We sat down with Mourad Zaoui while attending the TIFF Red Carpet event The Big Splash. We talked about his career, including his role in The Forgiven.
Horror Geek Life: Thank you for taking the time to talk with me.
Mourad Zaoui: My pleasure, thanks for chatting with me. This is great, I’m like a kid in a candy store!
HGL: So how has the journey been for you as an actor, from when you started to where you are now, here at TIFF?
MZ: Wow. Well, I thought I made the decision to become an actor in my late teens. But, I was talking to a cousin of mine not too long ago, and he said I told him, when I was nine and he was eight — we had just watched a martial arts movie, and I did martial arts, I was also a brown belt at the time — and I told him, okay, it’s decided, I’m going to become an actor. Both my parents worked, I don’t come from a rich family so they couldn’t afford a nanny to watch me, so my dad would leave work, pick me up from school, take me to the apartment. Between five and seven, waiting for my mom to come home, I would be by myself, and I would just watch VHS tapes. I must have watched Superman about 300 times, Mad Max, Star Wars, Conan the Barbarian… I fell in love with movies early. I used to think of those films as my family.
HGL: When did the fantasy become a reality for you, becoming an actor?
MZ: I grew up in Morocco, we don’t really have a movie industry, so you telling your parents you want to be an actor is like a Canadian kid telling his parents, I want to be an alien and go live on Jupiter. People literally looked at me like I was crazy, but that was later, I couldn’t even admit it to myself as a teenager. I had a conversation about becoming an actor, my doubts, and was told, if you want to be an actor, do it, and if it doesn’t work out, at least you tried. So, I joined a theater troupe, started doing theater, commercials, and then I booked my first lead role in a Moroccan feature film called Walk Up Morocco in 2005. I then worked quite a bit in Europe, France, Germany, England, Italy, I even did a chick movie, Libas jako dabel, You Kiss Like The Devil.
In 2013, I was contacted by this casting director out of the blue, to come to LA to audition for a role on this new HBO pilot and a week later, I was signed by Media Talent Group. They asked me if I had an agent or manager and I said no, so someone put me in touch with Martin Torres, at the time he managed Angelina Jolie, Nicole Kidman, for the Media Talent Group. He said, if this deal with HBO happens, I’ll take care of it. We went to lunch, I told him my dream to work in Hollywood and told him, if you sign me, I’ll stay in LA. Three years later, I asked him, Martin, I know you don’t take on new clients, why did you take me and he said, because I thought you weren’t going to stay. (laughs) He said I just said yes to get you off my back.
It was tough, though, I wasn’t booking anything. For example, there was this TV show, I’m not going to mention which one, where I auditioned eleven times for eleven different roles, and then they gave me a role, one of my agents called me Sunday afternoon and said, they gave it to you, tomorrow they are going to make us an offer and I hung up and cried, tears of happiness because I hadn’t worked in three years. So, we were waiting for the offer, they were supposed to call at 6 pm the next day, they didn’t, so my agent got a hold of the casting director who said I’m sorry, I love Mourad but the producers found a local hire. However, if I had booked this role in The Forgiven four or five years ago, I wouldn’t have been as good, because that journey, those rejections, it made me realize that being on set is a privilege. It’s work, but also a privilege, you have to cherish it and if it came easy, if you didn’t work for it, it really has no value.
HGL: How have you enjoyed your time here at TIFF?
MZ: It’s been amazing, I’ve been walking around smiling and laughing, and stuttering, which for me is a rare thing (laughs). After the premiere of The Forgiven, I smiled and laughed so much my face was hurting, and then I went to my room exhausted and cried for two hours, from emotions, from happiness, I let out all the struggles, all the emotions. We shot the movie over two years ago, and I hadn’t seen it. I didn’t know how it was, if it was good, if I was good, so all that anxiety and waiting, it was like a big release.
It is also my first time in Canada, and I love this country. When I was a kid, I had two posters of Newfoundland, one in the winter, one in the summer. For me, it was magical, this Newfoundland place, it’s in Canada, okay, I want to live there so for me, Canada was that. It looked like Narnia or The Shire, this magical country where magic was happening and I still love it. First time in Canada, my first time in Toronto, and really, I’m more excited about being in Canada than I am about being at TIFF.
I want to thank Mourad for taking the time to speak with us.
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