She is enigmatic Marcia Roy in Succession, but as the Egyptian-American mother in the award-winning Ramy, she’s a hoot. The Palestinian actor examines her many-layered roles

You would be hard pressed to find two TV characters in 2021 with less in common than Marcia Roy and Maysa Hassan. The former is the enigmatic, sophisticated wife of billionaire patriarch Logan Roy in the HBO hit Succession. While the series is dominated by huge personalities, she is a mysterious presence – albeit one who is despised by Logan’s children. The latter, on the other hand, is an open book – the unfiltered, sometimes offensively so, Egyptian-American mother of the title character in the Golden Globe-winning comedy Ramy.

But they are played by the same actor, Hiam Abbass, whose ability to switch from calamity to calm speaks to a varied career across theatre, cinema and, latterly, award-winning television series. Though she has lived in Paris since the late 80s, the Palestinian actor was born in Nazareth, Israel, and started her career with the then-burgeoning Palestinian National Theatre, El-Hakawati. Though the company toured Europe, it was far from an easy existence back at home. “The Israeli authorities didn’t like all of the activities happening at our theatre,” explains Abbass, a warm presence who is fluent in English, Arabic, French and Hebrew. “They would come in and close it down. Part of my work there was dealing with how, politically, we could stay open. Travelling to Europe opened my eyes a little to the possibility of breathing some different air. It was hard to work all the time to justify your being.”