“I find it very, very difficult to function,” says Mo Amer.
He spends his day in Hermann Park in Houston, the city he has lived in since he was 9. It is late March and the air is still crisp. Young parents guide their toddlers over twisted tree roots. Ducks quack in the distance. Amer, 43, is surrounded by a small but focused television crew that is here to help him realize his dream: to host and star in the first Palestinian-led series in American history. But lately, world events have made it harder than ever to publicly celebrate his heritage.
The first season of “Mo,” which premiered on Netflix in August 2022, told a fictionalized version of Amer’s experience as a formerly undocumented refugee seeking asylum status in the U.S. Amer had been touring as a stand-up comedian for years, but the series cemented his place in the entertainment industry: After DJ Khaled and supermodel sisters Gigi and Bella Hadid, he’s the most famous Palestinian in town.
Creators: Mohammed Amer, Ramy Youssef
Stars: Mohammed Amer, Teresa Ruiz, Omar Elba
He’s been at that peak for a couple of years: Also in 2022, he co-starred in the Dwayne Johnson-directed DC film “Black Adam” as Karim, a character from the fictional Middle Eastern country of Kahndaq; later this year, he’ll embark on a national comedy tour produced by Live Nation and titled “The Palestinian Bear.” With each new peak in his career, he’s thrust his culture into the spotlight, beginning to remedy decades of underrepresentation and misrepresentation of Arabs in Hollywood. And though Netflix renewed “Mo” and also announced that the comedy series’ second season (premiering Jan. 30) will be its last, Amer exudes confidence that he’ll be able to do more of it: “I know the season I’ve put together is exceptional. Let things happen as they have to happen.”
Though that decision may seem foolish to him, Amer isn’t wrong to be excited. “Mo” is unlike anything you’ve seen on television: The characters spout dark, thoughtful humor in English, Spanish and Arabic at top speed and lovingly feed each other bites of hummus and pita bread, all framed by beautiful shots of a city that scripted television rarely reaches. The impact is clear: “Mo” earned unanimous reviews and a Peabody Award without the help of an A-list cast or a huge budget.
But success was easier to enjoy the first time around. The writers’ room for season two reopened on October 1, 2023, just days after the writers’ strike concluded. By the end of that week, the world had changed. Amer hasn’t been able to think about anything else since.
“My family lives under occupation, where you can’t move freely at all,” she says. Since Hamas killed 1,200 people and took 251 hostages in its October 7 attacks on Israel, Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed between 46,000 and 70,000 people or more in Gaza, according to various estimates. In addition, Israeli settler violence and the presence of the Israeli military have increased dramatically in the West Bank, where Amer’s ancestry is located. “My aunts have had to go to the doctor for the last year and they haven’t gone,” she says. “Normally it takes seven minutes by car, but now it’s hours.”
Hopefully, the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, announced on January 15, will begin to change that, but Amer is “very, very skeptical.” On the one hand, he says, “a ceasefire is the most important thing: the protection of innocent men, women and children and the release of hostages. The only thing we can hope for is no more killings and the idea that human life is sacred; I am praying for peace and true freedom for all.” But there is more work to be done.
“What about those millions of people in southern Gaza who are packed against each other and living in tents? What do they find in their homes?” Amer continues. And there is just as much uncertainty regarding what their relatives are going through: “The situation in the West Bank is completely different. There is no agreement for the West Bank, so they are still under apartheid law.”
When “Mo” premiered, Amer was proud to have introduced American viewers to a culture that many of them knew little about. But after Oct. 7, he suddenly realized that Season 2 would premiere into a world filled with all kinds of new and often misinformed opinions about his people.
Hollywood is part of the problem. “You’ve seen it online. It was really disheartening to see [celebrities] so reactive and uncompassionate,” he says. “It seems like a miserable existence. Like, is this your purpose in life? To just make angry, hateful videos? I mean, Palestinians are called to death.”
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