Maz Jobrani Biography

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Maz Jobrani is best known as a founding member of the Axis of Evil Comedy Tour, which featured some of the top Middle Eastern American comics in the world. The Axis of Evil Comedy Tour special premiered in 2007 as the first show on American television with an all Middle Eastern American cast. The DVD was also released in 2007. The tour started in the United States and later went to the Middle East in the fall of 2007, selling out 27 shows in Dubai, Beirut, Cairo, Kuwait, and Amman, where they performed in front of the King and Queen of Jordan. Jobrani followed up his Axis of Evil Comedy Tour with his own solo tour titled Maz Jobrani: Brown & Friendly Tour, which again took him all over the world, including the United States, Canada, Europe, the Middle East, and Australia. The Maz Jobrani: Brown & Friendly comedy special premiered on Showtime in the fall of 2009 and is now out on DVD at www.MazJobrani.com, iTunes, and Amazon.com. Jobrani is currently on his second solo tour titled Browner and Friendlier.

In movies, Jobrani starred in the role of Moly in Ice Cube’s Friday After Next. He also played Secret Service agent Mo in the Sydney Pollack thriller The Interpreter, opposite Sean Penn and Nicole Kidman as well as Jennifer Garner’s colleague, Glenn, in 13 Going on 30. In television, he most recently guest starred on Fox’s Traffic Light and NBC’s Perfect Couples. In 2010, he shot a pilot directed by Barry Sonnenfeld for ABC titled Funny in Farsi and recurred on ABC’s Better off Ted. He has been a regular on ABC’s The Knights of Prosperity as well as Fox’s Life on a Stick. He has also guest starred on Curb Your Enthusiasm, The West Wing, 24, NYPD Blue, ER, and much more.

In 2008, Jobrani sold a television show to CBS based on his life as an Iranian American in the United States. The show was best described as a Middle Eastern Everybody Loves Raymond. He is also preparing to shoot a film titled Jimmy Vestvood: An Amerikan Hero, a cross between a Middle Eastern Pink Panther and Bend It like Beckham.

Jobrani has done stand up on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, Lopez Tonight, The Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn, Comedy Central’s Premium Blend, and England’s Paramount Comedy 2 Network. He is also a recurring panelist on NPR’s Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me!, and has his own podcast with two other comedians called Minivan Men. His sketch comedy performances at the ACME Comedy Theatre in Los Angeles were hailed as “devilishly funny” and “extraordinary” by LA Weekly.

Jobrani was raised in the San Francisco Bay area, where he caught the acting bug after portraying the lead in his eighth grade production of Li’l Abner. He studied theatre throughout high school, and then went on to earn a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Italian at the University of California, Berkeley. In the fall of 1994, while beginning a PhD program in political science at the University of California, Los Angeles, he visited the university’s prestigious theatre programs and was immediately hooked back on acting. This led to him dropping out of the PhD program to pursue his childhood passion.