“It’s excruciating”: Mo Amer explains that his tearful acting scenes in “Mo” were real

There’s always pressure to deliver on the person who creates and stars in a TV show. But in the case of Mo Amer — the co-creator, star and showrunner of the Peabody Award-winning Netflix series, “Mo” — there is an added burden most will never bear.

And that is, as Amer explained in our Salon Talks, “Mo,” co-created by Golden Globe winner Ramy Youssef, is “the only Palestinian show on American television that is run, produced and created by a Palestinian.” He added, “the intensity of that” is part of the fuel that drove him to “put every fiber of my being into” the second season, available now on Netflix.

The great news for Amer’s blood, sweat and many tears (as you will see in the show) is that it has paid off beautifully. The second season has a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes at the time of publication. 

“Mo” shares with audiences a side of Palestinians and Palestinian Americans that we never see in American entertainment media. And being of Palestinian heritage myself, I can attest to that fact. One very powerful scene that jumps out is between Mo’s sister — played by Cherien Dabis and mother Farah Bsieso — where they debate how much they should follow the suffering of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza on social media because of the emotional toll that it takes. As Amer noted, this push and pull has been “a part of our lives since I was born” and he wanted audiences to see it. 

The season ends with “Mo” and his family traveling back to his family’s home in Palestine, Burin in the West Bank. However, given the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, it was “impossible” to shoot there, as Amer explained. “My aunts live in the West Bank. They can’t even go to the doctor. They’ve been needing to go get medical checkups for over 14 months,” he noted. Filming a TV series there was out of the question and as a result, much of the last emotional episode was shot in Malta.

Regardless of the location, the payoff in the last episode is unlike anything I’ve seen before on American television. We see a Palestinian family in the West Bank, not far from where my own relatives live, depicted as fully developed human beings. That fact alone is enough to move many Palestinians to tears.

Watch my “Salon Talks” episode with Mo Amer here on YouTube, to hear more about writing and directing comedy around a hard subject, why “Mo” is also about the broader immigrant experience in America and if he would be open to making a third season. 

The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

We spoke after the first season of “Mo” came out and you talked about how as an immigrant, your mentality is you have to outwork everybody. Did your mindset change in Season 2? Was it more work?

It is a lot of work. It’s not really about the quantity of the work, it certainly is about the quality. But it’s not really about [the amount of work], especially with what was going on in the backdrop of making Season 2. 

It’s the only Palestinian show on American television, show-run, produced, and created by a Palestinian. It was really the intensity of that and then what everyone’s opinion was on what we should talk about and not talk about, and how you put it together. In the end I was like, “I know what this show is. I know what it is. I know what it needs to be and nobody knows my story better than me, so please do me a favor and let’s all work together.” Specifically talking about the writing room and having a great relationship with my guys and creating such a beautiful final piece of art. 

I feel like I literally bled for it; metaphorically, spiritually, mentally. I feel that I put every fiber of my being into it, quite literally. I’m still aching from it. It was extremely painful to make.

You did everything. Writing, starring, directing some episodes. Is it because you need the control, or is it because of this immigrant work ethic and wanting to be proud of yourself, your family and your community, because you understand that people are looking at you for something?

It’s a combination of different things. I’ve always wanted to direct. Slick [Solvan Naim] directed the series with me and he directed the first season. He understood that I had a particular vision, especially for the flashbacks. He and I would work together and he would ask me, “How do you see this and how did you see that?” Essentially co-directing with him in certain aspects of the first season.

I’ve always enjoyed telling the story visually as well, even how I write and come up with different scenes is associated with music and it’s all visual. It’s very much in my wheelhouse, I want to do it. It wasn’t about being necessarily a control freak, I’m an artist and I really enjoy telling stories and I think I’m really good at it. Even Jaume [Collet-Serra], who directed Black Adam, when I was describing certain scenes to him, he was like, “You’re a director.”

Aside from that, I just really enjoy working with actors. Scenes that I’m not in, I probably enjoyed more, specifically the scene with my sister and my mom in the show, played by Cherien [Dabis] and Farah Bsieso. That was a really, really unique moment. I got to show-run so I’m working on the script, rewriting stuff, and then essentially you can direct them and see what’s working and what’s not working, then get them to a place emotionally, and reword certain things in the script so you end with a comedic punch when it’s such a heavy subject matter. What a beautiful moment. I noticed a lot of the crew was crying and most of it was in Arabic. I was like, “Oh, we did something right if the whole crew who doesn’t speak Arabic was in tears.” That was really rewarding and just very special.

There was a scene with Cherien and Farah sitting on the dock talking about how much you do engage or do not engage with what we see on our phones about Palestine. It’s something we Palestinian Americans have all had to think about. How do you find this common ground so you can function but you’re still not detached completely from what’s going on?

I specifically was advocating for this. I’m letting Harris [Danow], my right arm in writing with the show, know, “We have to plant these seeds.” This season all takes place in a pre-Oct. 7 era. I just wanted to highlight this is a natural part of our day-to-day. This is something that we’re used to. It’s not something that just happened after Oct. 7, where we check our phones all the time. No, we’re obsessed constantly. This [has been] a part of our lives since I was born. It was just something that I wanted to have in the show and a constant emotion to track with my mother there, and having it come to a head in the seventh episode in a wonderful mother-daughter moment.

You’re known as a comedian, you’re hilarious as a comic, but this series is heartfelt. You were so vulnerable in this, you cried in numerous episodes. Is it difficult or challenging to allow yourself to be that vulnerable?

It’s excruciating, man. It was so hard. It’s really, really hard. I feel like great art you have to suffer for. It’s not something that I did intentionally, to be honest with you. I wanted to be vulnerable and I think the first season was my first taste of that. It was really hard to do. The confessional scene in Season 1 was the first time everybody was like, “That was such great acting.” I was like, “I was really breaking down. That was a real breakdown.”

Taking it to Season 2, there was so much to track and in some cases, you’re recreating real moments you have with loved ones that are no longer with you anymore. That just kind of f**ks with your head a little bit. It can, if you’re not grounded and have great people around you. There were several times where I had to just walk away and get it out after we filmed a scene and I would come back and be like, “All right guys, all right, we’re going to film this,” just start giving direction again. Adi [Khalefa] was in episode eight, he plays my cousin, he saw me do this multiple times and he goes, “I don’t know how the f**k you do that.” 

It’s one of those things that you just have to trust the process. You have to take note of how much you do break down, how much of it is controlled and how much of it is just complete release. It is very painful. It’s very hard, but also very cathartic. I feel better about it today than I did before filming the show. There are so many things that you keep inside that you don’t ever realize are there.

You’ve put video of your late father in the show. Seeing that must be challenging. 

I lost it. I gave that doc footage to my editor because they’ll do their cut and then I’ll come in and do my cut. Lauren [Connelly] edited the last episode of Season 2. When I saw it, I lost it, because I had forgotten I had given it to her. I didn’t think she’d already edited it in, I thought she was going to maybe wait for me. She did such a perfect job. She’s such a tremendous editor to work with. When I saw it, I just lost it because I couldn’t believe how that all came together [at the] last minute.

What’s so wild is that the doc footage of me seeing my dad is actually in real-time. When I found that, I didn’t have any footage of my father. Adi, who plays my cousin, was filming me see that footage for the first time and then five years later he plays my cousin in the show. We didn’t even put it together until right after we filmed the scene, Adi was like, “I was with you when you did this, when this actually happened.” It was one of those really special moments that you can’t recreate, you can’t write that. Only the divine can create such a mystical moment.

In that moment on the show, your mom says to you, “Keep smiling even when the world tries to tear you down.” Is that for you? Is that for Palestinians? As someone of Palestinian heritage, it resonated on a whole different level.

Sure. I think as a whole, anybody can relate to that. The idea is that no one can take who you are inside. People can try to break you down. People can try to hold you small. The idea behind it is that no matter what, you can hold on to [who] you are and you don’t let them break you, no matter what the scenario is.

This is something I mapped out before the strike, in April to May, our first four and a half weeks of writing. This is how I wanted to end [the season]. It was based off of me going to the West Bank. I had a few moments where I had a gun to my face. I was smiling and the Israeli soldier was almost offended that I was smiling. I was just trying to show that I was not a threat. I was at a checkpoint. He raised the gun at me and I just maintained my smile. 

I mentioned that in the [writer’s] room, this is the way I wanted it. I was like, “Oh, what a powerful way to end, under such stress maintaining his integrity no matter what happens.” That’s how that came about.

The last episode is set in Palestine. You filmed partly in Palestine and partly in Malta. What challenges were you facing that forced you to shoot in Malta, as opposed to filming the whole thing in the West Bank?

Well, we couldn’t. I mean, it was impossible to. My aunts live in the West Bank, they can’t even go to the doctor. They’ve been needing to go get medical checkups for over 14 months. Something that takes a 10-minute car ride is six to seven hours, and essentially they’re confined to their own house. 

Of course, we couldn’t shoot in the West Bank. Initially, I wanted to shoot there. I wanted to shoot in the actual village I came from, but because of everything that was going on, it was absolutely impossible. You’re responsible for a whole crew and you’ve got to do the right thing.

Jordan was hard to shoot in. It was very, very difficult. Then when they proposed Malta to me, I was a little bit hesitant. I was like, “Oh no, is this going to look right?” It was incredible. Malta looks like Burin, like our village in certain aspects. It was perfect, aside from certain structural and architectural things that we just had to avoid in shooting.

Then the way we married the two together was that we had all this footage that I was very adamant about getting in ’22 when we were editing Season 1. It was literally for a four-second shot of my grandparents’ house in the dream sequence in episode three of the first season. I was like, “It has to be there. I don’t want to get some Getty Images video. I don’t want to do that. I want to get that spot.” It really saved us because we ended up having all this footage from our village that we were able to cut into the actual [second season] episode. Then Mustafa [Abuelhija], my manager, was able to get a camera crew independently to capture driving footage, the first initial thing. I think they did three different tries at it and nailed it on a third one.

At a time when undocumented immigrants are being demonized and, if Trump gets his way, put in camps in Guantanamo. What do you hope people take from seeing the experience of Palestinian Americans, Palestinians and undocumented immigrants on your show?

This is a love letter to Palestine. This is a love letter to my family. This is a love letter to Houston. It has all those components, but also it’s for everyone. My Latino brothers and sisters who are dealing with the same type of situations. I wanted to show the absurdity of the detention centers in Season 2 and talk about how difficult it is to actually cross the border, and show how privileged even my character is in relation to other refugees and asylees in the country. It’s for everybody. It’s for everybody who’s struggling to feel like they belong and to constantly fight just to be themselves and have an opportunity to grow with their families.

The most valuable commodity is time. You are robbed. I felt like a big chunk of my life was taken away from me with the inability to travel and move. Thank God I was hard-headed and I still persevered with a refugee travel document and was able to push and travel to 20-plus countries without a passport. It was extremely difficult. I slept on airport floors, I slept in immigration rooms to get to a gig. It’s one of those things like, you either fight for it or not.

That’s why I love doing [a “Shawshank Redemption” homage] in episode two because nothing is truer. “Get busy living or get busy dying.” It absolutely rings true to me and I’ve always been attached to that line and the movie as a whole. I felt like my whole life I’ve been in this jail, this metaphorical jail. Anybody who feels that way, you don’t have to just roll up and die, man. You can fight, you can push, you can just continue to get over these hurdles and not allow the system to hold you back even though it’s going to feel like it, even when you feel like you’re making strides and you’re pushing forward. It’s a difficult thing to grind through.

There’s a scene towards the end of the series where you’re at the airport. Israeli soldiers are going through your things and you sort of smile at him. What were you conveying there?

Well, it was about just maintaining your own, not allowing anyone to rob your spirit from you. It’s about no matter what, as difficult as it is, just hold on. Just hold on.

This is so hard to talk about. I’m so over it, man. I just want to do a real comedy after this.

Do you want to do a Season 3? Is that not what you want to do?

I’d be open to it. I could easily do 10 seasons on this.

Would you rather do touring as a stand-up?

Look, there’s no stopping on stand-up. Stand-up is the number one love. I know I love telling stories and I know I’m really great at it. I’m great at directing, I’m great at writing. I’m great at telling, not only my story — I’m able to tell other people’s stories as well. Let’s see what happens. I think that we could have done a lot more. 

[Dave] Chappelle is the one who taught me this, he was like, “Man, the first season you’re just riding a bike and occasionally you land a few tricks, and the second season, you’re able to just do a bunch of tricks.” That’s what I felt in the second season. I felt really free and knew exactly what I was doing. I knew what I could do and not do, what my capabilities were. I just feel like I’m a beast at this and I can do it all day.