Paul Elia
Paul Elia is an American comedian and actor from Detroit, MI. In 2024, his debut comedy special Detroit Player was released on YouTube.
Career
Elia was born in the city of San Diego, California on February 23, 1988, to Iraqi Assyrian immigrant parents. His family moved to Southfield in Metro Detroit in 1994. Growing up, his mother was a cashier and owner of a liquor store in Clinton Township, [Macomb County, Michigan|Clinton Township], while his father worked as a butcher for various supermarkets. He was initially two classes shy of graduating from Wayne State University with a bachelor's in English and had been hoping to apply to law school before deciding to become a comedian. After his first professional role on Detroit 1-8-7, he moved to Los Angeles, California.Elia arrived in Hollywood in 2011 and immediately hit the ground running – creating and producing his own projects with money he saved while working late nights at a nightclub. Although he didn't have any solid Hollywood representation, he was still managing to audition for various TV shows and films from his savvy networking skills. He soon began to see an influx of roles in television and film. When asked by The [Arab American News] about his struggles, Elia said “You have to take big risks. The people who take big risks are the ones who make it...Of course you're going to be scared, but what you do with that defines you as a human being.”
Throughout his career, Elia has been vocal about his Iraqi and especially his Assyrian heritage, and the issues pressing his community in wake of violence in indigenous Assyrian lands in Iraq. He has also been vocal about the divisions that the Assyrian community faces, namely regarding the naming dispute. Elia has also discussed how he began to feel ostracized from his community as a result of his stance on unity, even receiving a death threat before touring in Toronto. In a 2025 Substack article, Elia criticized the political origins of Chaldean identity and the impact that ongoing divisions had on his community, while expressing pride in his Assyrian ethnicity and his Chaldean Catholic religious background.