‘Ramy’ Editor Joanna Naugle on How She Used Silence To Heighten The Second Season

Speaking with Awards Daily’s Jalal, Ramy editor Joanna Naugle details what it was like taking the tone of the Golden Globe-winning series in a heightened direction for its second season as well as what it was like working with creator/star Youssef, particularly during a pandemic. 

In a lot of ways Ramy is an internal show, one that follows its titular character as he struggles with the intersection between morality and religion. Ensuring that the audience is able to follow along Ramy’s spiritual search to become a better person is where editor Joanna Naugle comes in. For Joanna, it was all about never forgetting that at the end of the day, Ramy is a comedy, and she fully embraces that strange and sometimes intense grey area where these two elements of the show intertwine.

Speaking with Awards Daily, Joanna Naugle detailed how she was able to utilize her skills and experience as an editor. It all begins with her working relationship with Ramy Youssef himself, a dynamic the two have been cultivating throughout two seasons and an HBO special. This year, that dynamic went in an unexpected direction in the second season when COVID-19 shutdown production. With months until the premiere, Naugle and Youssef had to finish the series remotely and as they liked to joke, it became a show they made through iMessage.

Awards Daily: You have worked with Ramy Youssef on multiple projects now. How did you two begin working together and what has it been likely develop that creative partnership?

Joanna Naugle: I am so grateful that our paths crossed. Basically, he was cutting the pilot for Ramy before it was even greenlit for a full series over at Senior Post. I was actually working on a different A24 project at the time (2 Dope Queens) and we were just working in the same space and hit it off. I had helped him with a couple of small things so when the series was greenlit he invited me on as an editor and that’s when we got to know each other better.

We have a similar story of our upbringing. I’m also from New Jersey. I come from a religious family and although it was Christian I related to a lot of the show’s themes about the intersection of morality and religion and how things that seem black and white are actually very gray.

After the first season we had like a two month break and then jumped into Feelings (Youssef’s HBO Special). We were cutting Feelings right as the first season came out and it was exciting to be able to experience that together. I came back on for the second season working on more episodes and acting as a supervising editor for the others.

AD: Heading into the second season what kind of conversations did you have with Ramy to set up the tone and what were your goals?

JN: The thing that I loved about the first season that Ramy the character kept coming back to was that he was always trying to do the right thing but he ever quite got it right. With the second season that was doubled or even tripled; he is so well-intentioned and that’s what makes him so likable but he ends up making very bad decisions and somehow we keep rooting for him.

In the second season having this figure of the Sheikh, played by Mahershala Ali who is so charismatic and compelling, you really see Ramy intending to better his life and follow a moral path. It works for a while but without giving any spoilers away he messes it all up at the end again.

AD: Right off the bat the second season felt a lot more intense from the scene with the gun to the violent episode at the Mosque. I’m curious what you felt that change in tone added to the season and was it challenging at all to pull off from an editing perspective?

JN: I remember when I read the script for the first time this season thinking “Oh wow we have a gun. This is crazy!” So from that first reading I knew we were heightening everything. I think the most challenging thing that I actually really love is reminding myself that at the end of the day Ramy is a comedy but I shouldn’t be afraid to let those larger moments really land and let the audience sit in them.

One of the first episodes I cut in the first season was “Strawberries” [The flashback episode to 9/11]. It almost plays as a horror film for half of the time so it’s like walking a fine line between landing this ridiculous joke and also dealing with heavy issues of morality and responsibility. In the second season we tried to emphasize the serious moments and the funnier moments because I think the show really shines when one moment you are so stressed and then thirty seconds later you’re laughing.

AD: Speaking of Ramy’s struggle with morality and religion I wanted to know what your experience was like cutting those moments? Those are incredibly internal private moments for a character and often times the script doesn’t provide a clear or obvious moment to cut.

JN: I think of Mahershala Ali as a quiet, reserved actor with so much strength and power behind his performance. He really chooses his words carefully so we really wanted to make sure that every line he had came with that sense of power and that the audience understood why Ramy was so enamored with him. As an editor one of the best tools we have is silence and choosing when to have those moments.

One of the best parts about working with Ramy as an actor and showrunner is that he knows exactly what he is looking for so when we are choosing takes he takes great care in finding the right moments to convey what his character was going through internally.

AD: The Hassan family is a bilingual family speaking Arabic and English and some of them are even trilingual also speaking French. Does that natural flow between languages create any challenges for you as an editor?

JN: Definitely, It adds another layer to the process. I by no means speak Arabic but I feel like I’ve listened to it enough now to understand when a phrase ends or when they’re repeating something in multiple takes. I have to give the biggest shout out to our assistant editor Salah Anwar because he is fluent in Arabic and any time I needed to know what they were saying he was there to help. A lot of the time the script would be able to cue me in but there were so many wonderful moments of improv and adding an extra joke Anwar was able to help.

At the end of the day the performance should come through regardless of understanding the dialogue but with comedy you want to make sure the joke lands. He was a great gut check. If Salah liked it I knew it would work with audiences.

AD: Some of my favorite episodes of either season are the stand-alone episodes Ramy dedicates to the rest of the family, especially his mom and sister. Their POV are so different and often times it gives the show a completely different tone. Did you approach those episodes differently than the rest of the series?

JN: I think the tone does feel slightly different than the rest of the season and that is definitely deliberate. I remember in an early cut of the Maysa episode “They” there is more of a presence of Ramy and the rest of the family thinking it would be great to see them in the background. Ramy felt like we didn’t need to see him in the background at all and wanted all of the focus on Hiam Abbass as Maysa. That episode also felt goofier in the script with the flashbacks, cooking elaborate food for the people in her Lyft – so I was trying to play up the humor in that so at the end when she is having this intense conversation with Sophia at the bar it would feel more true to the rest of the season. It was really fun to be able to cut with a lighter feeling and then have it take a serious tone at the end.

AD: Looking back at the second season do you have a favorite scene or sequence?

JN: The first scene between Ramy and Mahershala was just a delight. I remember watching the dailies and not being able to look away. It sets the whole season into motion and I really loved cutting that and finding the balance between introducing this character who was going to be so important to the season and making sure we get his personality and allure right away while also allowing Ramy to have these funny moments.

There is a twenty minute version of that scene and an eight minute version of that scene and I think we landed with about twelve minutes. We really didn’t want to lose the funny asides from Ramy but we also needed to show that was in a lost place at that time and needed to believe he was going to dive in head first into this relationship with the Sheikh and believe everything that comes after it. Like you said the second season is way more heightened with higher highs and lowers lows and we needed to make sure the audience bought that.

AD: Were there any other challenges unique to the second season?

JN: Besides that, I think deciding where we wanted to insert Amani, Ramy’s cousin, into the season was something that we spent a lot of time experimenting with. There’s a flashback that happens later on that was originally supposed to be in the first episode, but we ended up shifting through every episode until it finally found its home in the finale. It felt so right and we wanted to make sure she was a presence in the back of his head the whole time without making her the focus. Obviously she was where we left the first season so we wanted to progress but also understand how that experience impacted him.

AD: I heard that the pandemic impacted your work as you were completing the season. What was that like?

JN: One major challenge was the pandemic and trying to figure out how to work remotely. Ramy and I got into a really great rhythm of me cutting things, I would send them over quickly, he would respond back, and we were texting constantly. Halfway through one of our longest days he texted me like “we’re making a show on iMessage. This is insane.” Especially with comedy when we are trying to see what will land and being in the room is so helpful with that. We were getting down to the nitty gritty.

AD: I would have never guessed that a lot of the work was done from home. How much of the season was done remotely?

JN: We had spent a lot of time together doing about half the season. I would say the first five episodes we spent in the room together. Then the second half of the season was almost completely remotely. I had the added benefit of working with him on the first season and with Feeling so we already had this shorthand to work off of. If we didn’t have that it would be basically impossible. He was in LA and I was in Brooklyn and we had to figure it out. Overall, it was a fun challenge and I think, hopefully, it turned out pretty good!

The second season of ‘Ramy’ is available to stream on Hulu