'Why do you have to play the bad guy?' Middle East actors breaking the mould

Nabil Elouahabi, a British-Moroccan actor who made his name on the BBC soap EastEnders and the hit comedy Only Fools and Horses, has carved a diverse career spanning Hollywood action films to thoughtful and groundbreaking live drama. 

The wars of the Middle East and the attacks from 9/11 onward have ironically provided the actor with steady work, seeing him cast as terrorists in Hollywood films and TV series from 24 to Zero Dark Thirty. 

Elouahabi is sanguine about the mixed blessings of the Arab-as-terrorist roles he has often played, having spent recent years carving out roles in theatre that allow him to stretch his creative muscles. “Ultimately what actors are doing is supply and demand. Actors are supplying being part of stories which reflect what’s going on in the world. I don’t have so much of a problem with that, as much as it’s not perverting a narrative or reinforcing a narrative. “

For his new National Theatre production, Another World directed by Nicholas Kent, he has taken on the role of the biggest bogeyman of all – Islamic State’s self-styled caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. His part in the verbatim production required him to speak lines from the IS leader’s sermons, starting with his declaration of the IS caliphate in 2014. He explains: “One thing Nick always said was I’m not interested in somebody mimicking. It’s about getting the essence of what that argument is and delivering to the audience. And in that respect without making it sound overly simplistic I think what I try and do is just deliver what he said, and not to try to categorise it or put a spin on it.”

However, Elouahabi had to deal with the fact that Baghdadi is hardly a charismatic speaker. “One of the challenges of doing it was the way he delivered his speeches, which is actually quite dull. He was really quite monosyllabic and monotone and as an actor, all you want to do is zhuzh everything up. So needless to say I wanted to zhuzh up his speeches. I guess it would be like playing Hitler, playing someone who sees the world in a certain way and wants to propagate that version of it at the expense of everyone else.”

Elouhabi says taking on the role has not been disturbing or given him nightmares, despite the fearsome reputation of the group. “No, I put Baghdadi away - I put big daddy away.”

'That could be my brother'

Another World has come in for criticism from the writer and director of another play about young western Muslims attracted to Isis, Homegrown, made in east London by the National Youth Theatre but axed last year due to alleged fears over its “extremist” content. Writer Nadia Latif suggested that Another World was perpetuating a narrative of “good” and “bad” Muslims, and denying British Muslims the chance to tell their own stories.

Elouahabi says her criticism was unfounded. “I know Nadia Latif, I can share their frustration at their piece being pulled, but I thought it was totally unfair and inaccurate the observations she made to do with our piece, and its motives. I was quite disappointed to hear that from her…. Its tit for tat. The arts should be about supporting each other not about taking chunks out of each other.”

Elouahabi has played real life terrorists before. In 2005, he played the character of Ramzi Yousef, one of the first World Trade Centre bombers. “I had no issues playing that because it was a pretty well put together piece of drama which was based on the 9/11 Commission reports ... What I have more of a problem with is these imagined scenarios. I just think there’s enough of this in the world already. I’d love to play an agent who hunts those people down instead of being the guy they are hunting. Why do you have to be the bad guy, and why does the bad guy always have to be the Arab and the good guy is always white? It gets a bit tedious, although I don’t think it’s as bad as it used to be. I’m lucky enough that I don’t get sent too much crap.”

Elouahabi has personal connections to the Brussels suburb of Molanbeek, home to leaders of the Paris and Brussels attackers, the mother of one of whom features in Another World, which resonated with him during rehearsals. “You hear these women talking about their children, their sons and daughters, you see the pictures – it could be my auntie, it could be my mother. I have family in Brussels, in Molenbeek as well. It’s a huge north African diaspora over there, so my family who are from Tangiers, whenever I go over there to Morocco it's absolutely filled to the rafters with cars with Brussels number plates.

“What’s really sad when you see the Brussels bombings or the Paris bombings and you see all their faces, it really dawns on me that could be my brother, that could be me, in the sense that these are people who look like me, are from the same places ancestrally as me. And that’s quite a difficult pill to swallow because obviously you can't help but think – I can’t remember the name of the Paris gunman – we look quite similar. That’s quite an uncomfortable thing to deal with, for reasons that I can’t quite vocalise. It’s like, I wish he didn’t look like me. It’s like the face of terror.”

Rather than simply complain out about the lazy casting of Arab and black actors as terrorists, Elouahabi has pro-actively sought out work that offers roles that are anything but stereotyped. In 2014, he produced and starred in the acclaimed drama The Nightmares of Carlos Fuentes, based on a short story about an Iraqi refugee coming to the UK – an atheist who believed in God, a father who had to leave his family behind. It was exactly the kind of complex, multi-faceted role that the actor believed was lacking in film and TV.

Change at the National

London’s National Theatre, where we meet, has a buzz about it right now under new director Rufus Norris, with major black and Middle East focused work including Another World, African colonial drama Les Blancs, and Suheyla El Bushra’s urban satire The Suicide. Under Norris, the direction of work has moved decisively toward drama that features black and post-colonial writers and protagonists. That move has included bringing the Act for Change campaign, which seeks to strengthen diversity in the live and recorded arts, in-house to the National.

“Rufus and everyone at the National has been open and warm, and everything that we’ve wanted they’ve supported,” says Elouahabi.

Elouhabi has just finished shooting an Iraq war drama Sand Castle, in Jordan, playing an Iraqi engineer, and has recently starred in a Canadian Afghan war film Hyena Road. “I’ve been around – I’m very lucky, I get to travel. What I need to do is learn classical Arabic and then maybe I’ll do some Arabic films. It would be fun. Grow a bigger moustache and get on Arabic TV.”

'Hey go blow yourself up'

Jordanian-born Lara Sawalha, performing alongside Elouhabi in Another World, also has nothing but praise for what Norris has done in changing the theatrical output at the National Theatre. But she feels the industry in general has a way to go in following the same ethos in how it casts Arab and black actors across theatre, film and TV. “It’s still a very white industry and why we get pigeon-holed is beyond me. I still don’t understand it because there are so many talented actors of all colours, of all races, of all looks. And you just think why are you just sticking to one little narrow road. And it’s upsetting because so many people bust their ass just to trying to do what they love to do and then you're told, 'yeh go blow yourself up over there'."

“We are worth more than that. This is why I really praise the National and I praise Rufus Norris for opening the doors for all actors, for all topics of theatre. Like the NT is doing a play about Isis, it’s also doing Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and Le Blancs. There is such diversity in the National right now. Let’s not leave it for another 10 years for this to happen again, let’s mix it up a bit.”

Actors are famous for having to be careful in the words they choose when talking about the industry they work in. After all, it is an insecure profession and today’s glorious success can quickly turn into tomorrow’s agent not taking your calls. But Sawalha is in a combative mood, especially when we talk about the hit American TV drama Homeland, which in its portrayal of Arabs as untrustworthy terrorists and the Muslim world as one big dusty refugee camp has divided audiences like Marmite. After a four-letter word outburst, she says Homeland is "ridiculous," and echoes the sentiment of the "Homeland is racist" graffiti protest by Arab artists working on the set of the show last year. "I mean great acting, I enjoyed watching it. Everyone was watching it. Then you see how they depict the Arabs and then you just go ‘oh God’.”

Sawalha, who is part of a Jordanian acting dynasty including her father Nabil, uncle Nadim Sawalha and his daughters Julia and Nadia, has lived and worked in London for four years since leaving Amman. In Another World she plays Zarlasht Halaimzai, an Afghan refugee who became an adviser to aid organisations working with Syrian refugees. “I am telling her story a little. Sometimes she doesn’t understand the way people think the way they do. You know, this global jihad and radicalisation has been going on for a very long time, so why are you only now thinking that it’s a new thing?

“I am kind of giving a little history lesson, but it also gave me a history lesson. It was shocking because I thought I knew, but then I didn’t know. It took this play to educate me. That’s why I love my job – you learn so many things, and I’m still learning.”

Is there a simple take home message from Another World? “No. We are not politicians. Politicians don’t have the answer – are you kidding me? When people come out of this play and they go, I still don’t understand, I’m kind of well, first you didn’t listen, secondly, nobody’s supposed to understand. We’re giving you a platform to open the debate, to make people go: can I ask a question?”

As for what is next, Sawalha does not want to be limited to type-cast roles. “I’d love to do everything – TV, film, theatre, but not just as an Arab. I want a lead role, that’s it, I’m done.”