The Palestinian American comic made a Netflix show based on his life.
As he was writing the final season, October 7 happened.
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This interview contains spoilers.
When the writers reconvened after that date, they tried to incorporate the Israel-Hamas war into the narrative.
Every scene became really didactic, and this wasnt the show, Amer tells me.
I would lose it because it was so real.
Season one ends with Mo being stuck in Mexico.
Then we came back October 1, 2023, and six days later, all hell broke out.
We were not addressing anybodys emotions or mental state.
I also believe that to make it about that would distill it down to This just started now.
Couldnt be further from the truth.
This is something that has been going on for almost 80 years.
Something that I came up with is,Were always on the news.
I was just very adamant about We have to show this.
It makes me emotional just going back there.
I recognized that sense of Mom, you’re able to put down your phone.
you’re able to value yourself in this moment as well.Yeah.
Its not meant to, like, Tap out.
On the contrary, you should be tapped in.
Its a love letter to my mother.
This whole thing is a love letter to my family.
You told me your own personal immigration lawyer was in the writers room answering peoples questions.
When we walked in, we were dumbfounded.
We were really worried: Is this gonna look accurate?
Food is such a recurring element in the series.
The second thing is I love food.
Its a way to preserve your culture, right?
You cant do that.
You have to acknowledge where it came from.
You have to acknowledge that this is a Palestinian tradition, Lebanese tradition, Turkish tradition.
This bowl of hummus is the focus of this political conversation.
Its much easier to talk about that rather than dive into the occupation, for instance.
My mom always said, Listen, fine.
You want to take everything?
Just dont take our hummus.
Its a way of saying, Were holding on to something.
You might take everything else, but this is ours.
The other theme this season is the image of a key.
That always stuck with me.
I found my grandfathers passport there when we went back in 2015 or 2016.
I asked my uncle, who passed away last year, Can I have the keys and the passport?
He was like, No.
I was like, Uncle, what if something happens, God forbid, then we lose the keys?
Fine, just let me have the passport, to preserve it and our history.
You cant just have an all-white show in Houston.
Even white people have diverse friend groups in Houston.
How can we get actual Burin, the village where my family comes from?
We had a bunch of leftover footage.
And then this season, we sent a camera crew back to get the driving scenes.
We dont want to put any crew in harms way.
We had a few drone shots that we used from Burin, like the one at the mosque.
All the exteriors are 100 percent Palestinian.
The interiors, the olive farm, the internal mosque were all filmed in Malta.
The imam for that mosque was Palestinian.
I learned that so that show graffiti, you clear it with the artists.
You dont have the free-for-all to use whatever you want.
There was an amount of lawyers to erase the footage.
We filmed in Bethlehem, right across from the Walled Off Hotel, which Banksy built.
I felt that was the best and most usable stretch we have.
Were you also able to go for that filming in Palestine?I was not.
Youre right down the street, and you just cant go.
What felt right about setting the finale to end on the date of October 6, 2023?
I dont want to be broken from who I actually am, although it chips away at you.
I was sharing with my writing team, This was my experience.
This is what it was like.
The soldiers broke stuff when they were searching my stuff.
Ive been strip-searched to my boxers.
The curtain, the color of the room I re-created the room from memory.
Im open to potentially doing a third season.
It is such a difficult story for me to tell, emotionally.
But for now, here is where we have to leave it.
A cease-fire clearly is what we all have been advocating for from the get-go.
But according to Biden, [the basis of] this deal has been in place since May.
I dont understand what the holdup is.
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