Name: Using Humor to Create World Change w/ Maysoon Zayid
Uploaded: 2017-08-08T15:31:33.000Z
Duration: 27 min 42 s
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Hey, it’s Marie Forleo and you are watching MarieTV, the place to be to create a business

Past simple

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

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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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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Using Humor to Create World Change w/ Maysoon Zayid

hilarious

awesome

realize

routine