Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. You can tell comedian Janine Harouni is from Staten Island in part because she's really good at the accent. In fact, over the course of her one-hour show, Janine transforms into a variety of people, from her Staten Island parents to her Lebanese grandmother to her Irish husband. They are all essential characters in Janine's story, which focuses on motherhood, her fears about becoming a mother, her difficult pregnancy, an experience with miscarriage, and her relationship to her own parents.

It is funny, it is occasionally raunchy, and it's very touching. Oh, and when she debuted the festival at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, she was eight months pregnant. Janine now lives in the UK, but she's back in New York at the SoHo Playhouse, right around the corner from her offices here at WNYC. Her show is called-- All right. We've been having a discussion about how you call this. Man'oushe.

Janine Harouni: Well, I'm mispronouncing it.

Alison Stewart: [laughs] It's Janine, by the way, everybody.

Janine Harouni: Hello. Hi.

Alison Stewart: How do you say it?

Janine Harouni: It is Man'oushe or Man'oushe.

Alison Stewart: Is it?

Janine Harouni:

Alison Stewart: My family, it's a nickname for me and they just pronounce it Man'oushe. Many Lebanese people have corrected me, and so I do apologize, but I am pronouncing it in the show the way that my family say it.

Alison Stewart: Man'oushe.

Janine Harouni: Yes, Man'oushe

Alison Stewart: What does Man'oushe mean?

Janine Harouni: It has many meanings, but it's a food. It's a food in Lebanese culture that's like a pizza. My grandmother nicknamed me it. It's also, I've recently learned from an audience member, a nickname for a woman's private parts. I don't know why my grandmother nicknamed me that. She's passed away, so we'll never know.

Alison Stewart: We'll never know.

Janine Harouni: We'll never know.

Alison Stewart: You originally performed this when you were eight months pregnant?

Janine Harouni: Eight and a half months pregnant.

Alison Stewart: At the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

Janine Harouni: Big mistake.

Alison Stewart: That is crazy. Was that a mistake?

Janine Harouni: Yes. I don't know if you've ever been to Edinburgh. It is a city of hills. I was walking up and genuinely, my husband was pushing me up hills and then holding me from rolling down. It was an absolute nightmare.

Alison Stewart: What was it like to be on stage eight and a half months pregnant?

Janine Harouni: Do you know what's weird is, my son was a real kicker when he was in the womb, and the only time that he fell asleep was when I was doing my show. It was actually very nice to have that break. Then we joked that when he was born if he wouldn't sleep, I just needed to do my [unintelligible 00:02:26] It would just knock my son out. I guess he's not a fan. [chuckles]

Alison Stewart: Maybe he just heard your voice over time and over time and just was like, "Okay. I'm going to relax now."

Janine Harouni: Oh, that's a nicer way of putting it.

Alison Stewart: On a serious note, though, how did it feel to make all these jokes about pregnancy, about your miscarriage while you were pregnant on stage?

Janine Harouni: I'm the kind of person, whenever I do a show, I just tell everybody everything about my life. I feel like it was, for me, the only way to do it. I would feel fake if I was getting up on stage and not being honest about what I was worrying about. For me, the best way to break through fear and anxiety is to make light of it. That's my way of dealing with things. I hope that audience members take that away and feel a bit of catharsis when they see the show.

Alison Stewart: A lot of the show is about motherhood. You're very honest about how you were a little reluctant at first. You weren't sure about whether or not you were going to lose your career, your hello, sir. [chuckles] When you were thinking about this show, what was keeping you from that next step of motherhood?

Janine Harouni: When I was thinking about the show, I guess I was turning 35. I think everybody puts this thing in your head that you're getting old now, you've got to have a baby. For some reason, 35 in my head was it's now or never kind of thing, which is obviously not true. But we're put under so much pressure as women. I got pregnant, and it happened quite quickly. For me, I didn't feel great straight away.

Also, your hormones are going crazy when you're pregnant and you're dealing with all of these new symptoms. I had terrible morning sickness. I couldn't do my job. I had to cancel gigs all the time because I couldn't sit on the train to get to work. I started to feel really resentful of the fact that, if we wanted to have a baby, myself and my husband, I was the one who had to do all of the work and my husband just had to have one fun night in December. I started writing about that because a lot of people can relate to that. The injustice of being the one to carry the baby is great. I feel like my husband will never get over how upset I was the entire time that I was pregnant.

Alison Stewart: Well, now that you are a mom, what's something about motherhood that you couldn't know or understand before?

Janine Harouni: My son's 15 months now, and I think--

Alison Stewart: That's a cute age.

Janine Harouni: Yes, it's a really cute age.

Alison Stewart: There's a reason that people's kids are like 15, two years apart because they're really cute.

Janine Harouni: Right. I see. Everybody gets fooled and are like, I could do this again. Then they suddenly have a terrible two and a newborn to take care of. I will not be fooled. I'm a one-and-done.

Alison Stewart: Me too as well. Up here. High five.

Janine Harouni: High five. My son is 15 months. Everybody told me when I was pregnant, you're never going to know love, the love you feel when you meet your baby. For me, that didn't happen. I had this newborn baby to take care of. There's no feedback with a newborn. He doesn't even know I'm there. They can't even see you for the first few weeks, whatever it is. I was so anxious all the time that I had to take care of this thing. I'd never taken care of a baby in my life before, so I did not enjoy the newborn stage.

He's a big boy. He looks like a three-year-old. People are very confused when they meet him. Now that he's more solid, he is starting to see the world. Not only do I feel love for him and meeting this little person and seeing his little personality, it's such a nice feeling to see how much this little boy loves me and my husband. I think if there's anyone out there who's not enjoying the newborn stage, I am with you. I am not a woman who likes babies. I learned that through having a baby, which wasn't very fun. Now that I have a 15-month-old, I see this is what I thought motherhood would be like and I'm really, really enjoying it.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Janine Harouni. Her new comedy show is Man'oushe is running at SoHo Playhouse through December 21st. I don't want to give it all away, but we learned about your grandmother. We do learn that she was a professional singer before coming to the United States. We actually have a little bit of her singing. let's take a listen and we can talk about it on the other side.

[music]

Alison Stewart: What was her career like? What was her performance like?

Janine Harouni: She started very young. I think she was maybe 13 or 14 when she was discovered in Lebanon. At that time, I think Egypt was really big in music and movies and Lebanon had this budding industry and she signed this contract when she was 16 years old to tour the world. She was really well known. I don't say it in the show, but she starred in the first-ever Lebanese movie called The Bride of Lebanon. She had this really big career over there. When she was 16 or 17, this record company paired her up with this young singer who was completely unknown. Her name was Fairuz.

Alison Stewart: When you said that, the audience went woo, the whole audience at the same time.

Janine Harouni: If you don't know Fairuz, Fairuz is one of the most famous, most beloved singers in the Arab world. She was paired up with my grandmother, who was the more well-known singer. They did all these duets together and they still remained friends for all of my grandmother's life. I joke in the show that my grandmother would tell everybody, you talk to her for one minute and she'd be like, "Fairuz was my backing singer." Really, she loved Fairuz and they had a really nice relationship.

She had this really big career that was happening in Lebanon and then she got the chance to emigrate to the US and she left this career behind so that she could have a nice life with her family and her kids would have more opportunities in the United States. She eventually brought all of her family over. The show wrestles with that pressure that you feel as a woman to have a career and have dreams and still make space to be a parent and have a family and do all of those things. That's what I was feeling when I was pregnant because I was really worried how am I going to juggle all these things. I'll tell you how. It's impossible. It's impossible.

Alison Stewart: [laughs] Yes. That's the answer. In the show, we learned that you're from Staten Island.

Janine Harouni: I like the way you say that.

Alison Stewart: Staten Island.

Janine Harouni: Staten Island.

Alison Stewart: [laughs] What are some of the ways that I know that you're from Staten Island even though you haven't lived there in a while, you live in the UK now?

Janine Harouni: Everybody tells me when I come home that I have a weird transatlantic accent now, which I'm completely not aware of. I absolutely hate it whenever I hear myself back. I'm not trying to do it, listeners, just so you know. You can take the girl out of Staten Island, but you can't take the Staten Island out of the girl. I will argue with a stranger on the street if I think they've cut me in line for something. Staten Islanders are unbelievably tough, but at the same time, they'd give you the shirt off their backs. I hope that I carry that with me into the UK where people are very confused at my aggressiveness.

Alison Stewart: How do your jokes go over among Staten Islanders when they hear you?

Janine Harouni: I think they all really relate to it because my parents are very typically the Staten Island parents that lots of people grew up with. They were born in Brooklyn, my parents. Then they came over on the Verrazano, got a little bit of land on Staten Island. They're lovely people who are completely insane and absolutely overbearing, but I love them to death. I think a lot of people relate to that.

Alison Stewart: People can hear you do your Staten Island accent. They heard you do your grandmother's accent. You're really good at accents. When did that come about for you?

Janine Harouni: I don't know. I think I've always had a ear for it. I just like characters. I like meeting people who are big characters. It's funny. My first show that I did, I impersonated my mom a lot in that show.

These casting directors who were doing the Batman movie came and saw the show, and they were looking for someone to play a sex worker in this Batman movie. My impersonation of my mother, apparently, they were like, "She'd be perfect." My mom's very proud that you can see me in the Batman impersonating her as a sex worker.

Alison Stewart: Let's say. How would she give directions?

Janine Harouni: First off, she doesn't know where she's. She's like, "I don't drive over bridges. I'm not a driver. I mean, I'll help you, but I don't know where I'm going, and you won't know where you're going. Do you guys want to come in and have some coffee?" She's just all over the place.

Alison Stewart: That's so funny. The name of the show is Man'oushe. It's running at the SoHo Playhouse through December 21st. My guest is Janine Harouni. In the show, you make some edgy jokes about certain topics, one of them being abortion. The show I was at over on, I think it was StageRight, lady didn't like it.

Janine Harouni: Oh, yes.

Alison Stewart: She did not like the abortion jokes at all.

Janine Harouni: I'll tell you where they really didn't like it. North Carolina. I did the show in Raleigh, North Carolina. Half of the audience booed, half of the audience stood up and clapped. It was a microcosm of the division that's happening in the States right now.

Alison Stewart: How do you decide when you're going to go for it?

Janine Harouni: I generally just go for it. I feel like I've done the show dozens and dozens of times and all over the world. I think just go for it. The thing is, I'm joking. It's a joke. People have become really sensitive, maybe especially with a topic like that, and I think the best way through is to just laugh. I've never had anyone walk out, so that's good. Just go for it.

Alison Stewart: What do you do when an audience member has that reaction to you?

Janine Harouni: I think just what I did in the show that you were in just pointed out, make a little fun of it, and have a nice time. I want everybody in my shows to feel very comfortable and very wanted there. I think there's a very like male energy to stand-up comedy that you definitely see on Instagram when people post crowd work clips where they're taking down the audience or whatever it is. I think it's better to just be a bit nice. People have come, they're guests at your show, and I think I just want everyone to have a good time.

Alison Stewart: Do you like the crowd work or no?

Janine Harouni: Yes, I love it because I think otherwise the show gets very boring. We're at a live show, so it's nice to acknowledge the things that are happening in the space. It's nice to talk to people in the audience. I always incorporate a little bit of crowd work in every show that I do so that even a few people have come and seen the show more than once and then they're having a different experience.

Alison Stewart: Oh, that's interesting. A lot of people's comedy these days has been confessional, thinking about Hannah Gadsby and your show, it deals with grief and loss and all kinds of deep emotions. Why do you think we're seeing more comedians willing to share part of their lives as part of their shows?

Janine Harouni: I think a lot of those shows that are confessional that we're seeing in the States are coming out of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and those shows have been happening there for years and years. That's the standard show that you would go and see would be this really confessional show. I'm not sure if that's because in British culture, things are very suppressed. They're not as sincere and open as we are in the States. I think maybe a way to express that is by making a show. There is definitely a need for people to express that or to see themselves reflected back on stage. I think part of it comes from that.

I think the other part of it comes from we're living in an age where if you're doing observational comedy and you come up with a joke if you Google it, I would say there's a likelihood that there's 15,000 memes that have already made that joke and have gone viral on TikTok and Twitter and Instagram. The minute you have that joke, it goes insanely viral, and then it's dead. I think creating a show that has a long life, you're going to have to talk about something a bit more personal. The universality comes from the specificity of your life. I think we all go through in this world a lot of the same things, a lot of the same issues. I think that's why people are talking about personal stuff.

Alison Stewart: How do you get the balance right between those sincere moments, because they truly are, they grab you, and just comedy moments?

Janine Harouni: You only get it right by getting it wrong a lot of times. I must have previewed the show maybe 50 times. I left a lot of previews crying because I just did not know because I'm talking about such heavy topics. I talk about a miscarriage that I had. I talk about the loss of my director and friend Adam Brace. You want the audience to know that they're in safe hands, that we're going to go there, but at the same time, there's going to be levity and release from that emotion. That only happens by doing the show a lot of times and learning. Okay, that's a wrong step there. That's a right step there and piecing it together.

Alison Stewart: You talked about Adam Brace, and it was so sad. He passed away as you said. Before he passed away, how did he help you with this show? Help you create the show that we're seeing?

Janine Harouni: He was just the best. I met him on a comedy course that I did at the Soho Theater in London, and I hated him straight away. I don't think he liked me either.

Alison Stewart: [laughs] Sidebar. Wait. Stop. Tangent. You hated each other? Why?

Janine Harouni: I think we were just quite adversarial. Just in the first time that we met, we argued about a bit of mine that he said wasn't going to work, and I insisted would. After I left, I was like, "That guy's so full of himself." I left and realized that he had directed Just For Us by Alex Edelman, which at that stage was in very early infancy. I'd just seen it at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. I walked away from that thinking it was one of the most amazing shows I'd ever seen.

I sent him a very sad little email where I was just like, hey, it was wonderful meeting you, and blah, blah, blah. He said that he liked that I wasn't afraid of him and that I argued back. Then we spent the next five years arguing with each other and making two shows. He was the best. He knew how to write. He knew how to take someone from a joke writer to a storyteller and how to write about personal things that are meaningful and how to make them funny. Everything I know, I learned from him.

Alison Stewart: What's a part of your show that really honors who he was?

Janine Harouni: What he loved the most, I think, was the comedy that could take you to a really deep, dark place and then make you laugh really hard almost immediately afterwards. I was writing a show about pregnancy. When we were halfway through, Adam passed away very sudden from a heart attack. Like I said, when I get up on stage, I just want to be honest about what I'm thinking and feeling.

I started talking about him on stage. I'd never lost someone that I was that close with before. The show got very dark. every time that I found a way to take it from talking about Adam's death and making it fun and funny, in a strange way, I always think that Adam would have loved those kinds of jokes. That's how he was in life. He had such a dark sense of Humor. I think he would appreciate those jokes.

Alison Stewart: In the show, you talk about having a miscarriage. Did you feel ready to tell people about your miscarriage?

Janine Harouni: Oh, my God. The first time that I ever talked about it on stage, I was so nervous I pressed the microphone so hard into my chin that when I came off stage, I was bleeding a little bit.

Alison Stewart: Oh, wow. That must mean it. You were so scared.

Janine Harouni: I don't even know why. I found it easier to talk about my friend who passed away than the child that we lost. I think there's so much secrecy around miscarriage. You're not supposed to tell people that you're pregnant during the miscarriage window. Then when you do, if you do have a miscarriage, there's no funeral. Your parents don't fly in. You might not even tell anyone about it.

That secrecy, I think, creates so much shame around something that I think people should be open about. Because when I did choose to be open about it and just tell people, the amount of women who told me that it happened to them, and I mean, strangers, I mean, a yoga instructor, a woman at the hair salon, people I had met that day, we would have these really intimate conversations, and I would leave that feeling better because I knew I wasn't alone.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Janine Harouni. Her show at SoHo Playhouse is running through December 21st. It's Man'oushe. You talk about your family a lot in this show, in past shows. How do they feel about being a big part of your comedy?

Janine Harouni: They are really good sports about it. I feel very lucky because I poke fun at my parents a lot. Also, I think they know that they are obviously elevated versions of themselves in the shows. I'm just taking the funny parts of them and exaggerating it. They're really good about it. In my first show that I wrote, my dad is a huge character in it, and my dad is a son of Arab immigrants and a Trump supporter. That makes for terrible Sunday dinner conversations with my family. He was really good about me exploring that and poking fun at that, because I also think I poke fun at myself, too. I don't just point the fingers at other people. I think I come down quite evenly on us both being fallible.

Alison Stewart: I watched one of your older specials, and it was largely about when you were in a car accident.

Janine Harouni: Yes, that's that show.

Alison Stewart: That's right. That's very funny about your dad. In the car accident, you were you had to go home and be part of the family again. They had to take care of you. How did you think about your future differently at that point in your life?

Janine Harouni: I didn't think about my future at all. I'd been in a car accident. That's from a show called Stand Up with Janine Harouni (Please Remain Seated) that I filmed for Amazon, but that's now available on YouTube if anyone wants to check that out. I was in a car accident that paralyzed my leg for almost three years. I was not thinking future plans. I was 21 when it happened, and I was just every day trying to get through.

I had neuropathy, so my leg would feel like it was being electrocuted and on fire at certain points in the day. I was trying to wake it up again, which, spoiler, I'm walking fine now. The doctors were very, very good, thankfully, that I was able to see who did all my surgeries. I think when you go through something like that, you are just focused on the day. You're very present because there's a lot to deal with day to day.

Alison Stewart: In your show, your husband, Andrew, he comes out and actually opens for you a little bit.

Janine Harouni: Yes.

Alison Stewart: Was that the first night or was that always?

Janine Harouni: He's got a big career as a comedy director, so whenever I can get him to come and open for me, I take those opportunities because he's very funny and also because the show, I talk so much about him. It's really nice for the audience to get to see him and know him because it feels like a nice family affair. He'll be opening for me for the rest of this run, which is really nice because I've taken him away from his job and now he has to.

Alison Stewart: How do the jokes hit differently when he actually is your opener?

Janine Harouni: I think people feel like they know him by the time he gets off stage because he tells lots of stories about us before I come out. I think they hit a little bit harder because he's not just a character they're creating in their minds. He's somebody that they've met. It's a really nice touch, I think, to have him open.

Alison Stewart: Why are you good collaborators?

Janine Harouni: Well, tell that to my couples therapist. No, I trust him more than anything. He has unbelievable taste, and he's somebody who I can turn to and say, "Is this funny," and he'll say, "Kind of, but maybe punch it up with this joke or that.' We do that for each other. I think we've been together for eight years now, so we just have a real shorthand.

Alison Stewart: You're performing here in New York. Are New York audiences different than, say, British audiences?

Janine Harouni: British is a big term. I toured all over the UK, so obviously there's lots of different parts of the UK. I would compare New York to London. I'd say they're really comparable in that New Yorkers and Londoners are both very smart, they're very well-read. The difference is I think New Yorkers are up for a good time. You know what I mean? I think it's a hard city to live in, and I think when they come out for a show, they're there to laugh. It's really nice.

Also, they're not afraid to show their emotions. When the show has those emotional bits, the New York audiences are so much more vocal. There's gasps. People talk more in the audience. It's very strange. British audiences can be very reserved, very quiet. It's really special to be doing the show here in New York.

Alison Stewart: The show is playing at SoHo Playhouse through December 21st. My guest has been Janine Harouni . Thanks for coming to the studio. We really appreciate it.

Janine Harouni: Thank you so much for having me.