Hi, my name is Maysoon Zayid. I am a Palestinian Muslim

Virgin with cerebral palsy from New Jersey.

If you don't feel better about yourself,

maybe you f-ng should.

That's brilliant because it's so subversive.

I'm a really f-ing brilliant comic.

You're really brilliant.

♪♪

I am here at the home of actor,

writer, producer, comedian,

and tap dancer Maysoon Zayid.

And also her cat Beyoncé,

who has picked the perfect spot on the couch to join us.

You might know Maysoon for her TED talk

"I've Got 99 Problems; Palsy is Just One,"

or from her digital video series

"Advice You Don't Want to Hear" or from the New York

Arab-American Comedy Festival.

There are a thousand things you could know Maysoon from,

or you may have heard all the buzz about her upcoming

TNT series "Sanctuary."

You might not know her from the back of her head,

as a diner in "As the World Turns."

Also look at what Beyoncé's doing.

I mean, come on.

She's like, "Oh, yeah. You think you got a show?"

Thank you for coming to Beyonce's lair.

♪♪

There's been so many examples of able-bodied actors

playing disabled roles.

Can you talk a little bit about that?

A large swath of the disabled community

feels like, "You can't actually act disability."

And there's visible disability

and invisible disability.

And we tend to be talking about visible disability,

because what you're doing when you're trying to act

those things is you're mimicking a physical replica

of what disability is

and not addressing at all that those physical manifestations

come from something internal and that you can't imitate them.

So think of how uncomfortable it would be for someone to sit

and play me, like, for you to have to watch

someone try to move their mouth the way that I do.

You can't do it. It's not something that you can act.

So we say, you know, much like race,

it can be played, and onstage, I always say

if a wheelchair user can't play Beyoncé,

then Beyonce, I can't play a wheelchair user,

and she can usually slay anything.

Just not that. You know what I mean?

And in addition to the fact that it's inauthentic,

it's cartoonish, and honestly, it's offensive,

people with disabilities are 20 percent of the population,

but we're only 2 percent of the images

that you see on television.

95% percent are played by non-disabled actors.

So there's no opportunities for us.

That's right. You're taking what

is such a small pool of characters,

and then you're taking the opportunity of that employment,

because ultimately, all this boils

down to employment opportunity

when you're talking about the entertainment industry,

and you're saying, "No, even these roles

that we could have had you portray,

you cannot portray those, as well."

Now, you had a situation like this in college.

I know you talk about it.

Could you talk a little bit about that?

So, I was getting A's in all my acting classes

and I wasn't getting cast in any of the shows.

And then my senior year, they decide to do a show

called "They Dance Real Slow in Jackson,"

about a girl with cerebral palsy.

I was the girl with cerebral palsy.

So I was like, "Nailed it!"

And I didn't get it.

This girl named Sherry Brown got it.

And the head of the theater department said

I couldn't do the stunts.

And believe it or not,

that really is a big reflection of Hollywood --

the idea that we can't do it,

that we can't remember the lines,

that we can't handle an 18 hour shoot,

that the insurance is not going to cover us.

There's a lot of challenges with disabled actors and insurance.

There's a lot challenges in sets being accessible.

So, you know, I do a live news commentary.

None of those sets are accessible.

But that's the thing.

It's like you you can't call this an H.R. issue

if what you could be doing

is changing your sets to make them accessible.

But also making sets universally accessible

just makes it easier for the entire crew to navigate.

I mean, cameras tend to be on wheels, too,

not just people, you know what I mean?

No, it's true.

And then you could potentially --

we've got Beyoncé...

Beyoncé's eating snacks in the background loudly.

Beyoncé decided that this would be the perfect time

to drink from her red Solo cup.

I'm so glad that she did that live

so that you could see that my cat really does drink

out of a red Solo cup.

Which I feel works way too far into the Jersey stereotype.

Am I a cliché and caricature of myself

because I have trained my cat to play pong

and drink out of Solo cups?

This is the cat episode of --

Wait, what is your show called?

"Famous Cast Words."

"Famous Cats Words!"

That's what we are doing, right?

"Famous Cats Words."

We have to write over the logo.

"Cats."

Come on. Focus.

[ Laughs ]

So, Maysoon, you are self-described on your TED talk,

specifically, as Palestinian, Muslim, female, disabled,

and most challenging, a resident of New Jersey.

So we're going to take a look at some phrases

and words that pop up in casting notices

for characters with these various demographics.

Are you ready? I am.

"For a variety of disabled characters,

there seems to be a recurring theme of confused parallelism."

"Even though she is deaf, she lives a fulfilling life."

That's right. All right.

"As well as a strange belief that one's mobility

might affect one's brain."

"Will be wheelchair-dependent,

but amazingly sentient."

Amazingly sentient!

"Your competition will encompass a wide swath of humanity."

"Seeking special-needs actors and also skilled actors

who can or have played this type of role before."

I don't know why you would have stopped.

I don't know what possibly

could have pissed you off about that.

What could have shocked me?

[ Laughs ]

"Because your lived experience

is really just an able-bodied talent waiting to be developed."

"Actor must be able to portray the symptoms of cerebral palsy."

"Must also know how to Google

symptoms of cerebral palsy."

"As a Palestinian, there are a few recurring words

I found with which you should become acquainted."

Tell me it says "rocks."

Aah! There's no rocks.

"Terrorist, militant, hijab."

Rocks? What do you mean? Throwing rocks?

Yeah.

If you do Palestinian, usually "rocks" is in the top three.

Oh, my God.

"As a woman, though,

there's really just one word you need to know."

Boobs!

Yes! I got it! It's "boobs"!

[ Both laugh ]

And lastly, "As a resident of New Jersey,

your character type is cut and dry."

"Real Housewives."

And this genuinely did come up

in a bunch of breakdowns I saw.

When I started going to auditions in New York,

it was funny because I had no idea

that people weren't going to cast me as,

say, one of The Real Housewives on a Lifetime movie.

So I would go out for, like, Italian characters,

Jersey characters, of course, all the Middle Eastern,

you know, hijabi characters.

And I never realized the fact that I was disabled

was getting disqualified me until I started auditioning.

So I would go into auditions, and sometimes I would walk in

and they'd just go, "No, no, no, no."

And they wouldn't even let me read.

That is horrendous.

And they wouldn't let me read.

And then I would memorize the sides

because turning the pages was too hard.

So then when I did have to get sides

that I had to turn the pages,

it would be, like, a fight to the finish

to get the pages to turn

because it's really hard to do.

And, like, I never had anyone take me even slightly seriously,

which is why I became a comedian.

Part of the reason I've always been drawn to comedy

is you get to take ownership of what you are

before anyone else is allowed to say anything about it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And if I can get you to laugh at that first,

then I own it and you don't.

And that was my exact experience when I first started

doing standup comedy in my comedy class.

The teacher, who was such a great guy,

named Mike Irwin Russell.

So he's gone now, but he was an amazing teacher,

and he made us do five minutes of comedy every class.

And the first time I went up, I was inspired

by, like, Andrew Dice Clay and Eddie Murphy.

So it was basically just, like, slurs and misogyny in a box.

And it was really funny and I got good laughs.

And when I was done, Mike looked at me and he goes,

"What is happening?"

And I was like, "Oh, I have cerebral palsy."

And he said, "You're going to have to talk about it,

because if you don't, the audience is going to think

you're either drunk or nervous.

And neither of those things are funny."

And I was like, "But I don't want to talk

about being disabled."

So what I did was the next class,

when I introduced myself, I said,

"Hi, my name is Maysoon Zayid,

and I'm a Palestinian Muslim virgin

with cerebral palsy from New Jersey.

And if you don't feel bad about yourself,

maybe you f-ing should."

And the idea was bury the "palsy" so deep

in everything else that they heard it,

they got it, and they got to move on.

That's brilliant because it's so subversive.

I'm a really f-ing brilliant comic.

You're really brilliant.

Yeah.

No, I mean, you are.

There's something to comedy

that allows you to slip things in

and get people comfortable with things in manners

that they didn't even realize occurred.

I always say onstage that if you have someone laughing,

they're less likely to kill you.

They may still do it, but they're less likely.

They're less likely. I'll buy that.

Who has no idea who I am?

[ Audience members cheering ]

I'm just saying something really quickly.

I'm not drunk. But check on me in an hour.

If I'm walking straight. Then you'll know I'm wasted.

[ Laughter ]

'Cause, like, here's the thing.

I'm not drunk, but the doctor who delivered me was,

so I have CP, which means I shake all the time.

So I shake it, shake it, shake it like Taylor Swift.

But she just wants to shake, shake, shake,

and mine is totally involuntary.

[ Laughter ]

Like, let's be honest. I'm not Taylor Swift.

I'm the lost Kardashian.

[ Cheers and applause ]

They moved me away because I couldn't keep my legs open.

♪♪

So you had a situation where you had one pilot,

you had gone through a process with a producer,

and they insisted you work with another writer

who was just sort of a white,

able-bodied, inexperienced in terms of anything

that you're dealing with writer.

Can you talk a little bit about that?

What happened was when they put me with the head writer,

I was really excited to be collaborating

and I was very, very excited

that I was writing with another woman.

Unfortunately, she decided

that she wanted to write the show without me.

So the production company cut me out of the process.

And now suddenly, my semi- autobiographical comedy series

was being written by a non-disabled, non-Muslim woman

who hadn't spent 17 years on the comedy stage.

Like, I've been a standup comic for 17 years.

I learned how to write about disability,

how I write about religion, how to write about, you know,

so many things that are really difficult to tackle

and get very uncomfortable very quickly,

if done incorrectly.

And I was completely silenced.

And so, when we finally got to the stage

where the network decided

whether or not to shoot the show,

they passed because it was not funny or good.

[ Laughs ]

Surprise!

♪♪

It took seven years for the series I developed

to finally be sold and picked up.

And the first stumbling block was for years and years

and years, people said, "Your writing is amazing,

but you can't star in it. We need a big name.

The only way that we're going to do this

is if we have a big name."

And you know, they would suggest people like Salma Hayek,

and Penelope Cruz.

And I'd say, "If I can hold their head underwater

for three minutes

and they can become palsy, then they can play this part.

But otherwise, you need someone who's disabled.

And news flash, I'm the most famous, you know,

palsy person in the game right now.

So you're not going to find a woman

that's going to be able play not just palsy,

but an ethnic role.

Like, you need a brown disabled woman.

It's me. Like, that's who it is right now."

And so, that was the first stumbling block.

I swear to God, the story I'm about to tell you is true.

One producer suggested that my love interest heal me.

And I said, "Well, I think the CGI

is going to be really expensive

because it can't be healed."

And also, how do you keep going with the series?

"It's a permanent disability," you know.

But, God, I mean, that just has "paternalism"

written all over it.

And she was, like, a legend in Hollywood.

And I had to, like, look at her lovingly

and be like, "So, I can't be healed.

And I'm playing the role."

And she was like, "Yeah, I don't think this is a good fit."

You know what I mean? And she was gone.

I always say disability --

you only get to tell three stories.

Either, "you can't love me because I'm disabled,

heal me, or kill me." That's it.

So, when you come in and you're like,

"She's super successful, and her dating life is good.

And the problem is that her parents

are conservative Muslims who don't let her date

and she's 35 years old and has to sneak around

and pretend she's not on Facebook."

You know what I mean? It's just something different.

And they're like, "But when does she cry

about being frustrated from being disabled?"

She has vulnerability.

It's simply not tied to her disability.

She has vulnerability.

And it's not because she's an oppressed Muslim woman.

So even though she comes from one conservative family,

it's not the images that you see on TV of these women

with no voices and no independence.

It's more like, "Just like everyone else,

she doesn't want to disappoint her parents."

Not, "Just like everyone else,

she's going to get honor killed."

By the way, there's no killing that's honorable.

So she's not gonna get murdered by her parents.

She just doesn't want her mom to be sad, you know?

I think the simplicity of that

is so important, is seeing people just as humans

and how we're all just humans and it's still really hard.

I am so excited about all the content you're making

and all of your standup

and everything that you're doing.

I want a Netflix special.

I want you to have a Netflix special.

But I'll do it for Showtime.

What if we do one together?

We're both women. We're both very funny.

Okay, I'll give you the funny.

I have black hair.

You have brown masquerading as blonde.

I have cinnamon skin.

You're see-through. [ Laughs ]

See-through?! How dare you.

I've got olive undertones.

Every makeup artist I've ever worked with is...

I love you.

You can say, "I love you, too."

[ Both laugh ]

That's my worst nightmare.

I'll say "I love you" to someone,

and they just stare at me.

[ Laughs ]

I can't believe you just said,

"You can say, 'I love you, too.'"

It's like Jeb Bush telling people to clap for him!

[ Both laugh ]

Thank you so much for being here today.

This was so much fun.

Thank you for coming to Jersey,

and thank you for allowing Beyoncé to be on set.

She is the most important part of our show.

She's joining the crew now.

Thank you for watching. Take care of each other.

And be professional.

[ Laughs ]

"And be professional"?! That's the one I did!

♪♪

♪♪