and life you love. You know, a few months ago I saw this incredible video online of

a comedian and she made me laugh so hard that I nearly fell off my chair. Plus she made

me even more proud to be from New Jersey. So the instant I saw her I knew I had to have

this hilarious, brilliant woman on the show so that you can enjoy her talent as much as

I do.

Maysoon Zayid is an actress, professional standup comedian, and writer. She is the cofounder

and co executive producer of the New York Arab American Comedy Festival. Maysoon was

a full time on air contributor to Countdown with Keith Olbermann and has most recently

appeared on the Melissa Harris-Perry show and Huffington Post Live. She’s currently

a writer at The Daily Beast and Maysoon has appeared on Comedy Central’s The Watch List,

CNN, HBO, As the World Turns, Law and Order, MTV, 20/20, and had a feature role in Adam

Sandler’s You Don’t Mess with the Zohan. She’s also the founder of Maysoon’s Kids,

a scholarship and wellness program for disabled and wounded refugee children.

Maysoon, thank you so much for coming to New York to be here with us.

It’s my pleasure.

So ok, we’re both from New Jersey. You are from Cliffside Park and you made me laugh

when you said, you know, “I’m not drunk, but the doctor who delivered me was.” Start

us off.

Yeah, I mean, accidents during labor that cause lifetime disabilities are hilarious.

So, yeah, the doctor who delivered me was drunk. I was born in New Jersey and, you know,

I always picture him being down the shore like, you know, doing slip and slides and

taking shots. And he came up and I came out fist first and the party was over. I lost

3 minutes of oxygen and as a result I have cerebral palsy. And in my case it manifests

itself by me shaking all the time, which is fun. Burns calories. Very efficient.

You… just how you handle everything with such humor, and I also love the story that

you tell about your dad. About both of your parents, how they didn't believe in the word

can’t, that you can’t do it. How did that impact you growing up?

I mean, I’m really blessed and lucky because so many people don't have parents who are

also their advocates. And often parents let doctors guide the way and don't kind of question

or push. My parents weren’t like that. They had really strong faith and I think that both

of them kinda had big egos and weren’t willing to just settle for what the doctors told them

would happen, which was they said I would never walk and, of course, I’d never graduate

college and they’d be lucky if I got to a fourth grade level. And my parents decided

to go against that. And I talk about my dad teaching me to walk because what he did was

he put my feet on his feet and he just walked. So I always say I walked miles on that man’s

shoes. Not in them, but on them. And also, my parents couldn’t afford physical therapy

so they sent me to a tap class. So I’ve been tap dancing since the age of five, which

is what most Muslim women in America do. And that was really helpful too because I learned

to dance in heels. So walking in heels was never an issue.

That’s awesome. And being from Jersey, we typically like to wear heels.

Yeah.

When we can.

Heels, big hair, makeup. I mean, just the amount of hairspray that I used to put in

my hair in high school, that was a whole other balance obstacle for the CP because I had

to like, you know, wield this helmet that I was sporting.

Yeah, me too. My mom used to actually make me… I had so much hairspray in high school

there’d be a layer of it in the bathroom on the sink and she was like, “You can’t

leave that bathroom…”

Ooh.

I know. It was just… it’s how it was.

Yeah, I have pin straight hair, so in order to get it, like, that big I went through bottles

of AquaNet. Bottles. Like 5 a week without… there’s an entire hole in the ozone just

above my parent’s house. Right above it.

I can’t take you. So…

You can’t take me anywhere.

I can’t take you…

Because I have to sit down. It’s a problem.

Stop it. So I also read that you wrote… you learned to walk by tap dancing, but you

learned to live by doing yoga.

Yeah.

Yeah. Tell me how… do you love yoga? Do you still do it?

Yeah, I love yoga but I don’t ohm.

You don’t ohm.

I’m really… like, I’m competitive at yoga.

Yeah.

I try to show up other people in the class and be like, “I’m disabled and standing

on my head. What are you doing, fatty?” Like, you know, I’m really competitive.

I don't get into the whole, like, ohm, zen part of it. Just the stretching and standing

on one hand. I was… I was working with Adam Sandler on a movie and one of the actresses

there named Ryan Medin said to me, “You know, you should really try yoga,” and I

was like, “I don't really think I can stand on my head considering I can’t stand on

my feet.” And I tried it and it completely, completely changed my life. And, first of

all, it made me so much stronger. Like, I could never lift my arms above my head, now

I can. I can stand now. Not for as long as I want to, but I’m sure that’ll happen.

And I just always wonder, like, if I could have done that from when I was 5 years old,

what would the difference be? Because when you watch me doing standup a decade ago and

now, it’s night and day. It’s a completely different body, different coordination, much

less shaking, much less pain. And… so I really advocate parents with young children

with cerebral palsy, start doing yoga at 6 months because you can.

That’s awesome.

Yeah.

Really cool.

Now, I know a lot of my summers were spent on the Jersey Shore, but I know a lot of yours

weren’t and you went back to Palestine. Can you tell us about that?

Yeah, I always… I joke about it on stage and I say my friends went to the Jersey Shore

and my dad sent me to a war zone. So I spent, yeah, I spent my summers growing up in Palestine

and, you know, in the beginning there was like one phone so it was like Little House

on the Prairie where you would all gather on the phone and we’d call our parents and

we’d be like, “Why do you hate us?!” And they’d be like, “When you grow up

you’ll thank us.” And I do because I’m bilingual because of that, so I perform in

Arabic and English when I do standup comedy in Jerusalem or in Dubai or in, you know,

Jordan. I do it in Arabic, which is really cool. And I wouldn’t have that if I didn't

grow up spending summers in, you know, this village that I grew up in outside of Remoma.

And I talk about my comedy is so heavily influenced by my aunts because I grew up in a time where

you didn't have TV, you didn't have internet, a lot of them didn't have bathrooms, you know,

back then. And they would spend all day talking about other women. So they’d come home from

a wedding and be like, “I can't believe they found someone to marry this donkey. She

was just the donkey in a white dress. They found someone, God is great.” And I feel

like I learned so much comedy from them but I also learned, you know, a lot about the

world because I grew up witnessing a conflict. So I’ve been in conflict since I was 5 years

old and it gives me a really interesting perspective in America when things happen that are not

to my liking. When I see religion taking a bigger role in government than it should,

it really terrifies me because I’ve witnessed those things firsthand and I see how quickly

you can get in a situation that’s the opposite of freedom and democracy.

And I… that actually leads me right to where I wanted to go next, which was I think one

of your earlier ambitions was wanting to be an attorney.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And you took a class and things started to shift and you realized comedy was a possibility.

And I never told my parents, which was really funny. So I was gonna be a lawyer because

I always talk too much and I’m very opinionated. And my parents were like, “You can fight

with the wall, so you should become a lawyer.” And lawyers played a big part in my life because

Drunky the Clown got sued and, you know, my lawyer, Gerald Baker, was my hero so I wanted

to be a lawyer. And I had to take a fine arts class. And I was very, very academic, you

know, just super competitive and I was like, “I don't have time for this. What’s the

easiest arts class?” And they said, “Take acting. You get to be like an ice cream cone.”

And I went and right after my first class I was like, “I’m going to be an actress

and I’m going to win an Oscar,” and I switched my major and I never told my parents.

So when I graduated my mom was at Arizona State University and she looks at me and she’s

like, “Why are the pre law graduations in the fine arts building?” And I’m like,

“Haha, funny. I kinda have a degree in theatre with an emphasis in women’s studies.”

And she was like, “I’m going to murder you.” Yeah.

And so for you, when you discovered comedy did it feel like somewhat of a coming home?

Like this is what I was meant to do? Were you always funny as a little girl?

I was always very talkative.

Ok.

And very opinionated. I’m not sure if I was funny or not, but I do remember like holding

court. You know? Being like 10 years old and being like, “I think that what Reagan should

be doing,” and people were like, “Wow.” But the comedy was a means to an end because

I wanted to be on television and Hollywood doesn't hire ethnic people willingly, and

when they do it’s certainly not a disabled ethnic person. And I talk about this a lot

in my work about how people with disabilities are the largest minority in the world and

also in America. And we’re also the most underrepresented on television. And the story

lines that are done are really quite offensive. So, first of all, you have able bodied actors

playing disabled, which we call crip face and we find it really offensive. And they

win Oscars and we’re like, “This is a caricature.” But on top of that, it’s

always the same two storylines. You can’t love me because I’m disabled, and heal me.

And I wanted to kind of flip the script and make it be like, “You know what?” I saw

all these women that didn't look like supermodels on TV and they were all doing comedy. From

Carol Burnett to Ellen to, you know, even Queen Latifah on Living Single. And I thought,

“Comedy is my way to get in there and change it.” And when I started doing comedy it

was a perfect fit in that I wasn’t a disabled comic and I wasn’t an Arab comic. I wasn’t

even a female comic, I was just a comic. Because I came up in New York City in clubs, at the

Comedy Cellar, at, you know, Gotham where you had to bring people or you couldn’t

get on stage and we were doing 5 minutes at 6:30 in the afternoon on a Tuesday. It wasn’t

the whole YouTube generation. And I was treated as an equal by all of my fellow comedians,

so after the TED talk come out and people really were like, “Oh, how cute. The disabled

girl is trying to become a comedian,” or people saying, “You know, without her disability

she’d have absolutely no material.” I had already had a decade long career prior

to…

Yes.

Yes. I mean, if you go online there’s a lot of people who say, “Without the CP,

without the shtick, she wouldn’t have a career, she wouldn't be on TED’s stage.”

And I think, “It’s really amazing that you all thought the disability helped me in

Hollywood, because it’s actually been the biggest hindrance.” And some people ask

me is it being female, is it being ethnic, and it’s not. It’s really the disability

is… it’s the most underrepresented and people just don't want to take a risk on us.

And I write so often because I want to change what we’re doing. Like, if you look at a

TV show like Friends, there’s no reason that Phoebe couldn’t have had a disability,

or Monica even, and not had that be the storyline. And we just don't see that on television.

They make such a big deal out of it that it’s the central storyline. And casting directors

don't think you can just cast us as anyone. I could be the wacky best friend, I could

be the lawyer on The Good Wife. You know?

Yeah. It’s a… it’s a brilliant point and I’m really excited that you’re doing

the work that you’re doing in the world.

It’s hard. It’s hard. They don't want to take the risk, they immediately look at

you and say, “Financially how much is this gonna cost me? Can you handle a 12 hour shoot?”

And you’re like, “Sure, I can handle a 12 hour shoot, but there might be a disabled

actor that can’t who’s worth making the ADA accommodation for,” because by law you’re

supposed to and for some reason entertainment and media don't think that they should follow

the law.

Wild.

Yeah.

The other thing that really struck me was that you talked about the fact that as a child

you weren’t made fun of and even as an adult until you went on the Keith Olbermann show

and then the kind of internet comments just blew up and you’re like, “Yeah, people

are scumbags.”

Yeah. And I’ve learned because I’ve been so blessed that the TED talk was translated

into 35 languages so I have people with CP from all over the world contacting me talking

about their lives. And I was really blessed. There’s something about that small town

in America where it was just not acceptable. I’ve had the same 7 friends since I was

5 years old, they were my bridesmaids, they’re my Jersey girls, and the idea of any of them

making fun of me or leaving me out is unheard of. But also I think that if anyone else made