‘What the hell have I done?’: The crisis that inspired Nazeem Hussain’s new comedy

Nazeem Hussain is nervous – and not just because there’s a random white lady standing in what’s usually the men’s section of the prayer hall inside the Albanian Mosque in Melbourne’s inner north. “Oh no, a journalist in the mosque!” he jokes when I meet him during the filming of his new ABC series Separated at Birth. “You’re going to scare all the readers.”

“We’re used to journalists coming in undercover,” he tells me later, laughing. “So the fact that you advertised that you were a journalist is brave.”

In truth, the comedian is nervous because he’s not used to being earnest. And though his new show – and his first time writing a full, scripted narrative series – is a comedy, it’s also a sincere exploration of new parenthood, “dysfunctional” families and the broader community that supports them.

“I’ve been outside my comfort zone since day one on this,” he says of the story, which is based on his life.

“In stand-up and sketch comedy, like Legally Brown and Orange is in New Brown … everything ends in a joke. You’re only sitting in an awkward moment with the intention of breaking it and popping that bubble. But here, there’s no tension to break. You just sit in the sad or the happy [moment].

“This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done: telling a story that is worth telling and worth listening to and investing in.”

That didn’t stop him from breaking the tension on set. As we watch director Nina Buxton (Heartbreak High, Dog Park) diligently set up a scene without him, Hussain mischievously whispers about messing with the “serious actors” where he can. In one scene, where his character shares a picture of his new baby on a phone, he’s been subbing out the image to throw off his co-stars.

“Every take, it would be someone else: Jeffrey Epstein, Bill Cosby, possibly Donald Trump,” Hussain says. “When you see their faces [in the finished series] looking down at that phone – before it cuts away to a sweet baby – just know that they’re looking at Jeffrey Epstein.”

That’s the kind of provocation Hussain is known for. This is the comedian who cut his teeth confronting white Australians on the street for Salam Cafe and Legally Brown. Dressed as Uncle Sam (full name Sameer Iqbal Muhammad Salahhudeen), a caricature of perceived Muslim extremism, Hussain gleefully proposed “making Australia an Islamic state” and told angry bogans to “get out of my country” because they couldn’t pass John Howard’s English language tests for new migrants. Here, Hussain plays a different Sameer: a wayward new dad who is (rightfully) dumped by his wife in the birthing suite after the arrival of their first child. It’s a character that hews much closer to his experiences.

“The idea for this show came from becoming a dad and having this massive identity shift,” he says. “I had a bit of an existential crisis in the birthing suite, holding my [first] kid. I was overcome with all these big emotions and this feeling of responsibility. I was looking at him, thinking, ‘I’m gonna love you, I’m gonna care for you, I’m gonna teach you everything, I’m gonna provide for you … Wait, I have to provide with money I earn from jokes... What the hell have I done with my life? How did I get here? I’ve got to be funny for the next 18 years, minimum.’

“The birth of a child can really test relationships, and it brings to the surface issues that might be dormant … I remember thinking, ‘Oh no, am I going to end up like my own dad who abandoned me? Like, is that in my wiring?’”

Hussain’s eldest son was born in 2018 and the comedian separated from his wife that same year, leaving him to reckon with the prospect of single fatherhood. A year or two later and he was workshopping this TV show (he has since remarried and had three more children). It’s a process that made him reflect on his own flaws and broader family history. “This could have easily been a men’s rights activist series [if written another way],” he says, laughing.

Hussain and his two sisters were raised by their mum after his father returned to Sri Lanka when he was a child. Though the pair were in contact later in life, his father passed away from COVID-19 in 2021 – and that relationship clearly influenced the content of Separated at Birth. The theme of generational trauma looms larger than you might imagine for a half-hour comedy that co-stars Urzila Carlson and has cameos from his other comedy mates including Luke McGregor and Ryan Shelton.

“The way men have received love from their parents and their dad specifically – or how they haven’t – informs how we struggle to do that ourselves,” Hussain says of Sameer but also men more broadly. “We’re trying to figure it out as we go.

“I’ve also found that men often feel their bond with their child is secondary to a mum’s love. It is as a Muslim. We’re taught that the Prophet said, ‘You must love your mother, then your mother, then your mother, and then your father’ … The story of Sameer isn’t that ‘bumbling dad’ thing where he doesn’t know how to change diapers; it’s more of an emotional journey about identifying as a parent and carrying that responsibility properly.”

Sameer is an extreme example of that: a paramedic who we meet while ghosting his wife’s calls for three hours during active labour. (Hussain recalls someone saying this makes the character “c--tish” and he doesn’t disagree, though he’s hoping for some redemption in the back half). But the series also offers meaningful exploration of parental responsibility through its female characters.

Sameer’s ex Aaleyah (Sana’a Shaik) is going on her own journey as a resourceful but overburdened first-time mum. His mother, Husna (Nadee Kammallaweera), who raised Sameer on her own, is trying to guide her son through the crisis while finding a way to help raise her grandson. Aaleyah’s loving but wildly judgmental mum, Sadiah (Leah Vandenberg), who has a longstanding feud with Husna, is also struggling to find her place. And that’s without getting into Carlson’s character, a fiercely independent single woman who is ready to throw blows when Sameer recruits help from their local Dandenong mosque to help renovate her dilapidated new house.

“My family was me, my sisters and my mum, but our extended family was really the Muslim community,” says Hussain, who grew up in Melbourne. And since the inception of the show, he’s felt a responsibility to “maintain authorship” and “depict the community well”.

That includes everything from an initial reluctance to swear or crack jokes about Al Qaeda outside a Carlton mosque (they’re cool with it, he says, “they’re not expecting me to be a sheikh”) to accurately representing elements of Australian-Muslim life.

“I’ve worked on productions before where there are people who have no experience with the world that you’re trying to paint on screen, so then you’re not just the writer or actor, you’re also the set designer, the wardrobe assistant – you’ve got to be across everything.”

Thankfully,that wasn’t the case here. The show canvassed detail and knowledge not just from its cultural consultant, but also the diverse cast and crew – some of whom were young industry professionals taken in as part of a Screen Australia/Vic Screen attachment program. Emerging cinematographer Shaki Prasanna, for instance, ended up filming reference and stock footage for the final episode when he happened to be on holiday to Sri Lanka.

“We had people who hadn’t done these roles before because they’d never been given the opportunity,” Hussain says. “[Princess Pictures] made it a point to hire that way so that we actually got fresh blood – and the industry could change as a result of this show.”

It’s not exactly fresh blood, but Hussain is also proud of another behind-the-scenes detail: the adhan (call to prayer) in the mosque scenes is performed by Yusuf Islam (aka Cat Stevens).

How did that happen? “Muslim community stuff,” he says in disbelief. His mum held the famous singer-songwriter in a “hostage situation” calling Hussain on FaceTime after bumping into him at a function.

“He said yes without really even knowing what the show was about,” Hussain says, laughing. “I hope we’ve done him proud.”

That story won’t surprise anyone who knows Hussain’s mother from his stand-up. This is the same woman storied to have hauled then-premier Jeff Kennett into her kids’ school principal’s office to put a stop to racist bullying.

“Single mums have a resilience about them,” Hussain says. “I could always identify children of single mums or parents because there’s a particular way they viewed life. They had a little more gratitude. They don’t sweat the small stuff as much. Everyone’s carrying a little bit more responsibility on their shoulders.

“I feel like [my kids] have missed out on a lot of that because they’ve got comfort,” he says, laughing. “I hope they don’t end up doing what I do … resolving their trauma via the arts. I hope they get their validation from their dad.”

Separated at Birth premieres at 8.30pm, November 11 on the ABC and ABC iview.

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