Yahoo News Omar Ayuso Talks Return to ‘Elite’ and the Moral Responsibility He Feels Playing a Gay Muslim Character
The fictional high school of Las Encinas continues to be a playground for murderous mischief as the Spanish teen drama Elite made its return to Netflix on Oct. 20. Now in its seventh season, the series has added new characters to the salacious mix — Brazilian singer Anitta being among them — and brought back a member of the original ensemble cast, Omar Ayuso, who starred as Omar Shanaa from seasons one through five.
“One day by chance, we were on a train, and I asked him if he would be willing to come back,” says screenwriter, director and producer Carlos Montero, who created the series with Darío Madrona. “We gave him a protagonist role and we felt in debt to Omar because he always pulled out all the stops with our show. We love his character very much and we wanted to give him the importance we think he deserved.”
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Elite has been praised for its progressive representation of sexuality and identity over its past six seasons, with subplots exploring subjects such as rape, sexual health, sexual orientation and the criminal justice system amid the overarching theme of the haves and the have nots as scholarship students at the private school set in Madrid, Spain, struggle to fit in with their wealthy classmates. For Montero, striking the right balance between drama and character development has been key to avoid falling into the pitfall of stereotypes and recycled storylines for the TV show, which he says is among the first in Spain to delve into such once-taboo topics in a front-facing and provocative way.
“The good thing about having eight chapters is that you can keep balancing,” he says of the series, which is set to end next season. “This is a season where mental health is very important. We have Omar, an old student coming back to high school, and he’s very much mauled by Samuel’s (Itzan Escamilla) death. It’s something that he just cannot get over and he comes into the high school to try and help other people.
“All of the characters are going to be affected by this,” Montero adds. “On the outside, they seem happy, but inside they are very hurt.”
Ayuso had an internal battle of his own to grapple with as he was considering a return to the series. “Preparing to come back was more a personal struggle than a professional one,” he tells The Hollywood Reporter in the conversation below. “I had this feeling like I had failed an independent project, but it took some time for me to understand that Elite 7 was like an independent, different project from the first one and my success as an actor doesn’t depend on whether I do something that is similar to what I did before or not.”
The similarities between Ayuso and his character Shanaa, both of whom are gay men with Arab backgrounds living in Spanish societies, also made reentering the world of Elite a somewhat easy decision.
“When building your character, you are actually building an audiovisual role model in fiction on a national and international level,” Ayuso says. “Being able to be that role model and to play that role model is something that is really special.”
How does it feel to be back and promoting Elite again?
It’s something that I actually like and it’s a part of the job. I like it because it helps me think. Having to develop answers forces me to generate criteria around subject matters and discourse around topics, defend things and stand for things related to the series and some not. We live in times of such numbness where we only use our mobile phones and TikTok or whatever, and I think it’s good to take time to find space for thinking.
What did Carlos say to you the day you ran into each other on the train that convinced you to return to the series?
We started joking and we had this conversation about what it would be like and suddenly he was like, “I mean it. If you want to come back, you can come back,” and then I asked him if I could have some time to think about it. He gave me two weeks and I came back to him with a yes, but I can’t tell you that it was anything specific that he said.
When you first joined the series, you spent two months with the director, Ramón Salazar, to fully absorb the character. Talk about that time a little bit.
I have wonderful memories about those rehearsal times. It was one to one-and-a-half months and we were a bunch of actors who had never worked before and the ones who had worked had done different types of projects. It was a process of creating characters. It wasn’t so much rehearsing scenes. We went deeper into the past, into the souls, the wounds that our characters had through different dynamics and exercises. We created a series of music playlists which would be each character’s playlist. It was very beautiful. I remember it as a very effervescent time in the sense that we didn’t know what we were going to do. Now, Elite is Elite, but when we started, Elite was nothing. We didn’t know where we were headed. We all had this enthusiasm for the job. I had just graduated from university, and I was entering this new world all of a sudden. So, this kind of innocence, excitement, motivation, and lack of technique, made it like a kind of school. In fact, Ramón was my first acting teacher.
What did preparing to step back into Omar’s world look like?
Preparing to come back was more a personal struggle than a professional one. I had to fight some absurd prejudices I had within me. I had this false sense of failure like when you go back to live with your parents. You know what I mean? I had this feeling like I had failed an independent project, but it took some time for me to understand that Elite 7 was like an independent, different project from the first one and my success as an actor doesn’t depend on whether I do something that is similar to what I did before or not. I can do several projects that are related, and it doesn’t mean I failed. Once I fought that, finding Omar in me was very easy because it’s a character that I’ve been playing for seven years, so he comes out alone. The baseline, the scripts, the story is something I know very well. The point that he’s at this season, dealing with the illness of depression, the healing process of depression, it’s a process that I lived a while ago. So, the emotional and psychological language is something I understand, and I can convey in a very consistent and honest way because I’ve been there.
Is it strange for you sharing your real name with this character?
It’s funny you mention it, because it is strange. In the beginning I didn’t think it would be, but over time I’ve learned that it does affect me. There’s the language and the words and it has a power over you. And you know, all these emotional processes that he goes through is something that has a deeper effect than other characters I have been able to perform. The reality is that I’m closer to him for other reasons, too. I’m gay, I come from a small town, I have an Arab background, my father is from Morocco, he’s not Palestinian, but he is from Morocco, and even though my family isn’t as conservative as his family and I didn’t have such a hard time coming out, I can relate to many things from that character. It’s funny how a name can have an effect on you. I’ve done theatre plays where I played my character and I was able to disconnect and with another one I played in a film, but there’s more magic than you may think in sharing the name with your character.
Omar represents a lot for Muslim communities, for the LGBTQ community, what has it been like seeing the response from audiences to this character?
You do feel a responsibility as an actor in building up the character and conveying certain things for a character with a certain reality. There’s a moral responsibility. You have to be honest; you have to start from an honest point, especially if you’re talking about a minority that has been marginalized over time. Everything you do has to help them eventually get to a better place. I would say in my day-to-day life, being a gay man in Spain, it’s also a responsibility I feel in how I behave myself. There’s great beauty in the feedback from the fans. I think one of the few things that you can say is great from social media is that you receive messages from faraway cultures that have nothing to do with you, from people you don’t know and they convey the difficulties of trying to be who they feel they are and realizing that your job may mean so much in the life of other people is something that is really rewarding.
When building your character, you are actually building an audiovisual role model in fiction on a national and international level. Being an openly gay actor that is free in real life and in fiction is something that we need so much while growing up and also in our lives as adults. It’s role models that I didn’t have as much when I grew up, that my mother didn’t have at all. So being able to be that role model and to play that role model is something that is really special.
Your onscreen sister, Mina El Hammani, is coming back in season eight. Have you talked about her return?
Mina is my friend in real life, and I’ve kept in touch with her. We’ve already shot some scenes together in season eight and I think there is just some kind of poetic justice to close the circle together. It’s the best thing that could happen to me to finish the final season with her. And Mina’s coming back means my parents’ characters have come back, too. So, to be back with the family that we started with in that fruit shop in season one is wonderful.
Interview translated and edited for length and clarity.
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