[ad_1]
YesYou would be hard pressed to find two TV characters in 2021 with less in common than Marcia Roy and Maysa Hassan. The first is the enigmatic and sophisticated wife of billionaire patriarch Logan Roy in the HBO hit Succession. While the series is dominated by huge personalities, she is a mysterious presence – even though she is looked down upon by Logan’s children. The latter, on the other hand, is an open book – the unfiltered, sometimes offensive, Egyptian-American mother of the Golden Globe-winning comedy lead character Ramy.
But they are played by the same actor, Hiam Abbass, whose ability to move from calamity to calm is testament to a varied career spanning theater, film and, later, award-winning television series. Although living in Paris since the late 1980s, the Palestinian actor was born in Nazareth, Israel, and began his career with the then booming Palestinian National Theater, El-Hakawati. Although the company toured Europe, it was not an easy existence with us. “The Israeli authorities did not like all the activities that take place in our theater,” says Abbass, a warm presence who is fluent in English, Arabic, French and Hebrew. “They came in and closed. Part of my job was about how politically we could stay open. Traveling in Europe opened my eyes a little to the possibility of breathing a different air. It was hard working all the time to justify your being.
Despite moving to Europe – first to London and then to Paris – much of Abbass’s work has revolved around Arab cinema. She has screened Tunisians, Syrians and Algerians among other nationalities and appeared in many acclaimed films, including the Oscar-nominated drama Paradise Now. In this film, she played a Palestinian. Abbass has already spoken of the danger of seeing the Arab people as “a mass” and found it necessary to be concerned about his character, the mother of a suicide bomber. “The way it was written reminded me a lot of what we already see in the media,” she says. “She didn’t seem unique in any way. I spoke a lot with the director, Hany [Abu-Assad], and he’s changed a lot in character. I felt I had given her a unique and different identity from the mass of women we usually see. The media choose to show you this image of the crying Palestinian mother, almost as if she has nothing else to offer. Life is much more complex than that, so the stories and the characters are much more complex. “
It wouldn’t be the last time Abbass – who has also directed two short films and a feature film – would take on a bigger role than that of an actor. In addition to acting there, she was a consultant for the 2005 film Spielberg, Munich, on the aftermath of the killing of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics (“I felt like we were totally on the same wavelength, ”she says with a smile, calling Spielberg a“ genius ”) and assisted Alejandro González Iñárritu on the set of his 2006 film Babel, acting as a channel to Arabic-speaking distribution. “I spent three months with him watching him work,” she says. “I was talking with actors from Morocco, because I was an actor – I could be one of them. Alejandro called me his guardian angel. It was really beautiful – it meant a lot ”.
Over the past decade, Abbass has been involved in more English-language projects, such as Peter Kosminsky’s The Promise and The State series, both of which air on Channel 4 in the UK. This has led, over time, to bigger gigs, like the ever popular Succession, which she just returned from filming in New York when we speak. There is talk of the indecipherable Marcia Roy, a figure so unknowable that her stepchildren perform a background check on her. “In the show, you know all the intentions of the other characters, but I think Jesse [Armstrong, the show’s creator] wanted to do something a little different with her. She is a little more noble, a little more human ”.
Why does she think a show with such hateful characters and lavish displays of wealth has turned out to be so popular? “It’s funny that you asked me that question, because I asked myself that,” she laughs. “People are fascinated by power and money. A friend of mine looked at it recently and I said, “What did you like?”, And she said, “I love that everyone is bad, it’s amazing “. It’s like watching Trump – you know what you think about him, but you always want to know more. People want to know about the imperfection of human beings. “
Abbass speaks fondly about his Estate family – including his good friend Brian Cox, who plays Logan – and just as warmly about his other very different TV series about Ramy. Even though this was her first time playing a comedic role, Abbass is quite believable as Maysa, who adores her adult son, played by Ramy Youssef, while warning her daughter (in the episode of opening, it cancels Dena’s criticisms of Ramy’s work in a startup: “Habibti, give them a chance, they’re just getting started”). She is largely unconscious, inadvertently offending a trans woman and a black customer while working for the rideshare app, Lyft.
“I had never played a woman without a filter,” Abbass says. “I don’t judge her. She’s not a bad woman – obviously she has feelings and gets hurt and often wants to. When her daughter tells her that she said the wrong thing, she tries to defend herself because she thinks she is just telling the truth. It all comes down to how she’s designed on Ramy’s side. There is a very fine line that I had to follow with it: if I take it a little too far you would think it is too much, if I am below it it would not be enough.
She deftly walks the line of a straightforward but world-weary character, finding her independence after several decades as a housewife. Maysa isn’t your average comic book character, and Ramy – where the action might take place in a mosque or a strip club, depending on the episode – isn’t your average comedy. How important is it to see a show about a second generation Muslim immigrant on TV? “I think it’s very important, now more than ever, because we all have such complex and complicated layers, whether they are social, whether they are racial, whether they are of color, whether they are ‘they are simply of sex. I think it’s very important to be able to talk about the duality of identities, be it Arab and American, Arab and British, Arab and French, French and Chinese. We have to come to terms with dual identities, and we have to see what people’s struggles are – what’s good and what’s not. We do our job artistically. And I think the next question would be, what would politicians do to help these kinds of situations in their own country?
We are talking about inclusion in society and in the arts. “The theater can have such an elitist way of thinking. For me it’s about, how do you work as an artist and how do you bring your thoughts to what is happening on the street? Who is your audience? These are the people who live with you – you can ignore their existence because you just want to take advantage of Shakespeare and Moliere, but you have to consider the people who basically made Shakespeare exist. Work with different organizations, my partner [the director Jean-Baptiste Sastre] and I find such talented people – the poems is part of their daily life. Coming back to Ramy: yes, it’s important to tell stories like this. It is important to bring to light the things that are rejected in life. “
She is then expected to appear alongside Jeff Bridges in another television series, a thriller called The Old Man. She has a passion for the profession which does not seem to diminish. “Don’t stagnate, don’t be sure about things, you never know. The road is still so long, ”she says.
• Ramy is available on All 4 and broadcast Fridays at 11:05 p.m. on Channel 4; Succession is available on Now TV with season three airing later this year.
Source link
