Interview with Zel el-Rais cast: an appointment with success

CAIRO -17 July 2017: Zel el-Rais (Shadow of the president) is an infallible soap opera that was featured this year in Ramadan. The series revolves around Yahya Nour al-Din, a former officer in the Republican Guard, played by the Egyptian actor Yasser Galal, who is exposed to conspiracies from unknown people to get rid of him.

The series achieved a booming success that dazzled both the audience and critics, exceeding all the expectations that were set for it, since the hero was not from the usual stars that commonly plays leading role, especially in Ramadan season.

Despite this fact the talented Egyptian actor Yasser Galal who has an acting career that extended for more than 20 years, proved to be worth this opportunity that all thought he deserves a little bit earlier, giving a true strong proof that to be a soap opera hero you do not have to be a star with a big name, you just have to be an actor with a big talent.

Not only Galal, but also the rest of the cast were in there best state including the actresses Dina Fouad ,Donia and Ola Ghanem, all beside the renowned talented actor Mahmoud Abdel Moghny. Abdel Moghny played with Galal what we could describe as the game of talents. Both of them were competing with the one another, doing their best to prove to result in an overwhelming performance, in a competition that poured in the interest of the audience in the first place.

They succeeded in portraying the complicated relationship between the two old close friends that the current circumstances forced them to turn to rivals, conveying with their eyes only in most of the scenes the astonishing mixture of love and hatred feelings. We will not be exaggerating if we say that there was a special script that was tailor made to the eyes of those dumbfounding actors.

‘’It is not correct to attribute the success of any soap opera to its hero only, success is based on many elements, it is true that the actor is the most important factor, but good production, creative director and the rest of the cast is all important as well,’’ said Galal to Egypt Today.

He added that he does not consider himself the hero of the series, because all the series’ actors are heroes, each in his role. Galal praised the role played by Zel el-Rais’s producers Remon Maghar and Mohamed Mahmoud Abdelaziz the owners of ‘’Fenon Masr ‘’ production company, as they cared much to present a respectable work from a different perspective. He admitted that the presence of a creative director like Ahmed Samir Farag was one of the main reasons of success. ‘’The director is the one that his print is present in every scene, responsible for the performance of all, unlike the rest of the cast, each is responsible to perform his role only,’’ Galal recounted.

‘’I fall in love with the character of the police officer ‘’Hazem Saqr’’ the name of the character I perform in the series, as I found myself in front of a challenging difficult role. Saqr deals with each of the people around him in a different way than the other. His way while dealing with his wife is different from that when dealing with his lover or while he is at work, I performed the role portraying much the human side of Saqr, he is a person who has both love and hatred feelings,’’ said Abdel Moghny.

Abdel Moghny recounted that he felt his true success from people’s reactions, they were telling him their opinion about every scene he performed, which conveyed how they were watching with great deal of attention and concentration. ‘’I felt I was performing in a play on stage because of the on the instant feedback my fans were providing me on every scene,’’ Abdel Moghny explained.

The Egyptian actress Dina Fouad started first by thanking the production company that was bold enough to give the chance to new actors to perform in such an important series. ‘’I was so enthusiastic to work in this series with Galal as a hero for the first time because he is one of the veteran actors who own huge acting capabilities, and the rest of the cast houses group of talented actors, that is why I was pretty sure that the series will achieve a booming success,’’ said Fouad.

She added that Zel el-Rais series has all the success elements like talented cast, good production, good script as well as a super talented director. ‘’Despite all these facts I was so afraid at the start of shooting, but what made me feel secured is my strong belief that the director Ahmed Samir Farag will guide me to perform in a dazzling way, he took out of me a different performance that I didn’t know I could do, presenting me in a totally different way,’’ recounted Fouad.

Zel el-Rais director Ahmed Samir Farag admitted that when directing a series starring a super star you feel that you are backed, that is why people though that we are insane to make a series without big name actor. ‘’Me and the producers threw back all what people said and insisted to continue our project with this cast, Zel el-Rais was simply our challenge and quest,’’ said Farag. Farag explained that he though thoroughly before choosing each of the actors, noting that every one of them was his first suggestion. ‘’I was keen to present each one of them with a new acting style,’’ said Frag.

The actress Donia recounted that she has a complete trust in both the production company that is why she accepted immediately to perform her role in Zel el-Rais. ‘’The actor glamour and performs perfectly when he is guided by a strong qualified director, if you have the most talented actor in the world, but he is working with unqualified director he will literally proffer a very weak performance,’’ Donia said.

‘’I was keen while performing Yehia Noureldin character to portray him as a simple man despite the fact that he was in the past the president’s guard,’’ said Galal. He added that he was so anxious at the beginning, whether he will be able to take the responsibility of being a soap opera hero or not. I said to myself that time has passed to take such opportunity, and if the series did not achieve the needed success they will blame me, but the trust I found in the eyes of the producers, made me exerted my maximum efforts,’’ said Galal.