We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Yaser Salamah a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Yaser, thanks for joining us today. Has your work ever been misunderstood or mischaracterized?
Absolutely. One of the unfortunate inevitabilities of being a visibly Arab actor is getting auditions for, or directly offered, roles that perpetuate very harmful stereotypes. In my first year and a half or so auditioning in LA, I got an audition for a wife-beater because, according to the casting director, I “looked the part,” I was directly offered the role of a child brutally murdered by insurgents in Arab North Africa, and I received another audition to play someone who was, to quote the character description, “a full-blown terrorist.” I declined all three of these “opportunities” outright. When I moved to LA, I promised myself that under no circumstances would I every play a character labeled a “terrorist.” I intend to stick to that promise. These three moments, while unfortunate, only hardened that resolve and made me recommit to my purpose for coming to LA in the first place – to be one cog in the wheel that improves and changes Muslim and Arab representation in the media. Perpetuating trauma porn and stereotypes of terrorism and domestic violence must end with me and this new generation of artists.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I’m an Arab and Muslim actor living in Los Angeles dedicated to uplifting marginalized voices! I was born in SoCal, but moved to North Carolina when I was 11 years old. My freshman year of high school out there, I took a theatre class almost on a whim. I went to Drama Club begrudgingly, and auditioned for the school play mostly because my friends did. But, by the time I graduated high school, I had performed in 12 plays and musicals in my high school, plus 3 community theatre shows and 2 self-produced productions out of my living room, I had gone from an active member of the Drama Club, to the Vice President, to the Co-President, and had earned a scholarship for acting at Wake Forest University. I went on to major in Psychology and Theatre and graduated with honors in Theatre for my writing, direction, and performance of my 80-minute solo show, “Toler(h)ated: Muslim in America,” still up on YouTube, in which I tell stories of my experiences as a Muslim growing up in a post 9/11 America.
Shortly after performing Toler(h)ated, one of 10 productions I performed in during my time in college, I got my degrees and picked up and left the state I had spent the last ten years of my life in. Leaving behind most of my family, most of my friends, most everyone I knew, for a dream. The classic, corny, movie plot. I was a Host and a Waiter at Denny’s, working the overnight shift, trying to keep my days open to audition. I had every intention to work that job, or similar ones, for years while I plugged away and kept throwing myself against the same wall we all throw ourselves at, desperately looking for some handhold to grab onto. I was tired and overworked, but my love for this new city and the delusions of grandeur carried me through. All I wanted to call myself “successful” was to be able to pay my bills by acting – that would be enough. That wouldn’t just be enough, that would have been a literal dream come true. I was happy to waste away at an overnight diner if it meant one day, I could get to that goal. What I never expected, was to book a short film in less than a month of working at the restaurant. One day, one paycheck, nothing financially stable by any means – but it served as a reminder that I *could* get there. And I got to work with Bassem Youssef, who for Arabs, is as much a household name as Jon Stewart. I’m still friends with much of the cast and crew from that short to this day. And of course we had no idea at the time, but this short film, Upsidedown, directed by Razan Ghalayini, would go on to be selected for the Tribeca Film Festival, the second most prestigious festival in the US, months later. That was an unbelievable experience – walking the red carpet and watching myself on screen in the same block of shorts that saw names like Alden Ehrenreich and Tom Holland starring in their own shorts, separated from Upsidedown by a matter of minutes – still one of the most unreal experiences of my life.
In the meantime, though, between filming and the premiere (about 10 months), my life would change so drastically in ways I never could have anticipated. Just one month after booking Upsidedown, I auditioned for, and booked, Stranger Things: The Experience, an immersive improv-based acting job, where I played a Hawkins High School student, who walked around a mall-like area, pulling up to 1000 people per night into improvised storylines, crafted by myself and 5 other actors every night. For 5 months, this became my full-time job. Asking for advice about Prom, staging breakups and arguments, passing out newspapers and talking about the biggest box office hits of 1986. At the end of that run, I had made so many lifelong friends, people who have genuinely reshaped my perspective on life, on acting, on LA, on what can be accomplished in this city. I will never not be grateful for what happened in those 5 months. Nearly every job I have worked since (18, as of this writing) has been in part because of my time at Stranger Things. Be it the experience it granted me, the connections I could pull on, or just having a friend plugging my name in the right place at the right time.
I’ve been immeasurably blessed to have had this much success in such a short amount of time. I arrived in LA in August of 2022. And since November of 2022, I have found that success I thought was a pipe dream – all of my income has come from performing. With that came terrible sacrifices. I’ve worked stretches of 28 days without a day off, I’ve worked 70+ hour weeks, I’ve had consecutive months of bleeding thousands of dollars, I had to work 16 hours on my birthday, I worked through my favorite holidays, and I couldn’t afford the plane ticket to see my family for Eid. But at the end, it always manages to balance out. I have found consistent work in a lot of immersive acting jobs, which I have loved dearly. And for all the lows, the highs are higher than anything I’ve experienced before in my life.
As for what comes next, I hope to continue the success I’ve had and help pull others up alongside me. I’ve begun finding more gigs on camera as well, and hope I can make that shift in a more significant and sustainable way over the next stretch of time. With all that in mind, my roommates and I are in the process of building our own production company, whose first movie, Freeman’s Pass, is in the final stages of post-production. I was one of the lead actors in it, a moving and beautifully shot western. A short I’ve been writing is slated to potentially be the next film we work on, which has been super exciting! Nothing I have accomplished has been from me alone. Call it blessings, call it luck, for the earliest successes, but the friends and connections I have made have led to much of what’s come to me. And working with friends and roommates to try and expand those opportunities for ourselves and for others feels good, to say the least.
And extremely important to note is the unending, unconditional, and unequivocal support from my mother. For the 20+ plays I did in school, she never missed a single one. She flew across the country to see me perform in Stranger Things: The Experience. She flew up to NYC to meet me and walk the red carpet alongside me at the premiere of Upsidedown. I don’t think I would have been able to accomplish even a percent of what I have without the love and support from her. She helped me believe in my ability, she instilled a work ethic in me that has been my saving grace, and as recently as yesterday, she was encouraging me over the phone, congratulating me for my most recent booking, and always asking when and where she can watch the different projects I’ve been a part of. I know not everyone has such an incredible support system, and I will never be able to sing this woman’s praises enough. My mother Delinda Otto truly is a godsend.
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
I touched on this earlier, but wanted to expand on it. I chose to pursue acting for a few reasons. Of course, I love it, and I think I’m good enough at it to give it a shot. But the memory that lights the fire underneath me, and what gets me through the hardest days of work, is remembering that I’m doing this to give this generation of Arab and Muslim kids the representation I never had – including my 8 nephews and nieces. The first time I saw a character named “Yaser” on screen, he was labeled a “terrorist,” and a cop shot him in the head before the credits rolled. I was 7 years old. The next time I saw a character named Yaser on screen, I was playing him. I was 22 years old. I got to reclaim my own name for myself. And for the several shorts I’ve done, and for the over 200,000 people I have performed for live over the last year and a half, I hope to have shifted at least some perspectives, and helped others reclaim their heritage. When the 6 year old girl walked away from my performance and said something excitedly to her mom about me being Muslim, when I made a lifelong friend by greeting them with “Salaam” in character and they connected with me after the performance, when Arab kids and adults alike walk up to me seeing that I wear a Palestinian keffiyeh during my performances to thank me for showing support – those moments remind me why I’m here. And they show me that I’m actually accomplishing that goal. Now, it’s just a matter of expanding that reach, or at least continuing forward doing what I am now.
Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?
Consistency in this field is nonexistent. I currently am working two steady performance jobs, but they are both slated to end within 6 weeks of this writing. One will go on hiatus and resume in about 3 months, the other is just over, but having run for 5-6 months, was a really, really long job. In fact, it’s the second-longest running job I have had as an actor. You may hear someone who says every couple weeks that they got work, they booked a gig, they found a job, but usually, that work lasts 1-3 days. What is most exhausting about being an actor is your main job is scrolling through websites you paid to subscribe to (imagine Indeed, but there’s three of them and you have to pay to actually apply to anything). Talking to people with office jobs about it, I find myself envying the steadiness of work, but simultaneously, I think the monotony of it would eat away at me. I spoke about this with one of my roommates and best friends. We chose this field because we had to. We cannot imagine ourselves in a world where we are not creating. We would be miserable without this outlet, no matter what our bank accounts said. When given the choice of miserable businessman or starving artist, we both would choose the starving artist path any day. And there is literally no way to know if or when you’ll have your “big break.” There’s a shocking amount of randomness to this industry. No tried and true method, no way to guarantee career-long success. A combination of hard work, yeah, but also luck, timing, and connections. No consistency and no rules. That, or I’m too new to it to have found the pattern yet! It’s exciting, but it is admittedly exhausting and draining.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://linktr.ee/YaserSalamah
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yaser_salamah/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@yasersalamah4765
Image Credits
Katie Fox
Adriana Henrichs
Ros Fiol