Comedian a YouTube sensation with his Baba Fira act

Gary Guz

When comedian Gary Guz posted his first YouTube video of him pretending to be a Russian-Jewish grandmother, he did not anticipate how much this would change the course of his life. The video, which was shot within an hour at his grandmother’s apartment while she was out doing errands, shows Guz wearing a grey wig, his grandmother’s robe, and enormous prescription glasses that his grandfather wore in 1988. He also debuted his now-famous “babushka” voice to the YouTube world.

Today, his six-year-old channel has over 6,000 subscribers, and Guz, 29, has been able to visit Russian-Jewish communities around the world and perform as Baba Fira. Most recently, he was present at the Winter Limmud FSU conference at the Schwartz-Reisman Centre in Toronto, where he greeted attendees in his costume and later led a session where he spoke about his experiences of being a Birthright Israel leader, among many other things.

Guz, who was born in Kharkiv, Ukraine in 1989, and moved to Brooklyn with his family when he was only a year old. Since his mother worked as a researcher in a hospital and had her own business, Guz spent a great deal of time with his maternal and paternal Russian-Jewish grandparents. He grew up wanting to become the “first Jewish basketball player,” and was even invited to Duke University to play basketball during the summer when he was just 14 years old.

However, as he grew older, he decided to pursue a career in law. Around the time he finished high school, Guz, who had always been drawn to the film industry, auditioned to be in the movie, The Assassination of the High School President. He was chosen to be one of the background people acting as the close friends of the lead actor, and this led him to join the Screen Actors Guild Union, which really sparked his interest in acting and the film industry. “I always wanted to be a director – I’m a great video guy and great actor, I’m good at putting everything together, so I thought with this skill set, I should be a director,” said Guz.

He had initially enrolled into New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice to study law, but soon transferred to Brooklyn College where he spent two years studying film production and screenwriting.

“When I finished school, I bought myself a camera, and started freelancing for fashion. I was in fashion for five years and sort of went away from acting, because I was more into filmmaking,” said Guz. “I wanted to do movies, so I was doing a lot of the behind-the-scenes work and not putting myself in front of the camera.”

Though Guz would occasionally act in commercials and take on minor roles in movies, he wanted to create something where he could do more acting. Around this time, there was a viral trend spreading across YouTube, that poked fun at the various stereotypes of different types of people. Guz and a few friends decided to do one about the Russian-Jewish community, and he decided to speak in his quirky grandmother voice that he used to prank call his friends with. The video was a success, and now has almost 500,000 views. His channel has greatly expanded since then, with many different Baba Fira videos and collaborations, and this has opened up many new opportunities for Guz.

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“With Baba Fira, I just love travelling and meeting communities, because I meet people that have the same background,” said Guz. “We all have the same story – our parents somehow miraculously survived, and I love hearing people’s stories.”

The winter after Guz posted his first video, he went on a Birthright Israel trip, which really changed his perspective on life. “I feel like we all need to go back in order to go forward, and I really went back at the perfect time in my life. Going on Birthright and reconnecting to my roots about why we actually left Russia made me understand that there is a bigger goal here, and I felt like I was the face of it,” said Guz, who has staffed eight Birthright trips in the last four years.

Guz says the scenarios that are portrayed in his Baba Fira videos are inspired by people and events in his own life, as Fira was actually the name of his great-grandmother. His comedic work is a way of connecting the Russian-Jewish community around the world by helping publicize the dilemmas and struggles that a lot of Russian-speaking Jewish kids grow up facing. It has allowed for entire communities of Russian Jews of all ages to come together and bond over their shared, and often hilarious, upbringing and culture.

A scene from one of his YouTube films What Russian Grandmas Say