Ramy Youssef is not interested in stunt casting.
The co-creator and star of Hulu's Ramy, which dropped its third season on Sept. 30, has been very careful and intentional about who has entered the show's orbit since its inception—and for good reason.
"The goal for me is always, if we're going to introduce someone new, I love our family and I love our friends and we really built those up in the first seasons," Youssef explained exclusively to E! News, "so if anyone is going to come in, I just want it to feel like they were already in the world, but we just hadn't gotten to them yet."
Though the show welcomed Oscar winner Mahershala Ali to the cast for season two, when it was announced that supermodel Bella Hadid had been cast in season three—in her first acting role ever—it raised some eyebrows.
But when it came to casting Hadid, who plays the mysterious, Office-obsessed girlfriend of Ramy's best friend Stevie (Steve Way), her integration could not have been more natural.
"With her, it just felt like, ‘Oh yeah, of course,'" Youssef revealed. "Of course her and Steve are so obsessed with The Office that they're just obsessed with each other."
He added, "Just from talking with her and getting to know her, I was certain that her emotional access as a person, she's such a cool person, I felt really confident that that would translate on the screen. It really does in a really cool way."
The show spawned a real-life friendship between Youssef and Hadid after, according to an interview with GQ, Youssef e-mailed Hadid out-of-the-blue and asked if she'd be interested in appearing on Ramy.
Youssef admitted "I don't think this is what anybody thought she was going to be doing," but that's part of why it ended up working out so well, as Youssef said of Hadid's performance, "I was very impressed."
All ten episodes of Ramy season three are available to stream now on Hulu.