Baz has found one way to kill his mammy’s enthusiasm!
HE’S already tried out 50 ways to kill her, but it’s his new sitcom that Baz Ashmawy’s mammy finds ‘too rude’.
Although best known as a TV presenter, Baz, 48, has turned his hand to writing and acting in his new sitcom Faithless – airing on Virgin Media later this month.
He hit the big times with the Emmy-winning 50 Ways To Kill Your Mammy, but Baz revealed that his mum Nancy finds his new venture ‘a bit strong’.
Faithless centres on Sam, played by Baz, who is left to bring up his three girls alone when his wife dies .
But it’s not an easy job, especially with teenagers, and Sam finds himself dealing with tricky subjects such as porn and vaping.
Baz says mum Nancy, 81, found the humour a bit near the knuckle.
‘Parts of it are strong but I suppose there is a tone to it,’ he said at the show’s launch in Dublin’s Light House Cinema yesterday.
‘My mother is not the biggest fan of it. She lit a candle for me, is what she did.
‘But she’s a fan and she supports me in anything I do. She makes a cameo in one of the episodes but it probably isn’t her cup of tea. I just wanted to do something that I thought was edgy or was funny, whether or not someone finds it offensive or not. Maybe some people might, but I just made it the way I thought was funny.’
In Faithless, Sam is from a Muslim background, while his wife’s family are Catholic. Baz said the show was something he wanted to write to put a different kind of Irish family on screen.
‘At the core it’s about grief and all these people, how it affects them individually,’ the Libyan-born Dubliner said. ‘But to have some representation, is nice and it’s not a stereotypical Muslim family. It is a mixed family and I suppose that’s where my own experiences come from.’
He joked: ‘My partner is half Serbian and I am half Egyptian – my kids are mongrels. I have a Greek Orthodox mother-in-law, my sister is a Muslim, my mother is Roman Catholic and I live in that world so to me it’s not strange.
‘But maybe other people will think it’s a bit alien.’
The cast of the comedy drama includes Art Campion as Sam’s feckless brother-in-law, Eleanor Methven as his mother-inlaw, Amir El-Masry as his half-brother and Raad Rawi as his dad.
Baz enthused: ‘The cast we have are just brilliant, they are heavyweights.’
Baz started out in showbiz as an actor and admits he is nervous about people finally seeing the new show because it’s the first comedy drama he has written.
‘I think any time you put anything out, you are putting yourself on the line – maybe it’s c**p and people don’t like it,’ he said.
‘That’s always the fear, but I suppose I’m at an age now where I don’t really stop myself from doing things because I am worried about what other people think. If I am doing it and it’s making me laugh or it’s making me feel something, then I go with my gut.
‘But I suppose that’s one of the only advantages of getting old – you start to back yourself a little bit more than maybe you did as a younger person.’ Television viewers can watch Faithless on Virgin Media One and Virgin Media Player from February 26.