Photo: FX
Spoilers follow for The Old Man through episode “XI,” which premiered on FX on September 26.
In its second season, The Old Man is less a show about old spies getting their spook on and more about those old spies realizing the personal impact of their imperialist shenanigans. That shift in perspective drives the action of episode “X,” in which American intelligence agents Dan Chase (Jeff Bridges) and Harold Harper (Jeff Lithgow) reunite with their daughter figure Emily/Angela (Alia Shawkat) in Afghanistan and find that she’s bonded with her biological father, Faraz Hamzad (Navid Negahban), the man Chase and Harper told her was an evil warlord. And it underscores the final good-bye in “XI” between Hamzad and Emily/Angela, now going by her birth name, Parwana.
Weeks before, they’d tried to kill each other. But on his deathbed, Hamzad tells Parwana that she belongs among her Afghan family and is accepted by them, an emotional moment that Negahban says both he and Shawkat — who previously played father and daughter in the 2013 film The Moment — felt on set. “People who have left home and they’re coming back, it doesn’t matter where in the world they are, there’s a sense of belonging,” Negahban says of the inclusion Parwana feels through Hamzad. “We all want to be part of something. And that realization is the moment of levitating you, giving you what you have been searching for your entire life.”
Negahban played the misunderstood and principled Hamzad with dignity and gravitas that came through whether he was singing along to a lullaby he used to entertain a young Parwana or smirking at a Taliban spy’s threats; he was always as foreboding or as vulnerable as a scene required. That emotional range comes from decades of experience; if you’ve watched a project set in or about the Middle East in the past couple decades, chances are Negahban was in it. The prolific Iranian American actor is getting into writing and directing with his short film, The Apple Tree, inspired by a fable told to him by his great-grandmother, and a completed script for a feature called Tosca Tehran, about an Iranian theater group performing the opera as an act of resistance against the government. Both his acting and his filmmaking are shaped by his past as a refugee after leaving Iran during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s. “That journey, with lots of ups and downs, it allows me to delve deeper into characters and discover more and look at all these different perspectives and corners.”
In season one, all we hear from Chase and Harper is that Hamzad is a warlord, but when we meet your version of the character, it becomes clear how much his daughter being stolen from him by Chase and his wife affected who he was. And then in season two, we see him standing up to the Taliban and protecting women and young boys. How much of that storyline did you know when you signed on?
I knew enough about it. The way that John [Steinberg, series creator] was describing the character to me, he feels betrayed by his best friend, by someone who he considered a brother. I was familiar with that relationship. I left Iran during the war and I was a refugee in Germany. Along the way, you are meeting people; you leave your family and you are on your own and you’re kind of isolated and you’re not connecting with anyone. You want to create a family for yourself, and sometimes along the way, you feel betrayed, and that’s just because of your expectations. Jeff’s character, in his mind, he’s doing the right thing. He’s protecting the woman and he’s protecting the child. But he’s not realizing or considering that, by thinking he is protecting them, he is betraying his friend. The characters, the relationship, and the way that they’re dealing with each other, that was very intriguing.
When my father left Iran, he was in Austria for six months. He would say there are people that you meet when you’re waiting that you create this really tight relationship with, and then you just might never see them again.
Yeah. I was in a refugee camp in Germany for about five, six months. I was transferred to Kaiserslautern, and from that group of people in the camp, I’m in touch with only three of them. We bonded and we stayed friends. We became one when none of us had anything, when all of us were struggling, and we didn’t know what the future will bring us. We were stuck in limbo, and we didn’t know where we were going. That was scary. You didn’t know if you’re getting accepted, if you are being returned, if you are being sent somewhere else. I think that struggle, it helped to shape me to become who I am, and at the same time, I’m using it.
Hamzad has different motivations than Alia Shawkat’s character expects. How did he feel compared with other characters you’ve played?
I don’t judge my characters when I play them. I just play the man. Each character has different nuances. Have I played characters who were struggling to achieve a better life or achieve a better future for their families or for their environment? Yes. Have I ever played a character that has such a complex relationship with his daughter? No, that was something new. And the way that I was seeing Faraz is that he is really in search of a better life for himself, his people, his family. For his environment, he might have been too advanced, too far ahead. He was dreaming of something bigger and better for his people, and that’s sometimes scary for lots of people. I mean, see what happened to Iran, and what happened to the Shah. You can find lots of similarities there.
How did you and Alia build that relationship? It starts very combative, and then it really goes to a place with more understanding.
Alia was on another project where she was playing my daughter, The Moment, so we already had some kind of relationship. And on this set, we tried to avoid each other — we tried to stay truthful to the story. For me, it was important to rediscover her. The funny thing was that I knew her, and then we lost touch, and now I’m reconnecting with her. That dynamic was very helpful.
The physical altercation between the two of you really lays out the resentment and baggage you’re both initially bringing to this relationship. How did you approach that?
It was a struggle. On one side, Hamzad has the emotions of a father-daughter relationship, and on the other side, he feels betrayed by his daughter, because she’s an FBI agent and she came to kill him. Shooting that scene, for me, it was a struggle to find the motivation behind it, and that helped with my frustration in the moment. The scene was about these two people discovering each other. They go at each other. They’re very close to killing each other. But at the same time, at the last minute, there is a love. There is anger, rage, but at the same time, How can I do that? How can I hurt you? I love you. It was frustration, rage, anger, disappointment, love. Everything was mixed together.
In the span of an episode and a half, we get Hamzad outside the room where he’s holding her captive, singing along to the lullaby he used to sing to her as a child, and then he’s holding a gun to her head, and then he’s crying after trying to kill her. That’s a real emotional roller coaster that you have to play.
Partially it’s John’s sick mind that is doing that. [Laughs.] He was putting us through hell emotionally. But it was good. The conversations that we had, he was very invested in those moments and he wanted to create something very rich. He gave us a very nice playground to play in.
Hamzad comes back to his family compound to make a last stand against the Taliban. Before he goes, he says to Chase, “Who are you to have an opinion about what is best for me, and the people I lead?” How did you react to that turn for Hamzad?
I always saw Hamzad as willing to sacrifice himself for his people. That’s all he lives for. There are people who live for themselves and there are people who live for others’ happiness; others’ joys, it becomes your joy. It was a moment that he’s finally able to really show who he is. I think even Dan realizes what he has done to Hamzad in that moment. Him coming down is his legacy. And Parwana following him and having that moment where she says, “I am Parwana Hamzad,” that’s his gift, that’s his reward. This is all he wanted his entire life, to have his daughter, and now he has it.
It’s a real passing-of-the-torch moment.
That’s exactly what it was. The moment that was very precious to me was the final touch, when they’re holding each other’s hands, when he’s in the bed. That was very emotional for me, the way that they’re connecting with each other. She’s becoming him, he’s transferring everything he has to her. We felt it in the room, and we both felt it when we were holding each other’s hands.
We had one season where her two American dads, Chase and Harper, are very important to her life. And now we have Hamzad, the Afghan father who is giving her what she needed.
That was beautiful. When we are standing by the horse and we are trying to get back, and all three of us are standing there, the way that John, Jeff, and I were going at each other like, “No, she is mine.” “No, she is mine.” “No, I know better.” “No, I know better.” It was a funny moment.
