Tv Reporter - August 11, 2003

Whoopi Goldberg was sold on giving British-Iranian comic Omid Djalili a role on her new NBC sitcom as soon as she saw a tape of his act.

Getting him to the United States for the taping of the "Whoopi" pilot in April, however, was a struggle. The war in Iraq was raging, and U.S. visas for guys with Middle Eastern last names were hard to come by.

But NBC and "Whoopi" producer Carsey-Werner-Mandabach scrambled and got Djalili to Los Angeles in the nick of time for the pilot taping.

After all that, Djalili was stricken with a severe case of vertigo on the first day of shooting. But that didn't stop him.

"It was horrible, but he got out there and he did it," Goldberg says. "It was amazing."

Djalili's Middle Eastern heritage has always taken center stage in his act — his first one-man show was dubbed "Short Fat Kebab Shop Owner's Son" — but never has his ethnicity been so crucial to his career as in the past two years.

In 2001, Djalili, whose name in Persian means "the hope of the great one," scored two high-profile stand-up gigs in London's West End scheduled for Sept. 28-29. Omid and Annabel Knight, his wife and writing partner, had worked on the act for months. And then the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks happened.

Instead of canceling, Djalili and Knight worked nonstop to put together 20 minutes of new material. On the first night, the theater was packed.

"Everybody was coming to see the death of my career," Djalili says. "They all knew I was a liberal nice guy, but when Sept. 11 happened, I was suddenly a bad guy."

The same act earned Djalili praise at Edinburgh (Scotland) Festival. That brought him to the attention of NBC executive vp casting Marc Hirschfeld, who signed Djalili to a talent deal.

Djalili and Knight came up with the idea of him playing an Iranian professor in New York who ends up helping his brother at his diner. The pilot script was barely finished when the United States went to war with Iraq.

Djalili recalls the network telling him that America was probably not ready for an Iranian sitcom lead at that particular moment. Days later, he was detained for 40 minutes at New York's JFK airport when he came to meet with Goldberg. Now, even in his second-banana role on "Whoopi," Djalili knows it'll take time for some viewers to warm up to him.

"It's an uphill battle for me, you know," he says. "You know, like when Mr. Cunnigham in 'Happy Days' (actor Tom Bosley) walks on the set and they go 'Whoo!' That's not gonna happen for a long time."

Djalili is a good fit on "Whoopi" because it is a show that promises to skewer sacred cows. Goldberg's character, a cigarette-puffing owner of a small hotel in New York, has compared it to "All in the Family," with her in the Archie Bunker role.

Djalili, who plays the hotel's handyman-turned-concierge, has a better description: "Ugly multicultural 'Will & Grace' … but we're not gay."

All kidding aside, Djalili aims to put a human face on Middle Easterners with his work on "Whoopi."

"I hope that if you focus on the personal — a funny Iranian handyman — then you will see the universal, which is that all cultures, although we're different, are fundamentally the same," he says. "There's unity and diversity, and that is what the show is about. It also sends a message: Hey, we can be funny too, and we're normal people too."