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PORTSIDE CULTURE

‘I CAN’T HANDLE ALL THIS EMOTION’: MO AMER ON USING DARING
COMEDY TO REDEFINE THE PALESTINIAN EXPERIENCE  
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Stuart Heritage
January 24, 2025
The Guardian
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_ The first season of Mo, comedian Mo Amer’s Netflix show, was a
funny, moving look at life as a Palestinian immigrant in the US –
then 7 October turned everything on its head. He talks about ceasefire
hopes and why he can’t stop crying _

‘I put everything into it – my bones still hurt from it’, says
Mo Amer. , Photograph: Eddy Chen/Netflix

 

Moments before I’m due to talk to Mo Amer, a notification pings on
my phone. After 15 months of unthinkable violence, Israel and Hamas
have agreed on terms for a ceasefire. As his Zoom window clicks
online, I’m parsing the news for details. As a man who has found
himself becoming one of the most prominent Palestinian voices on
Earth, so is he.

“I just got a flurry of text messages about it as I came to my
computer,” he says, holding his phone to the screen. “It’s
literally teed up and ready to go.” Presumably, I say, the gut
reaction to the news is a good one.

“Look, as a Palestinian man, we’re very suspicious of deals like
this,” he replies in his thick Houston drawl (a US citizen for
16 years, the city has been his home since he was nine). “I’m
very hopeful that it is honest and real and sincere, and that it will
lead to real positive change. I just have a lot of scepticism.
Whenever people are willing to literally say: ‘Cease fire, it’s
over, no more,’ that’s always a positive thing. The worry I have
is just like, it’s been going on for quite some time. I’ve seen
this so many times. I just really want for it all to truly end and
for Palestinians to have a real future there.”

The news can’t help but colour the interview, because it is to
promote the second season of Mo
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the wonderful Peabody-winning Netflix comedy show he co-created,
co-writes, directs and stars in. A semi-autobiographical retelling of
his life as a refugee in the US – he and his family fled Kuwait
during the Gulf war, and spent 20 years hustling for cash while they
waited to be granted citizenship – season one saw Mo working as
security in strip clubs and selling knock-off goods from cars, while
trying to inch his family’s asylum case forward within an
unintelligible system. It manages the rare trick of being just as
funny as it is heartfelt. More than anything, you can feel the
humanity pour out of every frame.

“It makes me feel good when you say that,” Amer replies.
“Really, it’s a show about doing your best to not allow people to
break your spirit, your mental state, your heart. So it speaks to the
resiliency of humanity and maintaining your spirituality, even though
it chips away at you. It’s this constant battle within yourself.
It’s not just what this Palestinian family on television is going
through but really it’s a metaphor for everyone that’s trying to
hold on.”

The perfect demonstration of this comes early in the new season when,
after some misadventures crossing the Mexican border without the
proper documentation, Amer’s character briefly finds himself being
held in an immigrant detention centre. In a lesser show, the officer
who gruffly processes his case would have been depicted as a
two-dimensional monster. Mo, however, takes a moment or two to show
that he is trying to hold on just as much as everyone else.

“He has to be at the centre every day,” he says of the character.
“It’s his job, bro. He gets to go home at the end of the day, but
he has to wake up every morning and go back into that cage. He’s in
a prison himself as well. So I was like: ‘I want to see what this
guy is like.’”

We’re talking two weeks before Mo’s return. A big, emotional man,
Amer has largely kept out of the spotlight since season one, and the
few interviews he has done have been characterised by a ready
teariness. In November, during a conversation with the LA Times –
about Gaza and the personal nature of his work – he broke down
mid-answer
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This doesn’t happen with us, but he’s keen to point out that this
is down to diligence on his part.

“I need to home in on my emotionalities,” he says at one point,
visibly moved that I’ve complimented his show. “But man, every
time I tap into it, just for like a quick second, it’s just
overwhelming in a very beautiful way.”

Mo’s second season is more expansive than the first, which revolved
round his attempts to get citizenship. As well as the Mexican jaunt,
the finale also sees Amer’s character return to Palestine, a
reflection of the journey Amer himself took in 2009 once he was
finally allowed to travel there, to visit family members he hadn’t
been able to see for two decades. The episode is so well made that I
was convinced it was shot in Palestine, but Amer is quick to put me
right.

“My intent was to absolutely go back and film in Burin, the village
we’re from. But because it’s so dangerous and just not the right
time, and settler violence and whatnot, it was impossible to do.
Really, really impossible. And I would never in a million years put
anyone in danger. Lives are at stake. So we never had the ability to
actually go there. But I was able to send in crews at different times.
We were able to get locals on the ground to physically get the
exteriors we needed. But even then I said: ‘Listen, if you even
feel a hint of uncertainty, don’t do it. You have to be really
careful and really thoughtful about how you do it, and make sure that
everything is safe.’ That was our number one priority.”

The other thing that differentiates season two of Mo is its timing.
The first season was released in 2022, when a show about a Palestinian
family was if not benign, then far less politically loaded. It was in
many ways a timeless immigrant story. However, this new series was
actively being written as 7 October – and Israel’s subsequent
invasion – played out. This left Amer with a dilemma. The conflict
recontextualised everything about the show, transforming the simple
fact that he is of Palestinian origin into a hot-button issue. How
much, if at all, should the new episodes reflect the violence of the
times during which it was made?

“I don’t know if you noticed this, but we ended the show on
October 6th,” he says. He’s right. The final scene of the final
episode cuts to a computer that shows it’s taking place a day
before, as he puts it, “all hell broke loose”.

“If we had set the season in a post-7 October era, it would have
overtaken the entire show,” he says. “The entire thing would have
been lost. So it was really, really important for me to not fall into
that trap. I believe very strongly with everything in my heart that it
would have been a massive mistake.” Even so, aspects of the show do
feel defined by the conflict; the Palestinian episode ticks by,
fuelled by the oppressing sense of heightened tension. “We did the
best that we could,” Amer says of the decision. “And I can
definitely tell you that I put everything into it. My bones still hurt
from it.”

Another result of the timing is that for better or worse, people now
look to Amer to be the mouthpiece of all Palestinians. That must be
overwhelming. “It’s wildly overwhelming,” he replies. “I
don’t want to say it’s unfair, because my position puts me in a
place where I’m expected to respond. But whenever you do actually
try to articulate a particular thought, whether it’s about what’s
going on right now or the overall situation, you’re never going to
make anyone happy. Also things are ever unfolding. So you can say
something now, then two weeks later those words can make you look like
a fool. It’s difficult, but it’s always been my practice to
articulate said message through my heart. I take it all very
seriously.”

This is billed as Mo’s final season. Although in person he seems to
have softened this to a position of never say never, he does seem keen
to get back to out-and-out comedy again. Next month, he embarks on a
US standup tour, with British dates promised down the line. Once
again, he sees this tour as an opportunity to lighten up a little bit.
His first special, The Vagabond, saw him tell all his refugee stories.
His second, Mohammed in Texas, was a love letter to the city that
raised him. Of his new set, he says: “It’s constantly revealing
itself, but it’s like stepping out. I don’t need to talk about
where I came from by now. It’s more of a traditional standup set,
diving into some deeper subjects in a very comedic way.”

That must be liberating, I say, after spending so many years literally
re-enacting the most personal moments of your life story. “It’s
been draining,” he nods. “It’s really taxing, man. Mentally,
emotionally, it’s been a lot. It’s just so personal. You’re
recreating memories, like my grandmother showing me hummus etiquette.
It’s like a warped dream. I got to see, like, a little version of me
with my grandmother, and she’s talking, and her accent sounds like
my grandma. It just really blew me away. It’s so hard, you know, but
also it’s beautiful. You’re immortalising them. You’re keeping
them alive in a beautiful way.”

He takes a breath, returns to the moment. “I’m out, man,” he
laughs. “I can’t handle all this emotion, bro.”

_Mo returns to Netflix on __Thursday__ 30 January._

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* Palestinians
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* Mo
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* NETFLIX
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* refugees
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