A BAHRAINI actor is making waves as the main cast of a trending Netflix television show, which has been on the GCC’s top-10 most-watched series list for the past month.
Actor Ahmed Saeed played the part of Abdulla in the Kuwaiti series She’s Gone with Water, a historical drama that is set in three time periods between 1940 and 2020.
It featured on Netflix’s top-10 list in six countries – reaching the second place in Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Oman and trending three weeks in a row. It also reached sixth place in Qatar and 10th in Jordan.
The story follows Wasmiyah who falls in love with her housekeeper’s son Abdulla, beginning a forbidden relationship with grave consequences that play out for five decades to come.
“Abdulla comes from a modest family and loves a well-to-do woman named Wasmiyah, but society rejects the relationship,” 28-year-old Mr Saeed told the GDN.
“Abdulla starts off as a confident and ambitious young man, but turns into a negative figure when he becomes a reason for the death of his lover.
“As a grandfather, he repeats history by denying his grandson’s wish to marry a woman from a different social standing.”
She’s Gone with Water expands on the plot of the infamous 1986 novel Wasmiyah Leaves the Sea written by Kuwaiti author Laila Al Othman. The controversial book, that also deals with violence against women, was later listed by experts among the top 100 Arabic novels of all time.
Mr Saeed explained how the TV series explores society’s beliefs and practices for each era featured, along with ‘the mistaken ideologies used to justify them.’
“My character represents how life forces someone to be either the best or the worst version of themselves – that’s how Abdulla is portrayed,” he said.
The method-acting Bahraini told the GDN that he enjoyed collaborating with director Mohammed Daham Al Shammari, but also added that the performance was quite challenging as he only had two days to prepare for the role.
“I was supposed to play a different role in the show and I had prepared for it for almost two months, but then the director felt that the part of Abdulla would suit me better,” he said.
“Other challenges were performing the Kuwaiti dialect and perfecting the character’s body language, gestures and behaviours. I also needed to get into the era’s way of thinking and research the time period in order to build on the reality of the incidents portrayed. Unfortunately, available sources can sometimes be inaccurate or too vague.”
This is not the actor’s first appearance on a Netflix series, having been a lead character in The Ten Sins, which was reportedly the first Bahraini production to appear on the international streaming platform.
Earlier this month, the GDN reported that Mr Saeed appeared in an intense theatrical adaptation of a 3,000-year-old Mesopotamian poem. Staged at the Cultural Hall by Al Sawari Theatre, Master and Slave was directly based on the long forgotten parable ‘The Dialogue of Pessimism’ which had been found on ancient clay tablets in Iraq.
She’s Gone with Water is rated for audiences aged 16 and above and all five episodes can be watched on Netflix.
zainab@gdnmedia.bh
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