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EXCLUSIVE: Amir El-Masry didn’t let a dislocated finger prevent him from punching his way to success portraying Sheffield-born British-Yemeni featherweight champion Prince Naseem ‘Naz’ Hamed in Rowan Athale’s movie Giant. El-Masry stars with Pierce Brosnan as Brendan Ingle, the gym owner who discovered Hamed when he was a kid and trained him to be a champ. Giant has been selected to open Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea International Film Festival which runs December 4 – 13. The British-Egyptian actor busted a digit on his left hand before he was due to shoot five boxing scenes. “I was like,”Guys, I have to see a doctor. This finger isn’t right.’” He was in despair but with Brosnan and others in his corner he was allowed to continue filming with the help of painkillers, and a warning not to jab with his left fist. El-Masry is transformed as the prizefighter who boasted an exuberant flair for tacky pizazz in and out of the ring. When I first caught sight of El-Masry on the big screen in full Prince Naz mode, his body bulked up and face all contorted as he’s being pummelled, I wondered was there some CGI trickery going on here? Shaking his head, the actor explains that it’s all him in the picture and he achieved the pugilist’s silhouette in record time having been allowed just four and a half weeks to get into shape. However, he says he’d already started “mentally manifesting it” because he was due to meet with Athale. “It went really well. And I didn’t hear anything from him, so I was like, ‘Let’s get myself to the gym,’ and I hired my own trainers out of my own pocket just because I had a good hunch.“ A fortnight later, Athale called and ordered him to the no frills Peacock Gym in Canning Town, East London. Heavyweight champion Daniel Dubois and many others trained there. “They put me through the wringer, get up at six, go to the gym at seven. Running, cardio workouts, jump rope, then a lot of pad work with Ian Streetz,” who looks quite fierce in the photos I’ve seen of him. “Oh, Ian. He looks like a beast, but he’s such a gentle person,” El-Masry says of the sportsman who is also Jason Momoa’s right hand man. “He does all of the stunts on any film Jason’s on. He’s his personal trainer and he’s the best. He is the crème de la crème of pad artists,” he declares. El-Masry says Streetz was really patient with him and he “always empowered me to make me feel like, ‘Mate, you are doing this in four weeks. You don’t owe anybody anything other than just achieving what we need to get on camera.’ And by doing that, it put me into a comfortable sense of security…He knows how to condition the mind and the body as well. He was really paramount to the process.” During the weeks of training, El-Masry says he was in “tunnel vision, deep into the trenches. No social life, just a very rigorous diet. And I love food. I’m a massive foodie. On my last day, I ordered about 10 boxes of donuts for the stunt team, for everybody. And I wolfed down a box to myself because I was craving sugar. I hadn’t had sugar in about a month and a bit, and it was taking its toll.” The stunt team would check in on weekends and take him out for a run, then watch a movie before heading back to the gym. El-Masry inhabits the character of Naseem so skilfully that at one point in a scene where he’s being offensive to Brendan Ingle, I wanted to punch him myself. The actor reasons that “you have to champion the character that you play and really, really support his ideas, but also give in to the fact that these people are very flawed individuals and that’s what makes them interesting. I think Naz is an interesting character study because he isn’t your out and out Muhammad Ali good boy. He’s the rock star version of that. Whereas Muhammad Ali…you can see how he talks about politics, about life, about love, about…he stood for a lot beyond the ring as well. And Naz had that. He also had it for free. He came out similarly. He lived in a predominantly white area, faced a lot of trials and tribulations off the back of that and overcame them. So in a sense, he doesn’t owe anybody his stance on life because he exerts that anyway.” Another key hire on the film was movement director and choreographer Polly Bennett who he’d worked with on The Crown when he portrayed the younger Mohamed Al-Fayed. Bennett, also worked on Bohemian Rhapsody with Rami Malik and with Timothée Chalamet on the Bob Dylan movie A Complete Unknown. “It’s essential for an actor, not just to get their accent or the intonations right…movement’s actually a thorough character study into finding what makes him tick, what doesn’t make him tick, how he acts with people that don’t know him versus people that do,” El-Masry says. “And a lot of our work involves archive footage. So we would watch a lot of videos, be it from Mohamed Al-Fayed, for example. With Al-Fayed, we had archive footage of him in personal spaces and public spaces. And you see differences behind that. And I think it’s essential. It’s another part of your artillery to have a movement director, not just a director on board,” he argues. What did he learn from Bennett about playing a fighter? “With Naseem, there were little moments that you see when he enters the ring. Little moments when he starts up…how he moves. Polly thinks of an animal, based on what animal is he to you. Does he come across as a snake or more of a crocodile, or is he more like a leopard?,” is the question. I suggest a gazelle because Prince Naz moves with lightning speed in the ring. “So I always thought he was more of a gazelle in the ring because he was unorthodox and unpredictable and gazelles are quite jumpy,” El-Masry explains. “But outside of that, I saw him like a snake when he’s just around his friends, when he puts on the prince voice, when he puts on the Naz voice, he’s not the Naseem Hamed that his parents know. The bravado, all of that stuff. It’s very smooth and very kind of, what’s the word, swaggery.” As he says this he stretches his neck and moves his shoulders appropriating the stance of a viper. Then when Naseem’s with his parents, he goes into little boy mode. El-Masry nods. “I think he’s like a cub. His parents are ultimately the people that he respects. Mum’s the word, so to speak.” There’s a scene where his mother Caira Hamed, played by Elika Ashoori (Art Is Dead) does an intervention between Naseem and Brendan. “You can see him regressing into this child and his mum is like, ‘You apologize now.’ And he says, ’Sorry,’ sheepishly. So he’s still a kid, but he’s been put onto this massive stage where he has to be world champion.” Prince Naz is a fighter “who sacrifices his boxing skills for showmanship,” is how the New York Times put it when the champ put on an elaborate show in Madison Square Gardens. He still won and the punters screamed for more cabaret. El-Masry’s sanguine about such behaviour because “boxing is entertainment and it’s meant to put bums on seats and how do we draw people in by our entrances and exits and our performance style. I think Brendan taught him a rigorous system and then he riffed off the back of that.” About that finger. A round of boxers visited the set including former cruiserweight champion Johnny Nelson. The stuntman with El- Masry in the ring, suggested they put on a show. “He goes, ’Let’s give it to them…You can hit me if you want.’ I said, ‘You sure?’ He goes, ‘Let’s just do it for this one take.’ Bless him. He had his best intentions at heart. He forgot to put his elbow up. And I whacked his elbow with my left hand and I didn’t have my pads” and the finger just popped out of its socket. The room went silent. El-Masry was in shock. “I couldn’t see my finger at that point…I said, ‘Guys, I need to see a doctor. This finger isn’t right.’ Johnny Nelson got up, everybody got up. They were like, ‘Is he okay? Is he okay?’” Ian Streetz was in a corner laughing. “And he’s like, ‘This is one for the books. You’ve now entered the big leagues. Every fighter has to break something or dislocate something, so this is great.’ I was like, ‘No! This isn’t great.’” After which, Streetz offered to pop the finger into place. El-Masry rejected the kind offer but there was method in the trainer’s merriment. “But when he was doing that, he distracted me and the on set doctor just went, pop and it was done. It was a loud pop.” Did he scream, I ask sympathetically. “Oh, yes. I think I screamed from the noise of it more than the actual pain. Oh, it was loud,” he says grimacing at the memory of the calamity. El-Masry says he pleaded with the physician to be allowed to continue. “And I got really emotional. I said, ‘Please, this whole film is resting on this week, please.’” They reached a compromise when El-Masry showed the doc that he could still move his hand and he was allowed to fight another day. “Well, I hugged him,” El-Masry says smiling. El-Masry recalls that when he injured his finger, Brosnan could see the look of devastation on the younger actor’s face. “He came over to me, he hugged me, and he was like, ‘Health is wealth. Be grateful that you are here. Your family love you. In a week’s time doesn’t mean anything.’” The former James Bond, and Mamma Mia! movie song and dance man has clearly made a deep impression on El-Masry. He talks about them having lunch between takes one day when Brosnan took a call from his agent that left him shaking. “He was like, ‘Oh, thank you. Thank you, Jesus,’” El-Masry recalls. Concerned, he asked if Brosnan was okay? “He goes, ’I just found out I’m going to be working with Helen Mirren and I’m going to be working with Ben Kingsley on The Thursday Murder Club.’ And I looked at him, I’m like, ‘They’re going to be working with you, Pierce. What are you talking about?’ “And he said, ‘Oh, it’s just to be 70 and to still be working and to be doing things. I’m just so thankful.’ “That’s what it’s about,” El-Masry marvels. “This man has played one of the most iconic characters in history, and he’s still grateful to be working.” Brosnan was also at that time about to shoot the Paramount+/ 101 Studios hit, MobLand, also with Mirren and Tom Hardy. “It says to me that Pierce has good people around him. And it says to me that he has people that have grounded him throughout the years. He’s always looking at the bigger pictures, but also a man that has also gone through a lot. He’s come out the other side and gone, ‘No, in the grand scheme of things, this isn’t what life is about.’ And I think when you hold that mantra in your head, you’re going to be happy. You’re going to succeed in all facets of your life.” El-Masry feels ”super lucky to have played” Naseem who was “one of my idols growing up.” The stakes were high, he insists, because it “was one of those moments of, ‘What if we don’t get this right?’ …because he’s such an iconic person, even to this day, for so many people, in so many communities.” The star didn’t meet with Prince Naz and the producers advised that he should decline an offer to meet with one of the fighter’s sons in case it might have hindered his interpretation. However, the former champ has seen the film twice after Athale went over to Dubai to screen it for him. Then Prince Naz showed the film to his wife and apparently she loved it. Brendan Ingles family have been associated with the film from the beginning. El-Masry visited Brendan’s son John Ingles at their family-owned gym in Sheffield. When El-Masry and I met several years ago to discuss Ben Sharrock’s film Limbo, where he played a Syrian refugee seeking asylum, we talked about him hankering for roles that aren’t defined by race whether it be a doctor, lawyer or whatever. Even though he now has a string of credits to his name such as The Night Manager, Faithless and the second season of The Agency, I’m curious to know if he feels it’s worked out for him. “I don’t know,” he responds. “To tell you the truth, I think I’m very, very lucky to be in a space where it’s already hard for any actor to be competing in, really. Few productions are being made. The money’s not as smooth. You couldn’t make Limbo now, he reasons. “I reckon if Ben Sharrock went back to make Limbo now, they would’ve been like, ‘Oh yeah, but who’s Amir? Let’s get…And that’s the problem.” He says that when he was part of BAFTA’s Breakthrough Brits “they said, can you name me five people that you would like as your mentor? And I said, well, there’s no one who’s on my track above me, who is British-Middle Eastern. Omar Sharif is. I was blessed to have met him.” Sighing, El-Masry says: “I think it’s a mixture of no one owes you anything, honestly. No one owes me anything. And on the flip side, you don’t owe them either. So you can be in those spaces, in those conversations, you go, ‘Why not? Why not me?’ But you’ll always be a wild card, I think until there are decision makers who will champion diversity, you’ll always have to be not, just the best in the room, in the audition… you have to be better than the best for them to have a look to see you.” El-Masry praises Dan Jackson the casting director at Kahleen Crawford Casting, who cast him in Limbo. Jackson had contacted him about a BBC drama series called Vigil. “Dan called me and he was like, ‘Look, it’s a fun series, but you’ve never played just a normal guy called Daniel who’s an MI5 intelligence officer. Let me pitch you to the producers for it.’” Jackson came back and explained that the powers that be wanted a “named white actor for it,” El-Masry says. “And he fought. He was like, ‘Have you not seen Limbo?’” El-Masry ended up auditioning. “And still, it was a conversation, but he fought tooth and nail for me to do it. And then I got it. And then they were like, ‘Alright, so let’s change the name now to something more ethnic sounding.’” There was back and forth over whether El-Masry should keep the character’s name of Daniel Ramsay. “If anything, I want it to be a case where we don’t even have to think about that. And I eventually did it, and they were very happy and they asked me to come back for another season. Sadly, I couldn’t do it. But I think it just takes one person to fight your corner, and then it becomes a domino effect eventually. “So am I satisfied? I’m very grateful, and I think I have a lot of people championing me,” he states while noting that one of his champions is filmmaker Julia Jackman who cast him in 100 Nights of Hero which was the closing night film at the recent BFI London Film Festival. “Ever so slowly it is happening,” he says of the possibility of being cast because he’s right for the role. “I am very positive about everything and it’s also time to take the reins as well, and to not complain,” noting the launch of his own production company Helm World Productions, which is co-producing with Branwen Prestwood Smith and Heather Rabbatts a film called Shorelines with Hany Abu-Assad (Omar,Huda’s Salon) attached to direct. El-Masry came on it as a producer with Helm World co-founder Alannah Olivia. “I had brought on Hany and I brought on a lot of other pieces so Branwen was like, ‘Do you want to do this with me? Let’s just do it. Let’s just make it a team effort.’” He says, “That’s what it’s about. We’re trying to empower, and champion voices that are maybe unsung, let’s say.” I ask El-Masry to tell about meeting Omar Sharif on his 18th birthday. His father was in Paris on business when he spotted the legendary star of David Lean’s epic classic Lawrence of Arabia sitting in a hotel lobby. ”My dad has no social inhibitions whatsoever,” he discloses with a broad smile. His father approached Sharif to tell him that his son is a big fan. “My dad says to Omar, ‘Can my son just talk to you on the phone?’ ‘Yes, sure.’ So I’m on the phone from London with Omar Sharif, neither of us know what to say to one another. And he’s like, ‘Really good to hear from you, Amir. Good luck.’” Cut to a couple of hours later and Amir’s on a Eurostar to Paris where his father meets him and whisks him away to an hotel in Deauville where the father persuades Sharif to leave his room to meet them. “My dad rushes over. He’s like, ‘Hi, Omar. Look, my son is here now.He would absolutely love to sit with you.’ Omar looked at me. He looked at my dad, and I think in his eyes, he was like, ’The lengths of what a father would do.’ And he hugged me and he grabbed me like a grandfather and sat me on his lap. He’s like, ’Wow, your dad does love you.’…The way you’re going to get on this industry is by being lucky and you make your luck, so why don’t go to my premiere this evening instead of me?“ Sharif handed the teen his tickets for the gala of his film Hasan wa Murqus. “It was probably one of the best moments of my life,” he says of that enchanted evening that saw him seated next to the film’s producer Ahmed Mohamed Helmy who ended up offering him an audition for the film Ramadan Mabrouk Abu Elalamain Hamouda. “I got the role and next thing I know, a couple of months later, I’m in the on the set in Egypt for my first ever film,” El-Masry says with pride. El-Masry wrote Sharif a letter “and I said, because of you, I landed my first role. And that moment of you saying, ‘Make your luck,’ that’s stayed with me.”
