We were lucky to catch up with Tarek Ziad recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Tarek thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

Attending Yale really helped me tremendously. Getting to study under professors from the Yale School of Drama in Shakespeare, Chekhov, Scene Study, Clowning, and more really gave me an insight to the highest caliber of possible performance. While it’s true that the translation from stage training to screen requires some tweaking, it was still an amazing foundation to be given. After graduating into a pandemic, I basically had to figure everything with self taping out on my own, and it was a slow trial and error process of about two years. Only now do I feel like I really have my self taping skills down which are ultimately the most essential in today’s field. If I could have afforded it I’d have loved to pay a coach or class of some kind during the pandemic to teach me everything I needed to know about self taping, but that wasn’t my situation—as is the case for many young actors. Ultimately, as an actor out of school, usually the biggest obstacle to “learning” across the board is money. The industry just has all these cost barriers to entry that can be hard to navigate if you’re not a nepo-baby or don’t come from wealth. But you figure it out!

Tarek, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’ve always been an entertainer in some capacity. I grew up in St. Petersburg, Florida as the child of two Moroccan immigrants. I was a classic class clown who talked too much. Surprisingly, I also turned out to be really smart and hard working. Eventually I ended up getting a full ride to Yale which was crazy, my parents didn’t even know what Yale was. I decided to pursue a degree in theater and also discovered I could be more than just a class clown after I had a youtube video go viral my freshman year when I was quarantining with mumps (that’s right, I quarantined before it was cool) and landed on NBC Nightly, Yahoo News, and Hello Giggles as a result. That’s when I started exploring comedy in addition to theater, and began doing stand-up and also made it onto the school’s nationally touring improv group, The Yale Exit Players.

At Yale I was lucky enough to do a bunch of training with professors at the world renowned Yale School of Drama, and after graduating into a pandemic, decided to fully commit to the arts and figure out how to build a career as a creative without having intergenerational wealth or family support of any kind. I think I’ve done a pretty good job so far! I’m recently most proud of being named an SNL Scholarship recipient at The Groundlings Theater, and I also just shot a lead role in a hilarious and queer AFI thesis project called Teen Mary by Ali Rosenthal, so keep your eyes peeled for that in the festival circuit and beyond. I’m also doing lots of sketch comedy on Maude teams at Upright Citizens Brigade and working on a feature script of my own!

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

My main goal right now is to get to a place where I’m supporting myself financially with my performance work, be it on screen or stage. I’ve always known that being a performer is what I wanted to do with my life, so I want to build a life from it. To that end, I’m constantly auditioning, taking any work I can find, working on my scripts, performing around LA, and networking my little booty off. I can’t wait to see where it takes me—I already am in some ways! The momentum I’m building is so exciting.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

The most rewarding aspect is genuinely seeing the emotional effect you can have on people as a performer. Faces lighting up, laughter, catharsis. It’s such a great feeling. To be at the center of it is when I know I’m doing something right.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://tarekziad.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tarekaziad/

Image Credits

Isaiah Hattix, Bahareh Ritter