This interview contains spoilers.
Season two of Mo, the Netflix series co-created by, starring, and inspired by the life of the Palestinian American comedian Mohammed “Mo” Amer, was filmed, and partially written, after October 7, 2023. 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 wasn’t the show,” Amer tells me. The season doesn’t directly address the war over its eight episodes; instead, Palestine is a steady thrum in the background of the characters’ lives that serves as a source of sadness, hope, and sitcom shenanigans.
In the first season, which debuted in August 2022, Mo Najjar is a part-time strip-club DJ and bootleg salesman attempting to make ends meet in Houston, where he lives with his mother (Farah Bsieso) and autistic elder brother (Omar Elba). Along with relationship drama with Mo’s on-again, off-again Mexican American girlfriend (Teresa Ruiz) and high jinks with his cast of multicultural friends, the show depicts a family in flux, trying to start an olive-oil business as they seek asylum. Mo — a refugee without travel documents — can be a purposefully frustrating character, prone to losing his temper and clinging to far-fetched dreams. After a series of missteps, he ends up stuck in Mexico with no way to make it back home to Houston. In the series’ second and reportedly final season, he blows his chance for a legal return to Houston when he meets the U.S. ambassador to Mexico and can’t help but pick a fight after the ambassador uses the word conflict to describe the situation in Israel and Palestine.
Later in the second season, Mo has to deal with the consequences of being officially deported, a decision that endangers his ability to ever visit his family in the West Bank. The season culminates with the episode “A Call From God,” in which Mo, his mother, and his brother travel for the first time together to Palestine. Many elements of the finale, which was filmed in Malta with Palestinian actors playing his extended family, were pulled from Amer’s own visits after he obtained American citizenship in 2009. “I can’t tell you how many times I would be filming something and have to sneak away,” Amer tells me. “I would lose it because it was so real.”
Season one ends with Mo being stuck in Mexico. What were the biggest writing challenges for season two?
We were in the writers’ room for a month before the writers strike, and we mapped out the entire season. Then we came back October 1, 2023, and six days later, all hell broke out. We went down this road of making it a post–October 7 world, and every time we delved into the story, we realized we were getting away from all of our characters. We were not addressing anybody’s emotions or mental state. I also believe that to make it about that would distill it down to “This just started now.” Couldn’t be further from the truth. This is something that has been going on for almost 80 years. Something that I came up with is, We’re always on the news. We’re always watching our phones. I wanted my mother to be the catalyst for that, to show the emotionality of, every day, this constant almost-trauma that’s happening on a second-to-second basis every time you pick up your phone. Whatever you look at in the algorithm, that’s what it’s gonna feed you, and this is something that we’re all living. I was just very adamant about “We have to show this.” And then one of the most beautiful things that I’ve ever done in my life so far is direct the scene between my mom and my sister in episode seven on the dock. It makes me emotional just going back there.
In that scene, Mo’s mother, Yusra, and sister, Nadia (Cherien Dabis), sit by the water and discuss Yusra’s obsession with reading about violence in the West Bank and the depression and anxiety it causes her. That was such a specific thing to include, and I think it speaks to so many immigrant communities whose moms and dads are on WhatsApp. I recognized that sense of “Mom, you can put down your phone. You can value yourself in this moment as well.”
Yeah. It’s not meant to, like, “Tap out.” On the contrary, you should be tapped in. It’s a love letter to my mother. This whole thing is a love letter to my family.
As Mo in Mexico.
Photo: Eddy Chen/Netflix
When Mo is trying to get back into the U.S. from Mexico, he ends up in a detention facility. You told me your own personal immigration lawyer was in the writers’ room answering people’s questions. Can you talk to me about the other resources your team tapped into for the detention-facility episode?
We filmed in a big old warehouse, the kind they use to actually hold people. They’re empty warehouses that they set up these fences in, and they have different security teams that come in to enclose them internally inside these cages. When we walked in, we were dumbfounded. What our production designer, Carmen Navis, and the team accomplished in a very short period of time was just mind-boggling. We were really worried: “Is this gonna look accurate?” We did a ton of research, independently and in the room, where everyone was gathering as much information as they could on what these facilities look like and what people go through. We signed off on everything based off that research: the porta-potties, how they split up the men and women, the foil blankets, the MRE food, the separate cells. We had someone who experienced that firsthand in the room, and I was told that after he had the session with us, he almost had a panic attack. He’s the one who told us that in his experience, there was a guy in there they called El Gato, who just kept meowing the whole time, a detail that ended up on the show.
Food is such a recurring element in the series. Chocolate hummus was a focus of season one, the falafel taco is a focus of season two, and there’s an argument about couscous. Why do you think food is such an effective way to talk about culture?
There’s a saying: “You break bread with somebody, you can’t be mad at them.” That’s one. The second thing is I love food. It’s a way to preserve your culture, right? Someone takes this thing and then remixes it and they call it something new — well, you’re erasing someone’s culture. You can’t 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. It’s much easier to talk about that rather than dive into the occupation, for instance. Once you start renaming it, rebranding it, and changing it to suit your goals, then what’s left for us? My mom always said, “Listen, fine. You want to take everything? Just don’t take our hummus.” It’s a way of saying, “We’re holding on to something. This is ours. You might take everything else, but this is ours.”
The other theme this season is the image of a key. It pops up in Mo’s elaborate dream sequences, one of which is set in a tepee with tatreez, a type of Palestinian embroidery, and another that references The Shawshank Redemption. Why was the key the right element for that surreal aspect of Mo’s life?
It’s a big part of Palestinian culture: what it means and what it stands for. When I was first allowed to go back to my grandparents’ house in December 2009, I sent my mom pictures of these keys, and she was like, “These are the keys to our house in Haifa.” That always stuck with me. I found my grandfather’s 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. Everything stays here.” 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.”
After the first season, there was so much praise for Mo: for how it depicted the Palestinian family, undocumented people, the city of Houston. Have you thought in the time since the first season premiered about what representation can do and what its limitations are?
I operate in the world that I’m in. You can’t just have an all-white show in Houston. That’d be weird. Even white people have diverse friend groups in Houston.
The trip your character takes to Palestine in this season’s finale is influenced by your own first trip back in 2009. What was daunting about re-creating it?
The daunting thing was, “How can we get the footage in Palestine? How can we get actual Burin, the village where my family comes from?” Thankfully, in season one, I sent a camera crew there to get four seconds of my grandparents’ house in Palestine. We had a bunch of leftover footage. And then this season, we sent a camera crew back to get the driving scenes. We don’t want to put any crew in harm’s way. It took about three or four attempts before we actually were able to get that real footage, but we pulled it off. 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.
The driving footage includes shots of the partition wall with a lot of different graffiti, including a portrait of George Floyd. What sort of partition-wall footage did you want?
It was one of those things, like, “Where can we actually film?” I learned that in order to show graffiti, you clear it with the artists. You don’t have the free-for-all to use whatever you want. There was an amount of lawyers to clear 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. My aunt said, “Don’t you dare come,” because I had my son and my wife with me in Oman. You’re right down the street, and you just can’t go.
What felt right about setting the finale to end on the date of October 6, 2023? In that scene, Mo and his family are returning to Houston, and while they’re detained at Ben Gurion Airport, their strip search is interspersed with a montage of the family’s earlier, happier experiences.
I didn’t know to end it on October 6 right out the gate. The intention was to always end it with a semi-smile, and that came from some of my own experiences. I remember being in a taxi, and a soldier put a gun up to my face and I smiled at him. I don’t 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. I’ve been strip-searched to my boxers. The curtain, the color of the room — I re-created the room from memory.
Was it your decision to end the series, and did you feel this was the right time to end?
Let’s see what happens. I’m open to potentially doing a third season. It is such a difficult story for me to tell, emotionally. There’s so much more I want to do and accomplish, and I think there’s so much more to this story. But for now, here is where we have to leave it.
One last question: How did you learn about the cease-fire, and how are you feeling after this news?
I heard about it while I was doing an interview. 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 don’t understand what the holdup is. I really am hopeful that we can be celebratory in some way and have some relief for the people of Gaza. I truly hope that also translates to the West Bank as well, because you can’t just think that it’s over. It’s not over.
