Ahmed Ahmed is an Egyptian American stand-up comedian, actor, director, and producer. He is known for describing life as an Arab American and Muslim in his standup routines.
In 2004 Ahmed won the first annual Richard Pryor Award for ethnic comedy at the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland. In 2010 he made his directorial debut with the award-winning documentary Just Like Us. He continues performing comedy in documentary film with Vice TV’s “TOO SOON: Comedy after 9/11” (2021).
Ahmed Ahmed: Comedian and Actor
Ahmed is a founder of the Axis of Evil Comedy Tour, along with fellow actor and comedian Maz Jobrani. The tour featured four Middle Eastern comedians making light of how their lives in America changed after 9/11. Active from 2005-2011, the Axis of Evil Tour received their own Comedy Central special in 2007.
Ahmed toured the US with Jewish comedian Rabbi Bob Alper in “One Arab, One Jew, One Stage: Laugh in Peace.” The show used humor to discuss humanness and promote harmony between different faiths following 9/11.
“Funny is funny,” Ahmed told the Times of San Diego. “We’ve never gotten any negative feedback.”
Ahmed was one of four stand-up comedians to perform with Vince Vaughn’s “Wild West Comedy Show” in 2005. Vaughn hand-picked each of the performers to tour 30 cities across the country. The documentary, Wild West Comedy Show: 30 Days & 30 Nights – Hollywood to the Heartland came out in 2006.
The comedian has appeared in several films and tv shows, including Iron Man (2008). He played Ahmed, an Afghan Agent for the Ten Rings organization.
Ahmed’s first major role was as a recurring character on TBS’ sitcom Sullivan & Son (2012-2014). He played Ahmed Nassar, childhood friend and tow truck driver. He has also appeared in episodes of Roseanne and Girlfriends.
Ahmed Ahmed: A Hollywood Dream
Ahmed hails from Helwan, Egypt, in “a small, primitive farm village outside Cairo,” he said. He arrived in the United States with his family when he was only a month old. The family settled in Riverside, California.
“I was raised very strict Muslim in a Muslim household in the middle of America,” Ahmed said in an interview with Stockholm’s Skavlan TV. “My friends would come over to my house midday when my mother and my father were praying, and they would say ‘Mr. and Mrs. Ahmed what’d you lose?’ and I’d say ‘Shh, they’re praying…There was a lot of comedy fodder that naturally came out of that.”
At 19 Ahmed moved to Hollywood to pursue his dream of becoming an actor. In 1994, he completed a degree in Theater with the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in LA.
“When I first got to Hollywood, I didn’t know anybody. I was a waiter, I was a personal trainer, I went to acting classes. I was struggling,” Ahmed said on the What’s Up Fool? podcast.
Initially, Ahmed’s parents were against his Hollywood dream.
“All the other Arab fathers…were like ‘My son just got his master’s degree in engineering; my daughter just got her PhD…What is your son doing?’”
“The movie I did after [an afterschool special with Vince Vaughn] was Executive Decision where I played terrorist #4,” he said. “In the credits it says the terrorist’s name Ahmed, and then it says Ahmed Ahmed…and then my dad was like…that is my son we are so proud…’ I was like, ‘You didn’t talk to me for 7 years.’”
Ahmed would later turn to stand-up comedy after only being able to book stereotypical roles in film and tv.
“I got into comedy because I just wanted a voice,” he told Naples Daily News.
Ahmed Ahmed: “Just Like Us”
Ahmed made his directorial debut in 2010 with his feature-length documentary Just Like Us.
The documentary features Ahmed and several other international comedians introducing stand-up to the Arab world. Just Like Us documents performances made in Egypt, Dubai, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia to a total of over 20,000 people.
“In 2007 we started doing comedy shows in the Middle East,” explained Ahmed. “It was a big phenomenon because they’d never had contemporary stand-up comedy. They always had satire, a one-man show, or big, fantastic plays that were over the top, but never a guy or a girl standing there just having a conversation with an audience.”
“But, thanks to Facebook and YouTube, they were primed and ready to hear American comedy,” he said. “They totally got it.”
“We decided to document the next tour…it’s to show that despite our cultural or religious differences that Arabs and Muslims on that side of the world laugh just like us on the other side of the world,” said the comedian.
Just Like Us premiered at the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival in New York. Omar Fadel scored the film. Following the debut, Ahmed received an invite to the White House to meet then-president Obama.
“That was cool,” Ahmed told the National News. “Then Hillary Clinton invited me to her state department after dinner…This movie has allowed me to mingle with politicians and rock stars.”
Ahmed’s company Cross Cultural Productions made the documentary available to stream on YouTube in 2020.
