Janine Harouni:
Doomsday prepping.
Bruce Dessau:
What's that?
Janine Harouni:
Yeah, it's not big here.
Bruce Dessau:
No.
Janine Harouni:
It's prepping for the end of times.
Bruce Dessau:
He thinks it's-
Janine Harouni:
Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Bruce Dessau:
How long does he think we've got?
Janine Harouni:
In his mind, he's like, "If it happens, I'm prepared. If it doesn't happen, it's just been an interesting hobby that I've"-
Bruce Dessau:
Do you mean like a survivalist, where you stockpile stuff?
Janine Harouni:
Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was messaging him, and I was like, "Can you get me a slash-proof hoodie or a stab-proof thing because I'm scared for walking from the station."
Bruce Dessau:
For the revolution. Where does he live? He's still in Staten-
Janine Harouni:
He lives in Las Vegas.
Bruce Dessau:
Oh, right. He's not in showbiz though?
Janine Harouni:
His wife is a dancer, so they moved over for her career. Yeah. He's a nurse, like my mom.
Bruce Dessau:
I see. Have you got other siblings then?
Janine Harouni:
I have another brother, my eldest brother. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, and they've got a little baby. He works for Deloitte. He's a genius, computer ... I don't know what he does. He tries to explain it to me and I actually ... I think I become dumber by listening to it.
Bruce Dessau:
What do your parents think of what you're doing as a career now? Are they-
Janine Harouni:
Before the car accident, they were like, "You're a smart girl. You've got to do something practical." Then after the car accident happened, so many doctors and people told me that my leg wasn't going to come back. My dad would be like, "Fuck you!" to the doctors. He's like, "You don't know what you're talking about." He'd like wheel me out of the hospital, and he's like, "You're going to dance again. You're going to do whatever you want." Now they're so supportive of anything creative that I'm doing, so yeah.
Bruce Dessau:
Yeah. Well also, they're just relieved that ... It must've been pretty awful for them, you know?
Janine Harouni:
Yeah, yeah. I think it was.
Bruce Dessau:
So, just relieved and all those ideas of "my daughter the lawyer" or "my daughter the doctor" ... Just glad she can walk and do anything really. But they've never seen you do standup?
Janine Harouni:
They've never seen it.
Bruce Dessau:
Have they ever left America? They do have passports?
Janine Harouni:
They have passports, yeah. I think the last time they were here was when I graduated from drama school. I think they'll never come back. My dad was like, "There's no air conditioning. There's no ice in any of the drinks." They just couldn't understand. So yeah, I don't know ... I think they might come, because the show will be on at the Soho as well because they're producing it. I think they're going to-
Bruce Dessau:
You think they might come-
Janine Harouni:
... muster their way. They'll come and see it in London, yeah.
Bruce Dessau:
How many times have you been up to Edinburgh, in any sense? In any capacity.
Janine Harouni:
The first time I ever went was Muriel. We had no idea what we were doing. We were winging it completely. That was 2017. I went up last year and did a half an hour version of this standup show. Yeah, so just twice.
Bruce Dessau:
Have you got a favorite club in London to play?
Janine Harouni:
I've got to say the The 99 Club. They've been so unbelievably supportive. Yeah, James (who runs it) is amazing.
Bruce Dessau:
Because you've played there before, and that's how his-
Janine Harouni:
Yes.
Bruce Dessau:
So yeah, you've played there regularly. But how do you find the London comedy scene? You said a bit about it.
Janine Harouni:
So supportive. Yeah, I feel like I've been so lucky to have moved here and everything kind of fell into place that I could be. I think that UK comedians and Irish comedians are so witty and funny and understand that comedy's about light and dark. You know? But sometimes I'll see a lot of American comedians, and it seems more personality based rather than jokes or writing. You know? Which is equally just as fun to see probably when you're in the room. Maybe it's different because I'm not there seeing it live.
Bruce Dessau:
But there's a different ... I don't know if you agree with this, but it feels to me there's a different sort of career dynamic, different structure. Because in America, you're trying to get those ... Maybe it's changing now because of all the Netflix specials and stuff. But in the past it always seemed to be that American comedians wanted to get those tight 10 minutes to do a Letterman or whatever. Whereas here, you're kind of working to an Edinburgh show.
Janine Harouni:
Yeah, I think people do an hour a lot sooner in this country than they do in American.
Bruce Dessau:
Yeah, for Edinburgh. They do it for Edinburgh.
Janine Harouni:
Absolutely, yeah.
Bruce Dessau:
But maybe in America, as I said, maybe it's changing now because of all those specials. I know there's been HBO specials for a long time, but now with the stuff that Netflix is doing, you can get your breaks. The idea was, I think, 10, 15 years ago, that you got on something like Letterman or Jay Leno and then you get spotted and get a sitcom out of it or something. Like Seinfeld.
Janine Harouni:
At least a half an hour special on Comedy Central or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Bruce Dessau:
But it's funny because when Americans come over here, they always ... Very rarely they do more than an hour. A London comedian will do an hour in Edinburgh. But maybe when he goes on tour, it'll be 70, 80 minutes. Even when you go and see someone like Chris Rock or someone, Seinfeld at the O2-
Janine Harouni:
Yeah, I think Seinfeld does like an hour ten-
Bruce Dessau:
At the most.
Janine Harouni:
Chris Rock does a lot though, I think. I think he does an hour and a half.
Bruce Dessau:
What other comedians do you like?
Janine Harouni:
Oh, man. Chelsea Peretti. From the Americans, Chelsea Peretti, John Mulaney, Michael Che. Then Phil Wang, Fin Taylor, Aisling Bea, James Acaster and Sara Pascoe and obviously Muriel. They're great; check them out. Stiff & Kitsch. Yeah.
Bruce Dessau:
But comedians that are very different. I mean, Fin Taylor and you are pretty different in style, aren't you? They're not comedians. You're not like them. You're not like them stylistically. You're not like those comedians.
Janine Harouni:
Do you think so?
Bruce Dessau:
Well, Fin Taylor for instance, his stuff is kind of provocative and political-
Janine Harouni:
It's provocative, but it's all very sensible. His opinions are all very sensible. I think people accidentally, or they mislabel him as being a right wing comedian, but he's not at all.
Bruce Dessau:
No, no, no, no, no. No. I suppose he's addressing whether it's Me Too or sexual politics. I suppose the thing about your show you're doing in Edinburgh this year, it's like-
Janine Harouni:
It's political, but from the point of view of the person in it. I don't talk about Trump at all in my show. I'm sick of hearing about him. I just talk about someone I love who is maybe lost-
Bruce Dessau:
Okay, so no big poster of Donald Trump behind you on stage?
Janine Harouni:
Right, yeah. I'm wearing a Make America Great Again hat the whole time, but.
Bruce Dessau:
It's interesting. I suppose did you ever see Olga Koch's show last year?
Janine Harouni:
I did see it. Yeah, yeah.
Bruce Dessau:
It's kind of feels slightly similar to that.
Janine Harouni:
Right, it's about our fathers and politics.
Bruce Dessau:
Yeah, and just also, when you do your first show, it's like, "This is who I am. This is where I've come from. This is kind of my autobiographical show."
Janine Harouni:
Yeah, yeah.
Bruce Dessau:
She did well, so hopefully you'll-
Janine Harouni:
Yeah, yeah.
Bruce Dessau:
Yeah, it's a sort of similar sort of path. I think maybe that's the thing with Fin Taylor. He's done a few shows now, and he's found his ... It's funny. He sort of found his voice two or three years ago. I don't think he was doing those shows, this kind of ironic, right wing, where people mistake him for having those views. I don't think he was doing that until two or three years ago.
Janine Harouni:
Right, right. Yeah. I think the first time I saw him was in 2017 maybe, so yeah.
Bruce Dessau:
Yeah. But he's very funny.
Janine Harouni:
He is.
Bruce Dessau:
You're from Tottenville? Is that-
Janine Harouni:
Tottenville. Yeah, that's right.
Bruce Dessau:
Is that the name? Is that like little-
Janine Harouni:
It's the most southern town you can be from in all of New York state and city. It's the very ass end of New York, yeah.
Bruce Dessau:
When you were growing up or when you were a teenager, you wouldn't have particularly gone into Manhattan to go out?
Janine Harouni:
My parents thought Manhattan was ... Their big fear of me, because I was accepted to a dance school in Manhattan, LaGuardia. That's where Fame was set. I was like, "I have to go, I want to go." My parents were like, "If you go, someone's going to stab you in the back with a needle full of you don't know what." That was their big fear about going into Manhattan.
Janine Harouni:
Then when I was older, I would go all the time. It's a two hour journey each way.
Bruce Dessau:
How do you get there?
Janine Harouni:
There is one train, above ground train, that goes from my stop, which is the last stop, all the way up to the most northern stop. That's about 45 minutes. Then there's a half an hour ferry that you take.
Bruce Dessau:
Oh, you do have to get the ferry? That's what I thought.
Janine Harouni:
Yeah, everyone has to take the ferry. Yeah. Which is funny, because so many tourists come and take the ferry. Usually you can get really beautiful pictures of the Statue of Liberty and stuff. So you'll see all these people really excited and smiling, and then you'll see all these people who are just commuting to work and they're like ridiculous.
Bruce Dessau:
Does the ferry go around the Statue of Liberty?
Janine Harouni:
No, no. It just goes past it, yeah.
Bruce Dessau:
It's not like the tourist-
Janine Harouni:
But the people take it because it's free. Whereas the ones that go around are tourist ones, yeah. So yeah, it's a little slow, above ground train, then the ferry, and then you're in downtown Manhattan.
Bruce Dessau:
What would the London equivalent of Tottenville be then?
Janine Harouni:
Essex.
Bruce Dessau:
It's kind of the real suburbs?
Janine Harouni:
Yeah, yeah. I'd say it's Essex. It's also culturally similar in that the girls are fake tan ... Actually, they're probably real tans. They're all in tanning beds, because they're Italian, they can get tan. Fake nails, extensions, that kind of thing.
Bruce Dessau:
It's got that kind of a-
Janine Harouni:
Yes, yeah. It's very like Jersey Shore, if you ever saw that show.
Bruce Dessau:
Yes. Yeah, I am familiar with it, yeah.
Bruce Dessau:
Have you got any ambitions to do straight acting? Like, I saw you did 1984, and you were in the film Collette.
Janine Harouni:
Oh, yeah.
Bruce Dessau:
Would I spot you?
Janine Harouni:
Blink and you miss me. Yeah, yeah.
Bruce Dessau:
I thought that, but-
Janine Harouni:
I've got two scenes, but yeah.
Bruce Dessau:
Yeah. But you do go up for stuff, and-
Janine Harouni:
I do, yeah. At the minute, I'm focusing mostly on comedy. It's just difficult to be an actress. I don't know how people do it. So much of it is what you look like and how much you weigh and how young you are. Whereas comedy is, funny's funny.
Bruce Dessau:
Have you found that pressure in acting? That sort of-
Janine Harouni:
Oh, yeah. Definitely. Yeah, absolutely.
Bruce Dessau:
But people have said you didn't get the job because you weren't tall enough or weren't slim enough?
Janine Harouni:
It's more insidious than that. I don't think it's as explicit as someone looking you in the eye and telling you.
Bruce Dessau:
Yeah. Where with comedy, it's like you're allowed ... If someone's funny, it's-
Janine Harouni:
I think so, yeah. I'm sure there's other things at play as well that maybe I'm not aware of as acutely.
Bruce Dessau:
Were you a funny child?
Janine Harouni:
I was a very serious child. If I ever drew outside the lines, I'd crumble it up and throw it away. I really was a perfectionist from a young age. I think ballet really fit into that, because ballet has to be so perfect. Then I think puberty happened, and I just felt so awkward. I'm Lebanese, so I got very hairy very quickly. I think as a result, I just started cracking jokes, I guess. Yeah.
Bruce Dessau:
Did you say you wanted to go ... You didn't go to the place in Fame, LaGuardia.
Janine Harouni:
No, no.
Bruce Dessau:
But you wanted to.
Janine Harouni:
I went to an all girls Catholic high school.
Janine Harouni:
I didn't even know that straight plays existed. I thought everything was musical theatre. So I thought I could be a dancer in musical theater. I could do a bit of acting and singing, but I would be mostly a dancer. Yeah.
Bruce Dessau:
Yeah, all right.
Bruce Dessau:
Yeah, I read somewhere that ... I don't know if it was a big influence on you, but when you saw Bridget Jones, that's kind of how you get your English accent when you have to do an English accent?
Janine Harouni:
Oh, right. Did I say that?
Bruce Dessau:
Yeah, in one of those-
Janine Harouni:
I think I ... Yeah, that's right. Well, she does such a good one. There's so many bad ones out there.
Bruce Dessau:
So you're serious when you say that?
Janine Harouni:
It's not that I studied her, per se. But when you see that, you're like, it is possible for Americans to do a great English accent. We're just not exposed to it as much as-
Bruce Dessau:
Have you ever done parts where you've had to do that-
Janine Harouni:
1984 was entirely ... My first ever acting job was in an English accent.
Bruce Dessau:
Yeah. You had to do it as an English-
Janine Harouni:
It was a straight play, as well. It wasn't even a comedy. You know, you can get away with more in comedy. So, yeah. That was a lot of having friends record all of my lines and just listening to it over and over again with them slowed down and try and get everything single-
Bruce Dessau:
When you go back to Staten Island, do you have a stronger American accent?
Janine Harouni:
When I go back, they're like, "You're the Queen suddenly." They all say I talk so proper now. When I'm here, I feel like I sound like an idiot.
Bruce Dessau:
Well, you sound American. I wouldn't say you sound like an idiot, but-
Janine Harouni:
No, but get a few drinks in me or piss me off and I'm immediately back to Staten Island.
Bruce Dessau:
Without being too stereotypical about nationalities, do you think your family background makes you quite volatile, passionate, I don't know? Quick tempered?
Janine Harouni:
It's funny. I've seen a lot of Arthur Miller plays here, where families are meant to be ... They're talking to each other, and the accents are perfect and the acting is amazing. I'm like, the only thing they're missing is they're not yelling. There's something in New York where you're not angry, but you're still just yelling at each other, and no one takes it personally. So when I moved over here, that was the first thing to go. Because people were like ... I'm like, "This is just my way of showing affection. I'm just letting you know I care." Yeah, no.
Bruce Dessau:
So you have to behave yourself more; be a bit more European. English restraint, they call that, don't they?
Janine Harouni:
Yes, yes, yes. Yeah.
Bruce Dessau:
Critics have said ... I don't know if I said it or someone else said it, compared Muriel to Smack the Pony. Had you even heard of Smack the Pony at the time?
Janine Harouni:
Oh, we love Smack the Pony. Yeah. That's the highest compliment we could get.
Bruce Dessau:
How did you know it? How did you know Smack the Pony?
Janine Harouni:
From moving over here. The other two girls obviously knew them from childhood. But I was exposed to it when I first moved over.
Bruce Dessau:
What nationality ... They're both English?
Janine Harouni:
One is English and one is Irish.
Bruce Dessau:
Right, right. That's the thing. I said when I saw you, you just seem to have a good combination because you all brought different things to the group. It all seemed to be good chemistry. We've never lived together. It wasn't a sketch group that you all lived 24 hours.
Janine Harouni:
I could not imagine. Do sketch groups do that?
Bruce Dessau:
I think sometimes. Maybe it's more a college thing rather than the-
Janine Harouni:
We all came from drama school together, so we knew each other really, really well. We knew what we could each do as performers and as writers and creators, from way before we even started collaborating.
Bruce Dessau:
Do you think it's more healthy that you all have lives outside? You're not-
Janine Harouni:
My therapist is always like ... I'm American, you knew I had a therapist just from that, didn't you? No, but she's always like, "You've got to separate work from play." I'm a bit of a workaholic, so yeah.
Janine Harouni:
The main thing I would say about the show is that I want it to help unite ... It's not going to be ... I just want it to help unite families, at least. People who feel really torn or disconnected from someone in their family who votes differently on either side. You know?
Bruce Dessau:
So you think your father's going to vote Democrat in the next election?
Janine Harouni:
They won't unite that much.
Bruce Dessau:
But it's that thing. You can't change ... Do you feel you can't change him?
Janine Harouni:
I can't change him, but I also sleep well at night knowing that we are, as a society, always marching towards tolerance and love and acceptance. Yes, there have been fall-
Bruce Dessau:
Well, I thought that, until Trump was elected.
Janine Harouni:
But that's the thing is, is we've always had periods of time where, if you look through history, there's always been periods of time where we've taken two steps forward, one step back. But this is the best it's ever been.
Bruce Dessau:
Well-
Janine Harouni:
It's hard to say that living in it, but in my grandparents' lifetime, they lived through World War II and the Nazis and-
Bruce Dessau:
Civil rights. You've got-
Janine Harouni:
Civil rights, gay rights. I rest assured knowing that we are slowing moving towards-
Bruce Dessau:
Then occasionally they'll make abortion illegal or something-
Janine Harouni:
Oh, my god. That's terrifying, isn't it?
Bruce Dessau:
That's the thing. Also, same thing, like I said, with leave and remain. From our perspective, there's so much anti-Trump feeling. But he could quite likely get reelected.
Janine Harouni:
It's very scary, yeah.
