Osamah Sami is an award-winning actor, comedian, writer, and poet. Like Iranian-American actress and comedian Tara Grammy, Sami presents a different side of Iranian immigrants using lighthearted comedy.
Sami has written an award-winning memoir, Good Muslim Boy (2015), the feature film Ali’s Wedding (2017), and the play adaptation Good Muslim Boy (2018). As both a scriptwriter and an actor for the stage and screen, Sami often performs in the creations he pens.
Osamah Sami: Stage and Screen Actor, Scriptwriter
In 2005 Sami played Saddam Hussein in The Trial of Saddam. His father actually wrote the Arabic musical-comedy and the cast rehearsed in a local mosque. However, an attempt to tour the U.S. with the play ended with deportation due to the government mistaking them for terrorists. The event would later have a scene in Sami’s film Ali’s Wedding.
“It was too much for the American officials to digest that Osamah and Ali and Mustafah had come to America to do Saddam – the Musical,” Sami joked with the Melbourne Theatre Company. “They wouldn’t believe us.”
In 2009 Sami played the lead role in playwright Hassan Abdulrazzak’s Baghdad Wedding at Australia’s Belvoir theatre. Sami performed as Salim, an Iraqi man who got a medical degree, wrote a novel, and had an affair with a man while in London. After the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, Salim must return home to get married.
In director Dee McLachlan’s comedy film 10 Terrorists! (2012), Sami played the Persian activist Azim. In the film, a Los Angeles producer creates an extreme reality show in which 10 “wannabe terrorists” compete for a $1 million prize.
The actor-writer also penned the comedic miniseries Two Refugees and a Blonde (2015). The 10-episode season follows three roommates, an “outspoken blonde” and two “erratic Muslim refugees,” who attempt to live together.
In 2015 Sami starred in Melbourne Theatre Company’s I Call My Brothers. He played Amor, a young Muslim navigating life after 9/11. Sami earned a nomination for a Green Room Award for Best Male Performer in a Lead Role in 2016.
Osamah Sami was close to his Father
Sami was born in Qom, Iran in 1983. His father was an Iraqi Shiite cleric who had been a political prisoner under Saddam Hussein. Sami’s mother, from Iran’s Kurdish ethnic group, met Sami’s father in an Iranian refugee camp.
In 1997 Sami immigrated to Australia with his family at 12 years old. Sami’s father started teaching Arabic literature in Melbourne, where he ran the local mosque.
“[My father] taught me to be free, to be myself, and to be true to myself,” Sami said. “Without his guidance and wisdom and friendship I wouldn’t be able to put one frame of [Ali’s Wedding] on the screen, and I wouldn’t be one per cent of the man I am today, really.”
Sami speaks English, Farsi, and Arabic. He has two daughters.
Osamah Sami writes “Good Muslim Boy” and “Ali’s Wedding”
Good Muslim Boy (2015) is Sami’s memoir. In 2016, the book won the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Award. Australia’s Victorian Government also Highly Commended the memoir at the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards that same year.
Ali’s Wedding (2017) is a movie adaptation of Good Muslim Boy and the first Muslim-Australian romantic comedy. The film follows the eldest son of a Muslim cleric who lies about attending school to become a doctor. At the same time, he enters an arranged marriage whilst in love with an Australian-Lebanese girl from school. Sami both co-wrote and starred in the autobiographical feature film.
Ali’s Wedding premiered at the Sydney Film Festival where it won the audience award for Best Narrative Feature. Sami won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 2017. He was also nominated for Best Lead Actor.
“It’s a film for everybody,” Sami told Australia’s Special Broadcasting Service. “It could have been a Chinese story, it could have been a Ukrainian story. But at the end of [the day], it’s an Australian story.”
Sami next co-wrote his play, Good Muslim Boy (2018), which continues the storyline of Ali’s Wedding. In fact, the actor-writer starred as himself at the Malthouse Theatre Company and Queensland Theatre. In the play, Sami escapes marriage trouble in night clubs and drug circles. But he faces trouble getting back home after his father books them a trip to Iran as an intervention.
The play featured on the 2018 Victorian certificate of education drama playlist.
“It feels like [my life] but it’s its own story as well,” Sami told The Guardian. “Writing the play was a bizarre experience because I am removed from some of these events in terms of time – some parts of the play happened in my childhood – so it’s kind of memories.”
