We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Assaad Yacoub. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Assaad below.

Assaad, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

There are many projects that I consider meaningful to me. Working in the LGBTQ space specifically with drag queens has never been more important and I’m so thankful my work showcases the drag community and lifts it up. I have a music video I directed for Trixie Mattel coming out in July that I am so proud of and can’t wait to share with the world. The song is great and the video is my best work to date stay tuned for our July release.

Assaad, 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 was born and raised in Dubai I always felt different from all the other kids and never wanted to work in the family business. I was always a creative person I just didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do. When I was 20 I googled art schools in New York and New York Film Academy popped up in my search I applied and got in. I discovered the drag world in NYC and decided to make all my projects about that. Flash forward to my masters and I made my debut feature film Cherry Pop as my thesis film that I sold to Netflix. After that I started directing music videos for Rupaul drag race contestants. My team and I are a one stop shop which my clients enjoy you give us the budget and we deal with all aspects of pre production, production and post production. I’m proud of the divers environment my producer and I have created behind and on camera we also have worked on over 70 projects in the last 6 years together without any representation ( if you are an agent or Maneger out there hit me up hahah.) I’m so great full I get to put out high quality work that highlights people from marginalized communities and really showcase their talent.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

When I was in my masters program I decided to make a drag Queen comedy feature film as my thesis aka. Cherry Pop. Back then drag race was still not main stream and I had a lot of people including some professors tell me I was making a mistake and no one would want to buy a drag movie. I always said to myself I will take any technical critiques given to me to improve my movie any personal opinions I just ignored because I always believed in my movie and myself. I’m so thankful I did because I ended up being the first person in the history of New York film academy to sell a thesis movie to Netflix.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

Growing up in a country where queer content was banned one of my goals in life was to make work that queer people in the Middle East can see and have access to and I will continue to do work like that for the rest of my life. My ultimate goal in my career is to keep elevating in my work and the artists I work with.    

Contact Info:

• Website: www.assaadyacoub.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/assaadyacoub?igshid=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==