In the summer of 2023, Lebanese-American Janine Harouni performed a sold-out run at the Edinburgh Fringe with her new show Man’oushe. The show was so well-received that it earned her a nomination for the Fringe’s Best Comedy Show award, building on the Best Newcomer nom she got for her first run in 2019. Harouni should have been ecstatic at the success, and she was. But, she tells me, she was often also miserable. Because Harouni was putting on her high heels and getting on the stage six times a week while eight-and-a-half months pregnant. 

“That was so dumb,” she says, talking over Zoom from her London home last week. “I wouldn’t have done it if I had been pregnant before and knew what it would be like.”

Now the proud mother of a six-month-old son, Harouni is back on the road. She’s performing three shows in India—Mumbai on 15 and 16 March, Bengaluru on 17 March—before heading to the USA in May. Ahead of her debut Indian set at Mumbai’s NCPA, Harouni spoke to DeadAnt about Man’oushe, the differences between US and UK comedy audiences, and processing tragedy through comedy. 

You fell in love with the idea of performing after seeing Annie on Broadway. So did you want to be a dancer when you grew up?

I wanted to do musical theatre. But crucially, I can’t sing. So I did lots of musicals when I was a kid, you know, just sort of amateur dramatic stuff and kids’ camps. And I was always cast as the funny person who, whenever you had to sing, you could kind of joke-sing. So I think it was there that I realised I probably was better off just being a comedian.

You ended up studying drama at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. What prompted the pivot from drama to comedy? 

When I was in high school, I played the comic part in all the plays and this nun—I went to an all girls Catholic school and this old old nun, she must have been 100 years old when I was there—she pulled me aside and said, ‘You are a comedienne’. And then she looked at my friend who’s very beautiful, a very talented singer and dancer who later went on to have a very successful Broadway career, she looked at her and said, ‘You are a leading lady.’ 

And I took that so to heart and I thought, I’m gonna show her I can be a leading lady, I can be a serious actress. I honestly think part of the reason that I didn’t just become a comedian when I graduated high school was because I wanted to prove that I could be an actress. And then when I became an actress in London, I did a play on the West End, a very serious play. I was so bored. It’s so boring doing plays, there’s no creativity, they tell you what to say, what to wear, where to stand. And it’s the same thing over and over again every night. And I was so bored that two of my friends—whom I had been in drama school with—and I started just writing and filming sketches and putting them online. And I thought oh, I am a comedian, that nun was right.

That was [sketch comedy trio] Muriel, which you took to the Fringe in 2017. Was it difficult to make the jump from sketch comedy to standup, where it’s just you alone with the audience? 

I remember talking to a bunch of standups about it when I first started and saying, ‘This is so lonely’. And they were like, ‘What are you talking about? There’s such a community here. We all have each other.’ And I thought, oh, you don’t know what it’s like to be on stage bombing and look over to your friend who’s like, we’re going to talk about this later, you know. So to be up there on your own, I found that very lonely. But then after a while, I guess when I started doing better at standup, I started to enjoy it a bit more.

Who were some of the comedians you looked at early on in your journey for inspiration? 

Well, I didn’t love standup when I was a teenager. I guess I was very late to start liking standup. Because I’d seen some standup online and in New York, where I’m from. Anytime I’d ever seen stand up comedy it was very aggressive, very male dominated. The comedian comes on stage and is like, I’m the smartest, coolest guy in the room, you know, put[ting] everybody down. That’s such an off-putting thing. 

The first time that I went to a comedy club and thought I enjoyed the comedy was when I got free tickets to see a show. It was a mixed show and the headliner was this guy I’d never heard of called Mike Birbiglia and he came on stage and he was so funny. So self-deprecating, so honest about how he felt awkward in the world, and I just related to it so much. That’s when I first started thinking that maybe there is something in comedy that I would want to do. And weirdly, now, he and I make similar shows, in that they’re both storytelling narrative shows, and not just, you know, straight standup observations about the world around you.

You got into comedy as an American working in the UK. What was it like when you first returned home to perform? And how do these two comedy scenes compare? 

I went back to do standup after I’d already had an Amazon special out. I went to New York, and it was the first time I was doing standup [there], and they don’t care who you are. I was spending six weeks in New York and I had to start back doing three minute spots on essentially open mics. And it is so competitive there. It’s so aggressive. People have their little cliques and they’re kind of mean to you, if you’re not in with them. It was not for me.

I think if I had started doing comedy in New York, I probably wouldn’t have continued. I think someone described it as, if you’re a comic in America, you’re either broke, or you’re super famous and rich. Whereas it seems like there’s a sort of middle class of comedy here in the UK, where you can make a living touring and doing Edinburgh every year, and being on a few panel shows. Whereas that just doesn’t really exist in America. And I think that breeds a sort of scarcity mentality where people are very, you know, competitive with each other, because there’s so little for everyone to have.

How different are the audiences? 

Both times I’ve done a show, I’ve previewed and built the show in the UK. Because I think the UK is a tougher audience. I think there’s a real idea of British comedy, and people take pride in that as their cultural identity. So I think it makes them a bit more discerning. They’re not willing to sort of just laugh at everything. 

It feels a lot like working out with weights on. And then you take the weight vest off when you get to the States and people are just happy to be out, happy to be there. They’re up for it. They’re much more expressive and vocal. And they just laugh more and clap a lot more, which is a nice feeling.

Your debut hour [Stand Up With Janine Harouni (Please Remain Seated)] was nominated for Best Newcomer at the Fringe. And central to that is the story of a horrific accident, and then how your parents nurse you back to health. That’s heavy stuff. Was it scary or difficult to be so personal in your first full hour?

It was so scary, I was terrified. I didn’t want to do it, at all. There were previous versions of the show where I didn’t even describe the accident. I just said I was in a car accident, and my parents helped me. But my director, Adam Brace, who worked at Soho Theatre, was so encouraging of me to tell that story. He really helped me realise that comedy and drama can go hand in hand, and you can do a comedy show that has moments of pathos to it. 

This show now, sadly, he passed away while we were making the show. So he’s a part of the show now. He’s a character in the show, and I talk about what it was like to lose him. And I would not have the ability to do that if I hadn’t learned how to do that from him for my first hour. Because comedians find it so much easier to just make jokes all the time. It’s way harder to stand up in front of people and say something vulnerable. It’s not my natural instinct. But I think it makes the show funnier in the end, when you have that release, you know?

You’ve dedicated the show to Adam Brace, and your son’s middle name too. How important was that professional relationship for your life and career? 

He was just the best. There’s a lot of people in this industry who are waiting for you at the top, they’re just waiting for you to build something big enough to reach them, like a following or a big enough tour, a big enough part in a TV show. And Adam was waiting for people at the bottom. He had shows that went on to have successful Broadway and West End runs, he’s done three HBO specials. And yet every year he would reset and start again with new comedians who only had about five minutes of material. 

He just was this all-encompassing human being who was just a teacher through and through. To have someone like that hold your hand through writing your first hour, it was just invaluable. He was not only amazing at the work that he did, he was amazing at just just being a good friend, you know. This industry, you get knocked so many times, and he was there for whatever emotional support I needed as well. I hope the show does him justice. 

Google tells me Man’oushe is the name of a Lebanese street food. What’s the idea behind that name for the show? 

Well, I don’t want to give too much away because it is part of the show. There’s a bit of a reveal on the show. But I will say that it’s my family’s nickname for me. And the show talks a little bit about identity. So it ties in that way, the meanings of names.

The show’s blurb mentions DNA tests, your Arab ancestry and pregnancy. So what can audiences expect from the show?

It’s a narrative standup show that talks about the year or so it took us to decide to have a baby and to get pregnant. I had a pregnancy loss along the way, so I talked about that. And then to eventually have our son. And it talks a lot about the sacrifices that parents make with their careers when they have kids, specifically with becoming a mom. 

And I reflect my decision to have kids with my grandmother’s decision to have kids. My grandmother was a classical Arabic singer. She sang with a very famous singer called Fairouz. So I talked about the sacrifices my grandmother made in her career when she had her children. I don’t want to say too much, but we did a DNA and ancestry test and we got some very weird results back that painted an entirely different picture of my grandmother. So the show talks about that as well.

Miscarriage is one of those things that people just don’t talk about, it’s still a taboo topic. I think a lot of times people just don’t know how to talk about it. So how did you approach that taboo on the show, where you address your very recent miscarriage? 

The first time that I ever said it on stage, I pressed the microphone so hard into my own chin that when I came off stage, I was bleeding a little. I don’t even fully know why it is such a shameful topic. But it’s something that you feel like you shouldn’t talk about. And that’s what made me want to talk about it. And especially talk about in the context of comedy, because comedy can be so cathartic. 

So yeah, the show talks about how a miscarriage is a death that you mourn in secret. And only after I had one and decided in my own life to start talking about it did I realise just how many people around me had also been through the same thing. It made me feel better knowing I wasn’t alone. 

I mean, everybody knows the statistic. It’s one in four. But that doesn’t mean anything unless you’re actually talking to people about what happened with them and what happened with you. Because when someone you love dies, there’s a funeral. Your family fly in from out of town, there’s a mourning process, you bury them, you know. But when you have a miscarriage, you don’t name the baby. There’s no burial. Your parents don’t come in to help comfort you. You’re alone. And it didn’t feel like nothing to me. It felt like a death. And I wanted to talk about it on stage.

And you became pregnant again quite soon after that. Did that give you emotional whiplash? 

Oh my God, my poor husband! Yeah, God, the hormones were raging. By the time my son was born, I’d been pregnant for the gestational period of a blue whale. It was pretty intense.

You ended up performing Man’oushe at the Edinburgh Fringe while eight-and-a-half months pregnant. Would you recommend anyone else try that? 

That was dumb. I wouldn’t have done it if I had been pregnant before and knew what it would be like. I’d come offstage and I’d instantly go from being happy to having false labour. So I’d be having contractions—you know, they’re called Braxton Hicks—but you feel like you’re having a baby. I also had gestational diabetes, that’s diabetes you get while you’re pregnant, so I couldn’t eat anything at the fringe. Because everything there is just bread and sugar and fried. So I couldn’t drink, I couldn’t eat any of the food. I was too tired to do anything. My feet were so swollen. I was wearing crocs everywhere, which I’m still wearing, I highly recommend them. They’re the best shoes. 

Worse than that, my poor husband just had to listen to me complain nonstop for the entire month. He’d taken time off work to come up and help me so he was a real saint during that period of time. But I would never do it again. And I would not recommend anyone do it. Especially because Edinburgh is such a hilly city that I couldn’t even walk around. I’d get up a hill with help. And then on the way down, I was about to fall over. Because I had this huge belly. I looked like Danny DeVito’s penguin. Like skinny legs and this big belly.

Did you get much maternity leave after your son was born? 

No, I was back on tour in three months. My son’s come on tour with me as well. We did a few tour dates. He was going to come to India, but our friends talked us out of it. But we were on tour together. My husband would open for me and I’d have the baby and put the baby to sleep in the dressing room in his little pop-up bed. And then there’d be an interval, we’d swap over and then I would go onstage do the show. And then we’d come off, pack the baby in the car and sleep in a hotel. That’s what I thought was a good idea. That also was a bad idea.

This is your first time in India. What expectations do you have from the tour? 

Yeah, I’m so excited. Every comic I’ve talked to has told me that the audiences in India are fantastic. So I hope they don’t let me down. Because my expectations are sky high.