Pax Assadi Only Feels Like a New Zealander 90 Percent of the Time

In Early Works , we talk to artists young and old about the jobs and life experiences that led them to their current moment. Today, it’s New Zealand comedian Pax Assadi, who’s just released his first stand-up special Live at Q Theatre.

My parents have a very classic refugee story. My dad’s from Iran and my mum’s from Pakistan. The reason my dad escaped Iran is because of the persecution of the Baha’is. Especially back then, that was the peak of the Islamic Revolution where your life was at stake as a Baha’i. So he left Iran, went to Pakistan and met my mother, then they both came to New Zealand together. My dad had $200 in his pocket and then worked his way up. He worked three jobs at one point and changed his name so he could get employed.

I was born a year after they got here. I grew up on the North Shore in Glenfield, which is seen as the place you go to if you’ve made it, especially for immigrants. It’s a kind of social statement saying, we came to this country and we clocked it. The Shore’s expensive to live in, but Glenfield is kind of the hood. So lots of immigrants go there because it’s affordable, but you can still say you live on the North Shore. It’s like this little pocket of diversity in this predominantly white area.

I specifically remember telling my parents I wanted to be a helicopter pilot when I was in primary school. Near the end of primary school, I wanted to be a basketball player. That’s what I thought I was going to be right up until I was 15 or 16. I’ve been a Utah Jazz fan since I was a kid and I really related to John Stockton. He was small, kind of the underdog, no one really believed in him, but then he figured out a way to be amazing.

When 9/11 happened, all of a sudden, I literally became a bad guy.

When 9/11 happened, all of a sudden, I literally became a bad guy. I was 11 and at intermediate school. As a little kid, I was kind of confused as to why, but after a while I figured it out. I realised that there is a narrative in the media that is turning me into a certain stereotype that never really existed before 9/11. Al Qaeda and all that stuff existed, but 9/11 put it into people’s consciousness and placed that label onto me as a young kid. That’s when I turned into a “terrorist” in everyone else’s eyes.

Before that, I would get called Apu from The Simpsons. I remember as a child, six or seven years old, and one of the kids was trying to make fun of me like, ew, why do you smell like curry? I just literally went, because I ate curry this morning. That was stuff that never really phased me. It was when it turned into terrorism that it hurt because it was associating me with a group of people where their intention was to damage society to make a point. Not even Middle Easterners, just brown people in general were getting labelled with it. A Bangladeshi kid in my class was getting called a terrorist as well. I was like, he did nothing.

I say that I feel like a New Zealander 90 percent of the time and an outsider 10 percent of the time because in my stand-up I don’t want to attack people for what has happened to me. I don’t want to tell the audience and the people watching my special that they’re to blame. If I say that I felt like I’m not part of this country and I’m not part of New Zealand, I would be lying because there would always be times when I love the fact that I’m here. When I think about it, the times when I’ve felt like an outsider have definitely been the minority. But I’m not going to pretend that I’ve never felt like an outsider. That’s never going to happen.

We moved to Hamilton when I was in high school because of my dad’s business. He owns a vacuum cleaner store and I would sell vacuum cleaners. My dad made me get out on the floor and be a salesman. I didn’t have weekends in high school because almost every weekend I was in the shop. As an adult now, with kids and a job and perspective, I’m really thankful that it happened.

To be honest, it was my first stage. I think I learned how to be funny and be a stand-up in my dad’s store. I had adults walking into the shop and this 14 or 15-year-old kid is like, you want a vacuum? I had to kick it into gear and be funny, because vacuums were all that we do. So you got to sell something. There’s nothing else. When they come in, there’s all these techniques of like they want this vacuum, but you’ve got to upsell them to that vacuum. You need to remember all that shit as a 14-year-old and make them laugh and make them like you, because they’re more likely to buy something. It was horrible shit. It was like, now this vacuum cleaner ‘doesn’t’ suck. But it made older white people laugh.

I went to a pretty white school in Hamilton, so I took what I learned in my dad’s shop and applied it there. I had my core group of brown friends and we all stuck together. We were kind of the cool brown kids that were friends with everyone. After I got over the hurdle of how to not be a punching bag, it was fine.

After I got over the hurdle of how to not be a punching bag, it was fine.

The first comedian that really drew me in was a guy called Omid Djalili. The reason I got pulled in by him is he’s Iranian, like me, so I got really excited by that. He’s also Baha’i. Essentially his story is really similar to mine: his family left Iran and they were a very traditional Persian family, but he did something different and succeeded at it. So I started watching him and really fell in love with his comedy. After Omid, it was Jo Koy, a Filipino-American comedian. I caught his stuff on YouTube and really fell in love with him too. After that, it was all Chappelle. It was Chappelle-mania. Once I discovered Chappelle, it was game over. Every night I would be watching him.

At the age of 18, I told my mum I was going to be a stand-up and that was all I was going to do. My family had moved to Christchurch. My mum was not happy about it and it was tough to tell her. When I think about it, relative to other immigrant parents, my parents have been really supportive of me. They haven’t been happy about it and they’ve sat down with me and been like, are you sure you don’t want to go to medical school? Those conversations have happened, but overall they’ve been like, if this is what you want to do, all we ask is that you try and be the best at it that you can possibly be. As soon as you start slacking off, then we’re going to start badgering you about doing something else.

The reality with a lot of immigrant parents is that they’re very hard-working because they come from a place where opportunity is taken away from them. When you’re a refugee, you leave somewhere because not only is your life at stake, but when it comes to opportunity, the doors are closed for you. So then you go to a country where all the doors are open. Some of them might be a little bit more closed than others because of your race or because of your name or religion or whatever, but there isn’t a door you can’t get into if you do it the right way. My dad grinded and grinded and now my dad’s reasonably wealthy, but that wasn’t given to him. He worked so hard there were periods where I never saw him.

I killed my first stand-up show and then I bombed six times after that. I got pulled right back down to earth. It was a real humbling experience, but constantly being on stage helped me get past it. I see rookie comics get off stage annoyed with themselves that they bombed. I’m like, hey, if you want to be a stand-up comedian—if this is what you want to do—you better be prepared to bomb a lot. You’ve got to get into the mentality that this is just another gig in the pool of thousands of gigs that you’re going to do. Don’t dwell on it, just learn from it and move on.

You’ve got to get into the mentality that this is just another gig in the pool of thousands of gigs that you’re going to do. Don’t dwell on it, just learn from it and move on.

The thing that I love most about comedy is that I have a platform to talk about things that I couldn’t talk about normally. A lot of the things I talk about in my special, I couldn’t just go up to a group of white people and say. Comedy is the best way to bring up these issues. The idea that my dad couldn’t get a job, or I couldn’t get a job because my name is weird. I can only say that stuff when I’m making people laugh because suddenly the wall goes down. They’re enjoying themselves so they’re way more willing to listen to what I have to say.

If you’re an employer, I hope that you go back to your job and you get a stack of applications and you see a really ethnic name. Your initial inclination might be oh, he probably just got to the country and doesn’t know how to speak English very well. But I hope you look at it and think about the comedy you saw three nights ago and go, you know what, I’m going to give him an interview.

Having kids solidifies the idea that I don’t want to sell out at any point. I don’t want to do things that might propel my career in some way, but opposes one of the main reasons why I started doing stand-up in the first place. I’m responsible for their social, mental, spiritual, and physical upbringing and maturation, so it’s naive to think that what I do on stage won’t have an implication on the way they view the world. I want them to grow up and watch Dad’s stand-up and want them to learn something from it as well.

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