As the third wife of media mogul Logan Roy, Marcia Roy had an incredible role in showing his scheming children her place in the family’s future. Hiam Abbass, who played the unbreakable character Marcia Roy on the HBO series Succession, was a reluctant actor who was first brought into the high-intensity world of television. (Also Read – Jeremy Strong reveals how Succession ‘messed up’ him: ‘No desire to return’ for HBO spin-off)
“This was the first TV show I participated in,” Abbas told Hindustan Times at the recently concluded Ajyal Film Festival in Doha, Qatar. “Before Succession, I was almost anti-television,” says the Palestinian actor, born in Nazareth, Israel.
“I just love the actor’s work in cinema and on stage, like the association with films where you know the beginning and the end. The TV series was a new experience for me, where you’re just like ‘go’, and you don’t,” she says. “I don’t know where you’re going. So it was an interesting learning process.”
“I loved working on the show. I loved the cast, the writers, and the director. I think basically it was one of the most important projects for me on TV,” recalls Abbas, who appeared on all of Succession. Appeared in four seasons. Which ended last year after half a decade of hugely successful international runs, both as a main and recurring character.
palestinian voice
Arguably the most successful Palestinian actor, Abbas played a variety of roles representing Palestinian identity and telling the stories of people who had become refugees in their own land.
She was a Palestinian widow who sued the Israeli Defense Minister for uprooting her lemon trees in Israeli filmmaker Eran Rilklis’s ‘Lemon Tree’ (2008), she portrayed American artist Julian Schnabel’s Arab Children’s House orphanage in Jerusalem in 2010 He played the role of Hind al-Husseini, a Palestinian activist who founded. A tailor in love with a fisherman in Gaza, she discovers romance beneath the business in the film Miral, co-starring Freida Pinto, and the Tarzan Brothers’ Gaza mon amour (2020).
Abbas was also in American director Steven Spielberg’s Munich, about the search for terrorists who murdered Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, Palestinian filmmaker Hany Abu-Assad’s Oscar-nominated Paradise Now, French-Canadian filmmaker Also was in Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049 and The Americans. Remy’s series on immigrant Muslims in the United States, hosted by stand-up comedian Remy Youssef.
Last year, Abbas played herself in her daughter Lina Soulem’s debut documentary, Bye Bye Tiberias, a personal account of four generations of Palestinian women who explore ties to their homeland.
“I am very happy with Bye Bye Tiberias. To be honest, I was very scared because when you expose personal things of your life and think deeply not only about yourself, but also about the people who helped you. And people who are close to you, people who are so deeply connected to their past that it’s hard to be still in the face of it, you know,” Abbas says of the story of her grandmother, her mother, herself and her daughter. .
behind the camera
Abbas stepped behind the camera in 2012 to make her directorial debut, Inheritance, the story of a marriage amid the war between Israel and Lebanon. More than a decade later, as the Middle East continues to grapple with a crippling conflict that has killed 44,000 people in Gaza and displaced more than three million in Gaza and Lebanon, Abbas is leading a collective of Palestinian artists. Are aware of the power of voice.
She says, “You know, I’m not an ambassador of any kind, but I think the most important thing is that this is the voice that I raise, and our voices together will become the Palestinian voice.” “Through cinema and through our work, at least, we were able to lift them up again, and just say, you know, we exist, but we don’t exist the way you want us to.” that we are, but exist as our own voices.” Individually, and we can represent what we’re trying to do.”
Abbas, who lives in Paris, has five films in various stages of production, most of them continuing his representation of Palestinian stories to the world. “Last year I shot four films, which will be released in 2025-26. There are two new films that I am doing early next year. One is a Lebanese film with the Lebanese-French director Danielle Arbid. (Alone with War of) and the second with Argentinian screenwriter-director Santiago Amigorena.”
“Yet another film (All Before You) by Palestinian filmmaker Annemarie Zakir (Salt of This Sea). My character is an old woman who used to be a resistance in the Palestinian revolution. In the film, I live with my husband And my daughter and her daughter. So there’s also a generational thing that happens in the film, but because of my relationship with Annemarie it’s really like a guest appearance,” Abbas says, referring to the acclaimed director’s new project. Are. Peasant revolt against the British in Palestine in 1936.
His new acting roles are keeping Abbas away from directing. “Unfortunately, since I directed The Inheritance, I didn’t have time to develop another. I directed a short film, Le Donne Della Vucciria, for the Prada Miu Miu Women’s Tales series. Prada decided to encourage more female directors to enter the market. I was at number six in the series. I also directed an episode of Raimi. I love it, I would still love to do it, but I can’t find time to develop. It needs all your time.”
Don’t ignore the memory
Abbas entered cinema as a production assistant on a film shot in her own village in Nazareth. Referring to Khalife’s first film, Wedding in Galilee (1997), she says, “(Palestinian filmmaker) Michel Khalife called for anyone involved in the arts to help because we didn’t really have any production company or production house. Wasn’t.”
“And I remember one day he asked me to do a silhouette part that was very small. That’s where I discovered the connection with the camera. I think it was one of the secret reasons hidden inside me that made me Forced to move away from Palestine to seek something different so that, you know, maybe one day we can meet that world.”
“I had a passion for acting since I was young. But I think my relationship with cinema was actually almost like a dream. One day, there was a film that came on in the open air at the central square of my village and I remember I was a very young person, I took a little chair from my parents’ house, put it there and sat on it and I saw something that seemed magical to me.”
On magic, is she going to be involved in the new Harry Potter series announced by HBO, which will be led by Succession creators Francesca Gardiner and Mark Mylod? “No, no, no. They didn’t tell me that, you see, I just learned it from you. I don’t really follow in that sense and I don’t follow people around like ‘Hey, you What are you doing next? Can I do something with you?’ I’m not that kind of actor. I’m not one to judge others, but I work so hard that I’m happy with whatever I get. I’m just lazy and waiting. But I have a deep belief that whatever is meant for me will come to me.”
Abbas’s decision to star in his daughter’s first documentary, Bye Bye Tiberias, came as a catharsis. “Talking about the past was sad because it was so close to all the pain I was living with that separation (my mother’s death). Separation reminds you of another and another and another, and it’s that legacy. What you do is you got all these exiles one after the other and they were given to you despite what you wanted.”
“But today, what I find really interesting is that I would recap this whole experience by saying that I found how important it is for people to be in touch with their stories and how important it is to always know that You are part of a collectivity, and this collectivity, you cannot ignore it. History, memory, may be individual at first, but you are part of a collective memory and we have to always hold on to the idea that we belong to a home. We are not alone in this world.”
