Q&A: Dave Merheje opens up on his (non)textbook case, finding his voice, Lebanese community support and being ‘as honest as I can’ with an audience
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Dave Merheje: My Dear Anxiety
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Where: Rio Theatre, 1660 E. Broadway, Vancouver.
Tickets: $29.50 at jflvancouver.com
Canadian comic Dave Merheje is on his fourth comedy special, I Love You Habibi. His second — Good Friend Bad Grammar — won the 2019 Juno Award for comedy album of the year.
A regular at the Just for Laughs Festival in Montréal, he has also made multiple appearances at JFL Toronto, the Winnipeg Comedy Festival, the Halifax Comedy Festival and the Melbourne International Comedy Festival in Australia. Merheje was a regular on CBC’s Mr. D and currently co-stars in the comedy series Ramy on Hulu and Crave.
We talked to the Windsor, Ont.-born, L.A.-based 43-year-old comic about his upcoming appearance at Just for Laughs Vancouver.
Q: Where did the title of the new show come from? Do you have textbook anxiety disorder?
A: I don’t know if I’m a textbook case, but it’s something that runs in my family. Over the last four or five years I started to see a therapist and dive into it and try to fix myself and better myself whenever I can. Some of the material started to revolve around that and I wanted to do something about it. And the title is kind of a play off an album title by The Weeknd, My Dear Melancholy.
Q: Do you do you think that, when you first started doing comedy, that it was a way of dealing with your anxiety?
A: I don’t think I was self-aware about it. At that point I was just trying to find my voice. I was probably burying it. I knew I had something and that I battled with things, but I didn’t know how to express it through stand-up just yet.
Q: Do you remember either the first joke you wrote or the first joke that made you think, I might have something here?
A: The first jokes are probably just like very amateur. I remember just being in the schoolyard with my best friend at the time and playing basketball with his older brother and my cousin and I was always trying to make them laugh or trying to make my boy laugh.
Q: Is Lebanese culture or your parents supportive of going into show business in general or comedy, or did you have to fight back against that a little bit?
A: I’m very lucky and blessed that my Middle Eastern family is super supportive. A lot of friends of mine tell me that it’s not as easy for them. But if I’m in Windsor doing a show, my whole family is there. When I started out and told my mom I wanted to do stand-up, she was like, “I support it and you can do it, just get a college education.” Which I did for her.
Q: The new show touches on your first trip to Lebanon last year. What were some of the expectations you had before going?
A: I didn’t really know what to expect. My friend Nataly Aukar, a very funny comic who’s originally from Lebanon and lives in New York, would tell me about her experiences, and I had Lebanese friends who’d gone and would tell me what their experience was. So I kind of had a grasp of certain things. What I didn’t expect — well, I just loved how much the people love each other and how there was so much passion. There’s a lot of stuff that’s wrong there with the government, but how they pulled together as people I found was very beautiful.
Q: What do you want to tell readers about your upcoming JFL show in Vancouver?
A: I’m going to be fully transparent, as honest as I can, with the audience. It’s going to be a great time. I know people say that, but I’m going to perform the s*** out of it. Anytime you come to a show, I’m going to give it every inch. I’m going to work my ass off for the crowd so that they walk away not being like, “Oh, that was a cool show.” I want them to walk away and be like, “Wow, that was some wild s*** we saw.”
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