would go anywhere from about 40 to 60, depending on how much protein you want in there. Vegetables as well, anywhere probably from 30 to 40 grams.

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What Space Force is and is not will be revealed to you when you watch it (it’s available to stream now on Netflix). As Greg Daniels told us when we spoke a couple of weeks ago, he’s eager for people to stop thinking that the show is “The Office in outer space,” hoping trailers and initial reads would be powerful enough for people to divorce themselves from the idea that Michael Scott somehow graduated from manager of a midsize paper company to the rank of four-star general. What Daniels is comfortable with, it seems, is the idea that his shows take some time for people to get comfortable with them. And then, as you may have noticed with your streaming habits, we seem to never let go of them, watching and rewatching new-classics like The Office and Parks And Rec that Daniels created, particularly at a time when TV comfort food is in high demand.

Whether Space Force will have the same hold remains to be seen. What it has going for it is an All-Star cast that evokes the memory of long-ago icon-rich comedies like It’s A Mad Mad World from Daniels when he lavishes praise on players like Roy Wood Jr, Ben Schwartz, Don Lake, Steve Carell, and others. It also has a deliberate focus on people — with all our insecurities, charm, and internal struggles between instinct, habit, and duty — striving to accomplish something that might not be as important as the journey. We spoke with Daniels about the show’s identity, the power of deploying John Malkovich in a comedy, and making comedy for the long haul.
I can see a version of Space Force that would have been very different — more pointed, more political. This is not that. You really focus on the people, not necessarily the “Space Force” joke.

Obviously, the show is set in the new branch of the military, but we didn’t want it to be a super timely, disposable thing. We wanted it to be a character comedy, and it’s about stuff. I think it has themes, but we’re sort of presenting a long-range look, I would say. We’re talking about nationalism and some of the greatest moments of our history, and people with integrity trying to achieve audacious things. So I think the show is saying stuff, but it’s not like it’s meant for late-night, one-time viewing.

Yeah. I think, like you’re saying, themes about nationalism, science and anti-science, and things along those lines definitely feel of this moment, but they’re also going to outlast this moment. These things are going to be topics for a long time. I’m assuming that’s part of the reason why Trump isn’t named and why he’s not a major factor.

Well, I think that there’s a way to do satire where it’s a little more subtle. Where it’s about taking a look at the whole situation and picking the good parts of different arguments and making an alternative vision of how people ought to act, maybe. In terms of just referencing him, I think that there’s a good bit of comedy fatigue in going after that name, so I think he’s just an example of a certain kind of nationalistic politician that we have now in Brazil, Hungary, and Poland. He’s not the only person, so when you take one step back, you realize, “Oh, okay. Well, we’re sort of talking about the military people who actually know what’s going on and then the people who are all about politics.” I guess it’s the goal to still be able to make that point in a different administration or without not making that point.

The casting of John Malkovich as Mallory is just fantastic, and I think he and Carell really play well off each other. Can you tell me a little bit about the importance of their dynamic and the punch–counterpunch relationship that they have?

We had a show before we had a script and we had talked about a lot of ideas for Steve’s character, a lot of comedy and storylines and stuff like that, and the show was announced and Malkovich’s agent called me and said, “Hey, he really is tickled by the concept of this. If you can think of a way to use him, he’s open to it.” So that actually inspired us to picture that and be like, “Well, what would it be like with John Malkovich in the show?” So we kind of wrote Mallory in the hopes of getting Malkovich, but it became more of a leader-and-his-buddy, man-of-science kind of relationship. Do you know the Master and Commander book series?

No, I don’t.

I guess they made a movie out of it with the guy who was in Gladiator, Russell Crowe.

That I’ve heard of.

There’s a ship’s captain and then there’s the science officer on the ship, and it’s set in the 1800s or something. I think it’s a good way to have characters that are representing different ideas but equally strong so you can have a debate on their points of view that are pretty evenly matched. Malkovich is so funny, and I feel he’s always in dramas where he’s a sparkling, interesting person with a sense of humor but he doesn’t necessarily get used in a straight-ahead, only-for-comedy way much, and it’s been really fun to give him that opportunity.

Yeah, and he just runs with it. It’s really spectacular.

Yeah.

Speaking of the cast, Don Lake feels like a secret weapon. Obviously, you’ve done a lot of things where you have a rich ensemble and there’s always someone that kind of stands out, and I feel like he steals a lot of scenes.

Yeah, he really does. I love Don Lake so much, and I wasn’t that familiar with him before we started casting. He’s done a lot of stuff with Christopher Guest and he’s obviously super trained as a comedian and stuff, but when he came in to do all the Brad stuff, I really felt like he was a comedy character from the 1960s. He sort of walked in like Don Knotts, and it was such a cool energy that I hadn’t seen on TV lately. Shows like The Office, Parks and Rec, and King Of The Hill — a lot of people are finding those shows now, re-finding those shows now as opposed to other types of shows that are maybe a little more sharp or drama heavy.

Why do you think it is that right now in this moment that people are really rediscovering a lot of your work?

Well, I am not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. I’m happy that everybody’s gone that way. I think what it is, is that I always pitched these shows as being part of a tradition of character comedy. Going back to Mary Tyler Moore or Cheers, or something. All those shows which I really respected growing up. The comedy is aimed at the long term and sometimes those shows have trouble getting started because since the jokes are coming from people’s personalities, you’ve got to learn the personalities first to appreciate the jokes.

And so shows like Mary Tyler Moore and Cheers had very rocky beginning as did The Office, as did Parks. And I always was telling the network executives, “This is for the longterm because people’s personalities and people’s characters are not something that you’re not going to be caring about ten years from now because it’s just human beings and how they interact.” So it was hard to get them launched because they were built for the longterm. But now I guess it’s paying off because it’s the long term and people are still enjoying them.

‘Space Force’ begins streaming on Netflix on May 29.

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Netflix has a new comedy out, called The Lovebirds, directed by Michael Showalter, which is like a lot of recent-ish movies. Kumail Nanjiani and Issa Rae play a bickering couple on their way to a party, who, just as they’re breaking up, hit a guy on a bicycle with their car. Suddenly they’re thrust into a kooky blackmail conspiracy.

It’s one of those movies where it’s sort of an action movie, because it has the skeletal plot of a thriller, but it’s sort of a comedy because the actors act “funny” and kind of half-ass their way through the thriller parts. It’s sort of like the Kardashian show, where the plots are like discarded sitcom B-story but the draw is people with “compelling” real-life personas bumbling their way through them.

The Lovebirds leverages the audience’s love for Kumail and Issa Rae (both of whom I too enjoy on their respective shows, Insecure and Silicon Valley) in the same way. For some, simply seeing these two interact is enough to carry a movie. To me, these kinds of double-half-assed hybrids, where unfinished action meets character arc-free comedy movie, are a waste of talent and energy. Laziness can work in comedy, but these kinds of movies — Knight and Day and Snatched and The Tourist et al among them — seem to expend their energy in all the wrong ways.

The jokes sound like improv jokes, extemporaneous and semi-topical and built upon puns or fourth-wall breaking, but clearly they aren’t improvised because this is a big, high-concept plot with car chases and people getting killed and constant life-or-death situations. You probably recognize the joke cadence, mimicking a sitcom, with lots of arch, faux-contentious back-and-forths, where every micro action is stretched and dissected and analyzed and commented upon, and then dredged up again five minutes later for a callback. Again, it feels like improv, and they’re the kind of jokes that work well in semi-improvisational shows, like Curb Your Enthusiasm or The Trip series.

But the stakes in Curb or The Trip are kept intentionally low. It’s easier to enjoy jokey conversation when the characters are just sort of lazing around, situations where you might expect people to joke. Low stakes allow us to appreciate Seinfeldian riffs about how people like to say “salsa” or why cars still have cigarette lighters in them. The latter is one of Nanjiani’s character’s riffs in The Lovebirds, which he delivers while he and Ray’s character are supposedly on the run from police after they’ve just witnessed a murder. Is that meant to be his character trait, guy-who-can’t-stop-doing bits even when he’s running from the police?

Comedy lives on a different plane of reality than thriller. When a stand-up comic does a bit about his mother-in-law or airline food, we don’t need to believe in the literal reality of him having bad in-laws or having experienced bad airline food to enjoy it. It invokes a kind of shared reality. Whereas if someone at a party told you a story about getting framed for murder and then you later found out he was lying, you’d be disappointed and upset. The latter is a specific reality. Movies like these attempt to live in both realities at once.

It’s not that an action movie or a movie with car chases and murders can never be funny, plenty are — Burn After Reading or Lethal Weapon 2, for instance. But generally those aren’t funny because they cast a comedian in one of the roles and had him do a hot five on dating apps in the middle. They live in their specific realities. They don’t keep invoking the shared, relatable reality every time they want to make a joke.

Plenty of people want to see more Kumail and Issa so badly that they don’t mind. I suspect these movies exist largely for the pitch. They exist because the people holding the purse strings feel more comfortable shelling out for some high concept like “they’re about to break up and then they witness a murder!” than for “it’s kind of a show about nothing, but trust me it’ll be funny!”

But please, studio execs, I beg of you: can we let some of the shows and movies be about nothing again? Or at least be about… less? These are not great displays of American comedy. There are four Trip movies. I’m willing to bet that there won’t be more Lovebirdses.

‘The Lovebirds’ is available now on Netflix. Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can access his archive of reviews here.