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Mo Amer on Making His Palestinian Refugee Comedy ‘Mo’ and Highlighting Houston with Bun B
Selome Hailu SPOILER ALERT: Do not read if you haven’t watched Season 1 of “Mo” on Netflix. As I finish interviewing comedian Mo Amer and ask him if there’s anything else he’d like to talk about, he says, “I don’t have a lean addiction, nor have I ever been addicted to lean. I keep saying that every chance I can, because it gets weird out here.” It’s an important distinction to make, as the mixture of prescription cough syrup, soda and candy has killed many, especially in Houston, where Amer grew up. He is the co-creator, executive producer and star of “Mo,” a comedy-drama series that heavily draws from his true experiences as a refugee — his parents were displaced from Palestine to Kuwait where Amer was born, before the whole family fled to Texas during the Gulf War. Several of the show’s most painful moments — like when, 20 years after his father’s death from a heart attack, is looking over paperwork with his immigration lawyer (Lee Eddy) and finds out for the first time that his father was captured and tortured during the war — are lifted directly from Amer’s life. But when Mo begins sipping lean to cope with an injury he sustains in Episode 1 — Amer says that’s all for the plot.
