Biography

[on what fans think of Oz] What people say about the show is that they can't believe how much it affects them. Long after the show has finished on the air, they are either talking about it or thinking about it, and it always makes them feel something. That is, different things for different people, but all of the things that I hear on the street are excellent. People love this show. That makes me very happy to be a part of something that, in my opinion, has changed the way that America is looking at television today. I am very proud to be a part of that journey.

[on what roles he looks for]I look for good scripts. I don't look for roles. The script touches my mind or my gut. Primary I read and wait for the payoff. Sometimes the first part of the script may just get one click, because there's a beginning, middle, and an end. It doesn't have to be good, and it doesn't have to be bad; I don't have to be a good person or an evil person; I just need a good script that I can relate to. It's that simple.

[on if it was difficult to making the transition from acting in the UK to the US] In the beginning, yes. I had so much I needed to learn about America. I had to learn the accent. I had to learn about American politics, the penal system, and Muslims. I had to learn how to speak some phrases in Arabic. So in the beginning, there was a lot to do, but God blessed me in a way I would never know how to repay him. He put the right people to help me get all of that information, and collated it together, right in front of me.

[on what his favorite role is] Kareem Said, the Muslim prisoner in Oz. As an actor, I like to be in productions that are not frightened to push the envelope. Oz did that, whether it was dealing with religion, sexuality or crime. As far as I'm concerned, the series broke the mold on American TV. Because it was an HBO series, you had to buy it so it wasn't on prime time and could cover all sorts of taboo things that are normally only caught in movies. Series like The Sopranos came after and they all took bits of Oz.

[His favorite storyline from Oz] The one that got a lot of attention was the one where I had a white girlfriend. I like that because all these two people ever did was hold hands and the world ended. So it made me laugh on some level, there's all this controversy and all this reaction and pain that everybody was carrying and these two people just held hands. He was in a prison and he couldn't come out so there was nothing that was ever going to happen. So I saw that was quite funny and ironic.