Pop-Culturalist.com

Actor-writer Omar Baroud has emerged as one of the industry’s most exciting new voices. This year, he’s captivating audiences with his breakout performance in Disney+’s Wedding Season.

The genre-busting series tells the story of Katie and Stefan who fall for each other at a wedding and begin an affair, despite Katie already having a fiancé. Two months later at Katie’s wedding, her new husband and his entire family are murdered. The police think Stefan did it. Stefan thinks Katie did it. And no one knows for sure what the truth is…

Omar shines as Jackson, one of Stefan’s closest friends who is always challenging the status quo.

Pop Culturalist was lucky enough to chat with Omar about Wedding Season, the chemistry between the cast, and an exciting musical he has in development.

PC: How did you discover your passion for storytelling and the arts?
Omar: It was when I was around eleven. I’m Dutch. In Holland, you do a musical for your final year of secondary school. It’s a Dutch tradition. Everyone does it whether you’re into drama or not.

I remember being so shy as a kid. I remember being so nervous and being like, “I don’t want to go in front of people and do that.” Then it turned out, I literally couldn’t wait for rehearsals every single week. I was sitting in class going, “Please, please, please.”

My character had to pee their pants. I wet myself in the toilet with water. I came out on stage. When I came out on stage, everyone started laughing. I was like, “This is what I want to do for the rest of my life.”

PC: Who or what has had the biggest influence on your career?
Omar: When I came to England when I was fourteen, I took these drama classes. I had a drama teacher who really believed in me, which made me believe in myself and believe that this could be a thing that I do for the rest of my life. I really owe him for that.

PC: You’ve brought so many dynamic characters to life on this stage and screen. What has each of those different mediums taught you about your craft, and what’s that transition been like going from the stage to the screen?
Omar: I’ve been so blessed to do both. I adore theater because London has so much to offer theater-wise. I saw everything, usually from the very top. I remember setting those little dots on the stage. [laughs] These theaters are massive. But I love the feeling of being in a space together with thousands of strangers. We’re all sharing the same emotions. I thought that was beautiful. It felt like a sacred space to sit together and experience something together. That’s why I love the stage. That love has grown and grown and is still growing. I doubt that will ever go away for me. When I started doing screen, I realized that it’s more natural and like the way we are speaking now. It’s so beautiful to capture those real, intimate, soft conversations. I really love that about the screen. I’m happy to be able to do both.

PC: Tell us about Wedding Season, your character, and what drew you to this project.
Omar: Wedding Season is on Disney+ now. You can watch all eight episodes. I dare you not to keep watching it. We got the first five episodes on set, and I remember the story being filled with so many twists and turns. I remember at the end of the fifth episode, I was like, “Come on, you can’t do this to us now! I need to know what happens.” I was going to the writer going, “Can we just know?” He was like, “Don’t worry…in a few weeks’ time.” [laughs]

It’s the story of Katie and Stefan. Katie’s at her wedding. Everyone at that table at her wedding is dead. They’ve all been poisoned, and Katie has run off. I’m in this friendship group with Stefan. We’ve been best friends forever. We met at university, and we’ve gone through so many things together. We see Stefan falling in love with Katie, and we’re trying to pull him out of it.

It’s called Wedding Season because we go to, you guessed it, about seven weddings, and we’re all in the friendship group at an age where we’re kind of settling down. It’s the age where people are telling us to settle down. Weddings have become more than a party. They’ve become, “Should we start thinking about this?”

I play Jackson. He is very much of the notion that it’s all fake and monogamy is useless. He thinks no one should commit to anything. He’s very fun to play. I do understand him a lot of the time. You reach a certain age where things have always been done a certain way and you feel like you also have to do it that way. It’s nice to play someone who pokes at and questions the reasons why we do things.

PC: Chemistry is key between this friend group and that radiates off the screen between all of you. How were you able to build that bond? Was there a moment while you were filming when you realized that this was going to work?
Omar: Honestly, it’s quite a magical thing that happened. We met on the first day. There’s a beach wedding in Episode 3. That was the first day that we were all together. We’re playing lifelong friends. It’s hard to fake that, but it took about five seconds to realize we were going to be lifelong friends.

It’s so insane to me. I’ve never had this in any job, where you looked at people and you’d all start laughing. We started laughing in the first minute of meeting each other. I remember a crew member came up to us and was like, “How long have you guys known each other?” They saw that we were digging at each other. I was like, “Oh, we just met.” It was insane. It’s one of those things that’s hard to describe, but when it works, it works. I saw them yesterday. I adore them, and they have become real friends in my life that I will have for a very, very, very long time.

PC: This is also Disney+’s first UK series. What has it meant for you to be a part of this milestone?
Omar: I know! Even you saying that to me, I’m like, “That sounds insane to me.” Disney+ is doing such a brilliant job making stuff that’s different and out there. They’re taking risks. To be a part of the first UK production is very, very exciting. I wouldn’t have wished it any other way. It’s so exciting. I hope people like it. I’m so excited for it because it shows love in so many different ways, especially with the character that I play. You see these characters on screen in a very non-judgmental way without questioning them. They exist. They’re there. It’s beautiful. I really, really, really love that Disney decided that this would be their first foray into UK productions.

PC: Like you were saying earlier, this series has so many twists and turns and this show doesn’t fit into one genre. Was there a particular scene that you’re really excited for audiences to see?
Omar: Episode 5 is so brilliant. I don’t want to spoil anything, but my mouth gaped. I was like, “Ah!” There’s a twist at the end of it. I’m very excited by that. You get to see this beautiful wedding between Leila and Anil. The set designers did such a gorgeous job. The sequence with Leila at her wedding coming into the space is so beautiful. It really shows the love of the friends. That was one of my favorite days.

PC: The series is out now and it’s been incredibly well received. What do you think is resonating most with audiences? What do you hope they take away?
Omar: I think what’s resonating most with audiences is the fact that it mixes so many genres so well. If you’re watching this show with different people with different tastes, there’s something that they all could get out of it. That’s the brilliance of Oliver Lyttelton who wrote this series. It moves at such a fast pace. It touches upon so many different things. You’ve got the twists, which we’ve talked about, but you also have these beautiful, really intimate, lovely moments between all the characters. The love between Katie and Stefan is gorgeous to follow. You’ve got this rom-com, this thriller, and then all this action. It’s all packaged together. That’s why I think people are loving it.

PC: In addition to acting, you’ve also written your own musical. Tell us about the inspiration behind After Elijah.
Omar: Like we were talking about earlier, what I love about the theater is being in a space together with people and feeling that energy. But the thing was I didn’t see myself on a lot of those stages. That’s why I started writing. I started writing from a very young age without knowing that I actually wanted to be a writer.

I would write stories all the time and have loads of them on my laptop. They’re really silly and were very bad stories that I will never show anyone. But with After Elijah, I wanted to show a family like mine—a mixed-race, Middle Eastern family that defies stereotypes. I grew up my whole life with people telling me how my family should be or how they thought my family was even when my real experiences were very different.

I wanted to show that on stage in a similar way to Wedding Season. It’s very naturalistic and non-judgmental. These are human beings who have flaws just like the rest of us. They love like the rest of us. Rather than othering them so much, which is what has happened to me a lot in my life. That was the inspiration.

It’s a story about Elijah, who died a year ago. His family is dealing with grief. They find out that his boyfriend Naim has been living in the house. His boyfriend has always been living in the house, and no one’s discussed that that was his boyfriend. So it’s a year after his death. Everything comes to a boiling point and it all comes out. It’s very exciting. We had a showing at the Other Palace in London. We had a bunch of producers there. I’m in talks now to hopefully keep it going and possibly bring it to a bigger stage.

PC: Have you found that your experience working as a writer has influenced or impacted the way that you approach characters on screen or vice versa?
Omar: Absolutely. They feed into each other. A lot of times as actors, we’re just saying the words. You’ll run out of breath saying the lines and go, “Why is that?” I think that’s been really helpful for me as a writer. You write these big speeches, but when you say them out loud, they don’t sound as natural. I absolutely love doing both. They really help each other.

PC: As you look ahead to the next five to ten years, is there a dream role or story you’d like to bring to life?
Omar: As a writer, I’d love to write a movie. I have one in my head, but it’s going to take some time. I’ve been working with the idea for a while, but it’s about how we’re all very different and the same at the same time. That’s the notion that’s in After Elijah. That’s what drew me to Wedding Season. I want to grow that idea into something a bit bigger. I really hope I can do that in the sci-fi/fantasy realm.

To keep up with Omar, follow him on Twitter and Instagram. Watch Wedding Season on Hulu today!

Photo Credit: David Reiss