This week’s featured American Immigrant is comedian Maziar “Maz” Jobrani. Born in Tehran, Maz Jobrani is perhaps best known for his membership in the “Axis of Evil” comedy group. During a recent interview on NPR, I was impressed with his comedic attempts to ease any animosity that exists between Americans and Iranians. Maz Jobrani also mentioned that as an actor he has attempted to find roles that portray Iranians in a positive light. Sadly comedic, when the producers of “24” learned that he wanted to portray a “good guy” Iranian, they thought they had the perfect character – a terrorist who has a change of heart. Unfortunately, when the character opening questions the need to kill he is quickly killed off by the “bad guy” terrorists. Like I said, sadly comedic.
Lets hope that the TV and movie industry has future “good guy” Iranian characters for Maz to play – perhaps characters who last a bit longer.