Egyptian-American comedian Ahmed Ahmed comes to Blue Note Hawaii for an evening next week. He’s amused that he’s coming here as part of the club’s comedy series, which Roseanne Barr kicked off in April.

“I actually worked with her about 20 years ago on her show,” he said. “She won’t remember me but I played a terrorist.”

He says this in a matter-of-fact tone of voice, then laughed and added, “Still playing them, still playing them.”

Over the course of his long career, Ahmed has made much entertainment out of his Middle Eastern heritage. He’s an award-winning director, with his documentary “Just Like Us” following him and 10 American comedians through Dubai, Egypt, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia. It garnered him an invitation to dinners with President Barack Obama and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Even before 9/11 and President Donald Trump’s proposed travel ban, Ahmed was playing characters based on the stereotypical Arab terrorist. He’s also played ethnic roles that have no reference at all to terrorism and barely reference his ancestry, as in the TBS comedy series “Sullivan & Son,” where he portrayed the childhood friend of a Korean-American (Steve Byrne) and an African-American (Roy Williams).

Ahmed was born in Egypt and grew up in Riverside, Calif., where his family had moved shortly after his birth. His heritage was a big part of his upbringing. “There was always the smell of garlic and cumin and clove,” he said. “My mom would burn incense to keep the ‘evil eyes’ out of our home.”

As he got older, Ahmed and his family acculturated, and he developed a reputation as a jokester during his high school days.

He had an epiphany of sorts after seeing Eddie Murphy’s film “Delirious.”

“When he’s in that red leather suit, I thought to myself, ‘Wow, man, that’s powerful. A 22-year-old black kid, going up in front of 10,000 people in our nation’s capitol, making people laugh telling jokes about putting G.I. Joe up his butt.’ I thought that was fascinating. I’d never seen anything like that.”

First he decided to get into “serious acting,” following the work of leading men like Marlon Brando, Robert DeNiro, Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman. But when he got to Hollywood, “there was lot of pigeonholing and stereotyping going on,” Ahmed said. “I made a really good living — playing terrorists.”

His name really is Ahmed Ahmed. “It’s like ‘Bob Roberts’ or ‘John Johnson,’” Ahmed said.

He believes he could have snagged more acting jobs if he had changed his name, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it.

Now he’s glad he kept it.

“Ahmed Ahmed turned out being great for me in comedy,” he said. “It was my first joke: ‘Ahmed Ahmed — named so nice they named me twice.’”

His entry into stand-up comedy came during a hiatus from show business, while he was working at a restaurant. “One night this woman came in with five of her sons,” he said. “At the end of the meal, she put a few hundred bucks in my hand and said, ‘This is for you. I’ll tip the rest of the guys, but this is for you.’

“I said, ‘No, I can’t take it,’ but she said, ‘Please take it. We don’t come here for the food, we come here for the service. You gave us great service. You’re really funny, you should be a comedian.’”

For his one-night, two-show appearance here Wednesday, Ahmed will be bringing a mixture of “transformed old material, but mostly new stuff about family, relationships, social media technology, the political climate right now,” he said — which is where the terrorist reference returns.

Asked about “a certain politician’s use of Twitter,” he replies, “I do a whole bit about how terrorist groups use social media, which is true. So I have a whole monologue about a radical terrorist leader who tries to convince people to follow him on social media. It’s really funny.”