Terrorist Actor


December 22, 2001


BROOKE GLADSTONE: Here in America Hollywood grinds out images of the Middle East chock full of stereotypes. In fact Tinseltown may be justly criticized for contributing to these tense, racially profiling times. But what of the men whose faces make it possible? Faces like that of Sayed Badreya who makes his living playing movie terrorists including a Palestinian hijacker in 1996's Executive Decision; an Islamic terrorist in 1993's Mirage; and a Hezbollah gunman in 1999's The Insider.

MAN: [SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE]

TRANSLATOR: He says "You must not sit so close."

JOURNALIST: What? I can't conduct an interview from back there.

MAN: [SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE]

TRANSLATOR: You must move back your chair.

JOURNALIST: Well, well you tell him that when I conduct an interview, I sit anywhere I damn please!

MAN: [SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE]

MAN: [SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE]

TRANSLATOR: There is no interview.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Mr. Badreya, welcome to the show.

SAYED BADREYA: Thank you.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: What are some of the other notable bad guys that you've played.

SAYED BADREYA: A lot of soap opera which, which I hijack someone or kill someone. Used to be a show on called Santa Barbara. I did Days of our Lives; I did Another World. So this wasn't a nice guy role I had to play, but I am a craftsman!

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Have you been criticized for taking some of these roles?

SAYED BADREYA:Yeah. After Executive Decision people didn't see the movie but heard I'd played a terrorist, and in the mosque there was confrontation and it's almost get-- you know, shuffled, people and shouting and it wasn't a good time.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:So somewhere along the line you said you decided to do the "De Niro thing" and research these bad guys that you played. How did you do that?

SAYED BADREYA: I went to the local mosque, and I, I found out they are wonderful people; very religious --so I hang around and I, I become part of the mosque, and I, I like it because it was a community for me, and in 1993 the group, a jihad movement from New York came to Los Angeles try-- tried to take over the mosque. Dr. Omar Abdul Rachman, the blind sheik, came to the mosque -- him and his follower--

BROOKE GLADSTONE: He is the man who was convicted of responsibility in the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center.

SAYED BADREYA: Correct. He came with his group and he tried to have a base of his operation in Los Angeles.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: What did you learn from watching these people about how to more accurately portray the characters you were given?

SAYED BADREYA:You know, it's -- they're not a cartoon character like I used to play them before. They are human beings. They happen to have a really bad ideology, but they are a human being and have dream and struggle like all of us.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:Now you've undertaken a, a kind of cinematic response to what you've seen and heard in the next decade, a, a documentary project. Could you tell us about that?

SAYED BADREYA: I was starting researching the making of a terrorist and how they recruit innocent young men. I want to protect all Arab-American kids and all Arab-American young men who are very isolated today, and I want to bring a scholar as good as Bin Laden in the way of teaching to defuse his intention of bringing young men to kill themselves.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:Mr. Badreya, after everything you've seen and everything you've heard, in your effort to make a life as an actor do you feel a conflict about taking the roles of terrorists and gunmen and hijackers that you took before?

SAYED BADREYA: If I do best this role, is that role not going to be played by someone else? A Mexican or an Israeli or Iranian or a Pakistani will play this role.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:Most recently you've played a pediatrician and not an evil pediatrician in the film Shallow Hal. Does this signal perhaps a change in the direction of your acting career?

SAYED BADREYA: It's me! I'm a nice guy! I can play a doctor. I can be, you know, you can bring me to your house! I'm honest! [LAUGHTER] I, I have to be honest with the character I play. If someone's asking me to play someone wearing a woman's clothes, I'm going to shave my beard and wear a woman's clothes and act like a woman. That's my profession!

BROOKE GLADSTONE: But be warned what happened to Richard Chamberlain -- you don't want to get trapped in those doctor roles.

SAYED BADREYA:No, no. Believe me or not, there are not going to be not too many doctor roles, but I would love to do history stuff, and I want to do the groundwork that have hard time in America but my son, 10 years from now -- I don't want him to change his name from Mohammed to Michael because-- Osama bin Laden. Osama bin Laden will not control us. Osama bin Laden will not have our face look like him!

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Mr. Badreya, thank you very much.

SAYED BADREYA: Thank you ma'am, and I'd like to say Happy New Year to everyone and Happy Ramadan and Asalaam Aleichem [sp?].

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Actor Sayed Badreya is currently on the big screen playing a pediatrician in the Farrelly Brothers film Shallow Hal. [MUSIC]