Comedian Maz Jobrani's latest special, Pandemic Warrior, was shot in Dubai in 2019 — right before the pandemic hit.
It was originally intended to be called Peaceful Warrior, but Jobrani felt the name and the special itself didn't make a lot of sense, given the current state of things.
"In December of 2019, I went to Dubai, I filmed the special," said Jobrani. "I was like, alright, I'm going to go back home, early 2020, we're going to get it on air, life is moving forward, everything is great. And then suddenly, boom! Pandemic, lockdown. No more shows."
Rather than scrap the project, he decided to realign the concept to incorporate comedy and life as he knows it during the pandemic, resulting in him renaming the special and adding an intro and outro addressing the current state of affairs.
"I added about three or four minutes at the beginning where I'm doing my show the way I've been doing it under lockdown, basically in a closet, and I remind people, this is the world we're in now. And then I say, 'let's go watch the special I filmed,'" Jobrani said. "And then at the very end, I come back and do a few more minutes of closet comedy and thus, Pandemic Warrior."
Pandemic Warrior will debut Thursday, January 28 on NBC's Peacock.