Interview | Growing Up Irooni- Payam Banifaz and his journey to not becoming a lawyer
Learn Persian with Chai and Conversation
Chai & Conversation
4.9 • 548 Ratings
🗓️ 1 June 2022
⏱️ 37 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
If you've been anywhere near Instagram in the last couple years, you will have come across Payam (also known as Peter) Banifaz's amazing videos depicting growing up in an Iranian American household with a very Iranian father. The father familiar is extremely relatable to a lot of us who grew up in immigrant households- he talks about where the idea came from and how it's developed over the pandemic period. Also, he talks about his journey from studying to potentially become a lawyer, to breaking it to his family that he was going into acting instead- spoiler alert: the conversation was not easy.
Related Links:
- Payam Banifaz on instagram
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Learn Persian with Chai and Conversation. Growing up Iduni interview with Payam Bani Fas. Salon Baham Beham-Meghi. |
| 0:28.0 | My name is Leila Sham's host of Learn Persian with Chaiang Conversation. |
| 0:32.5 | And today's conversation is with Payam Banifaz. |
| 0:36.3 | Payam is an actor and comedian based in L.A. right now, and he's been in a ton of |
| 0:40.5 | TV shows and movies you've probably seen. Shameless, Silicon Valley, Veep, and most recently, |
| 0:46.8 | everything everywhere at once, which is absolutely fantastic, by the way. But many of you |
| 0:51.8 | listening might know him best for his amazing videos depicting growing up |
| 0:55.2 | in an Iranian-American family with a very Iranian father. He started making these videos in April |
| 1:01.3 | 2020, and they immediately gained traction and have become such an endearing and poignant depiction |
| 1:07.2 | of what it's like to grow up in an immigrant Iranian household. I got to ask Payam about his |
| 1:12.6 | journey to becoming an actor and how he was able to broach this decision with his father. Spoiler alert, |
| 1:18.7 | it was not easy. Many of you are going to relate so much to this conversation. It's one of those |
| 1:24.4 | ones where I was smiling the entire time I was editing and didn't want to cut anything out. |
| 1:29.4 | That's when you know it's going to be good. |
| 1:31.2 | So without further ado, please enjoy this wonderful conversation with Payam Banifaz. |
| 1:38.3 | Payam Banifaz, thank you so much for talking with me today. |
| 1:41.8 | Thank you. |
| 1:42.7 | I've really been looking forward to this conversation. |
| 1:45.3 | Your videos have been such a joy to watch, especially during this period of time, this pandemic |
| 1:50.3 | time. It's been so fun to, every time you post a video, I watch it immediately, show it to my family, |
| 1:55.7 | show it to my kids. It's constant, it's constant joy. So I want to go back to your history and ask about, so I read that you were born in Iran and you moved to the United States at 8. So can you talk a little bit about that? What was your upbringing like? |
| 2:11.7 | So I would, yeah, so I was born in Tehran. My whole family is from Tabriz, you know, the north of Iran. And, but I was born in Tehran. My whole family is from Tabriz, the north of Iran. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Chai & Conversation, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Chai & Conversation and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.