Zuaiter takes over London
FlipNarrative founder, producer and acclaimed actor Waleed Zuaiter stars in season 2 of the thrilling crime series “Gangs of London”. Zuaiter portrays the terrifying Georgian villain Koba, whose character is set loose on the streets of the English capital to regain control for the powers who ultimately control the London underworld.
Created by Welsh director Gareth Evans, the show is a co-production between the UK’s Sky Atlantic and US entertainment giant AMC. The first season won global acclaim from audiences and critics alike when it debuted in 2020, giving Sky its second most-viewed original drama launch ever, after the multi-award-winning Chernobyl, and became its most-binged show of 2020.
Evans’ ultra-violent trademark style brought a grisly realism to the screen in a manner rarely seen on prime-time TV and season two’s director Corin Hardy, the twisted talent behind horror hits The Hallow and The Nun, took the ruthless nature of this criminal world to new depths.
Waleed Zuaiter stars as ‘Koba’ in Gangs of London Season 2
For Waleed Zuaiter, most recently starring in Hulu’s highly-acclaimed Baghdad Central, but whose lengthy list of credits includes House of Cards, London Has Fallen and the Oscar-nominated feature Omar (which he also produced), the role of Koba was a total break from the norm and a rare opportunity to create a truly complex character. Sporting peroxide blonde hair and an equally ostentatious wardrobe Koba is arguably the wildest new antagonist on TV screens this year; a ruthless, unpredictable, psychotic and peacocking control freak who sees the city as his for the taking and has no issues with breaking unwritten gang codes and targeting his rivals’ families in order to terrorize them into submission.
“I was a big fan of Christoph Waltz in Inglourious Basterds and remember thinking that the character himself was enjoying what he was doing in terms of the villainy of it and the manipulation of people psychologically. To me, that was very much similar to myself with Koba. I’m always more intrigued with characters that are psychologically torturing, to me that’s scarier.” commented Zuaiter in a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
Waleed clearly relished the challenges that came with portraying an Eastern European villain, even though the show allowed him to use his own nationality. “When I booked it, they said that, because I’m Palestinian myself, I could make him Palestinian. I’ve played the Arab bad guy in a lot of things in my career, but I wanted to have fun with this and not have this cultural responsibility, and wanted to just be an artist. So because I had never done the accent before, I just got really specific and found a Georgian in London to record my dialog. And there were these really great mispronunciations of words and emphases in the wrong places. So I really had fun with the cadence and the rhythm.” In a separate interview with the Emirati newspaper The National, Zuaiter elaborates further on breaking out of the Middle Eastern stereotypes and showcasing his talent as an artist. “In my opinion, this show really shows the diversity of what we can do as actors. I hope people get inspired and can really empathize and see themselves in these roles. That they see us and realize that even if you’re from a war-torn country, you can realize your dreams if you're a performer or an actor or an artist. That they think, ’Yeah, I can experience freedom.’ I really hope that what we do encourages others to live out their dreams.”
Gangs of London is showing on AMC, Sky Atlantic, NOW and OSN Middle East
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/waleed-zuaiter-interview-gangs-of-london-1235264025/
https://www.thenationalnews.com/arts-culture/television/2022/10/20/gangs-of-london-waleed-zuaiter-and-narges-rashidi-on-representing-the-middle-east/