Dina Shihabi On Storytelling, Her Silver Screen Dreams and Taking Pride In Being A Saudi Girl

The actress is proving that Arab talent can make it on a global scale. She talks to Bazaar about growing up in the Middle East, the importance of representation and her plans for world domination…

Dina Shihabi’s hands lift to her face and she can no longer hold back the tears. She sobs, trying to apologise through the  emotion.  I’m not in the habit of making celebrity cover stars cry, and I can confirm that these are tears of happiness and hope rather than anything untoward.

Our interview takes place the morning after the Oscars, and as she’s been living in Los Angeles for the last six years, she’s pretty close to the action. In fact, she shares an agent with Ariana DeBose, who the night before became only the second-ever Latina actor to win an Academy Award for her supporting role as Anita in Steven Spielberg’s adaption of West Side Story, and as well as being a woman of colour, like Dina, she is a professional dancer/actor.

“I was so moved by Ariana DeBose winning that it makes me cry – because she’s a dancer,” she explains as her voice breaks down. “I remember feeling like I wasn’t a good enough actor because I was a dancer, and I came to it late, and seeing her win I was like wow, that’s a version of me. I felt so effected seeing someone like that getting honoured on a world stage, I woke up today feeling changed, I feel a sense of connection to her as a dancer and as a woman of colour.”

Dina’s own acting journey, which she hopes one day too will land her one of those much- lauded golden statues – “of course I want an Oscar” – has seen her become a household name through major parts in romantic comedy Amira & Sam andmore well-known series such as Jack Ryan, Altered Carbon, Ramy and most recently playing Melody  Pendras  in the terrifying, number-one Netflix thriller, Archive 81.

And it’s a journey that started back in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Dina was born there in September 1989 to mother Nadia, who is half-Palestinian, half-German and Haitian and was raised in France, and father Ali Shihabi who is half-Saudi and half-Norwegian. Dina moved to Dubai with her parents and two brothers at seven years old and here she discovered her love of dancing through renowned dance teacher and choreographer, Sharmila Kamte, dancing professionally alongside school, before moving to Beirut with the family at the age of 15 – finding her passion for acting soon after.

“I always was interested in acting in some way, I would spend hours and hours watching TV, whether is was Six Feet Under, The Sopranos or Before Sunrise with Julie Delpy, and I would always do Oscar’s acceptance speeches in my mirror,” she laughs. “But while I was a dancer, I just thought I couldn’t be an actor, and also because I thought I had a weird voice! But the minute my acting teacher said that I could act, I thought ‘maybe I can do this’.”

New York was her next step at the age of 18, to study at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Manhattan, and she went on to become the first Middle East-born woman to be accepted at both Juilliard and at NYU Tisch School for the Arts, as well as the first Saudi Arabian woman accepted to both institutions. Dina then worked as a jobbing actor and also as a dancer for shows including Saturday Night Live before settling in L.A. Dina is extremely well-travelled and also spends a lot of time at her parents’ home in Portugal and “vintage and hipster shopping in London.”

“I’d say Dubai is my ‘home-home’ and Beirut feels like home as well – even though I was there for such a short time, Beirut was such an impactful time in my life and I felt very connected to that city and very woken up by it. I think that  city has magic,” says Dina. “But, I’m craving to go back to Saudi. I was supposed to go back the year Covid-19 hit, so I’m going to go back this year instead because my childhood best friend’s giving birth. And I also want to go and experience all the changes happening in Saudi Arabia because I don’t go there as much since my parents moved to Portugal.”

But she still has fond memories of growing up in Riyadh: “I remember the sense of community, being in people’s houses and their gardens,” she recalls. “My favourite memory was that every Friday we’d have a family day, we’d go to my dad’s uncle’s house where my great-grandmother lived and I just adored her, those days felt really special. I’ve been thinking about her a lot recently and when we left Saudi Arabia that felt like the hardest thing, like leaving my connection to her. I just felt very loved by her.”

Arriving in Dubai, Dina missed home and her friends and admits feeling lonely for almost two years until she attended her first dance lesson. “I went through a bit of a down period, just being quite introverted and quiet, not being myself and then when I was 11, I walked into this class and that was it,” she explains. “It became my everything. Sharmila taught jazz and hip hop, ballet and lyrical, she really taught us everything.” But it went beyond that; “She taught me discipline and how to work hard, and like my parents, she pushed the importance of morality and dignity,” says Dina.

“She knew that to be a dancer in a Muslim country could be frowned upon, she told me I had to be ‘extra good’ to make up for that, not do anything that would make me look bad because dance could already be seen as shameful or wrong. So I never misbehaved, I was seen as so good, so sweet, that I got away with doing this unusual thing for a Saudi girl.”

But that doesn’t mean it’s been plain-sailing, Dina has had to overcome challenges from her community and her immediate family. “Growing up, my older brother had a hard time with me being a dancer, he never came to one show, he was ashamed, but now he is my biggest fan,” she explains. “I saw in my dad that it terrified him that I did this [acting and dancing] and there have been things along the way that has have really upset him, and every step of the way, he’s learned to understand my art but also I’ve learned what my boundaries are.” Dina appears to be referencing the time her father tweeted disapprovingly about a racy scene of hers in Jack Ryan, a tweet which was picked up by global press but later deleted. “I’ve grown, and now I’ll remember, wait a second, I’m a Saudi girl and that’s a beautiful part of me and not a part that I want to reject,” she explains. “And my dad is trusting of me and believing in me, and believing in my power as a woman and as an individual.”

She’s also experienced the typical typecasting that’s faced by many women of colour, in particular by Muslim women. “The first couple of roles involved playing the wife of a terrorist, and I did have some shame around that,” she admits. “But I didn’t want to shut any doors that had been opened to me, and the Jack Ryan version of that was an incredible, and more nuanced, role, and I got nominated for a Critic’s Choice Award for it and it set me up to have these incredible agents.”

The saving grace is that she thinks things are changing for the better, and Dina herself has managed to land more universal roles. Next on her list of releases is six-part Netflix drama series, Painkillers, about the origins of the opioid crisis in America, where she stars alongside Mathew Broderick and Uzo Aduba, playing one of the main sales reps. “Things have changed, but I do think it’s changed by all of us doing so well – there’s a big group of us Arab actors now that are really killing it and so the industry is seeing us and recognising that we can do anything,” says Dina. “It was always about money and not being able to get financing for a film or series if it wasn’t a main character that was white, but now you’re seeing shows with unknown actors like in Squid Game – the biggest show in the last 10 years, and you  know  it’s   good  stories  and  good actors that people want to see, no matter what their background.”

Dina, who is set to start filming an independent movie in June, has also been making her own efforts in support of inclusion and diversity by adding ‘screenwriter’ to her constantly growing list of skills. “I started writing out of the frustration that I didn’t see what I wanted represented on screen: frustration and anger are really good motivators,” she laughs. “There’s a Middle Eastern woman in everything I’m writing, even if the whole thing’s not about Middle Eastern women, there might be a Saudi female character somewhere else, because why can’t the friend be an Arab girl?”

And she knows how important representation is for young Saudi wannabe actors. “I love talking to young Arab women and helping them along, telling them what I did, and that I made it up as I went along,” she says passionately. “I really believe that there isn’t one way of doing this. I do think everyone is so much more capable and creative than they give themselves credit for, so if you are in Saudi Arabia and you have a group of friends that love doing this, then start making things with them: start writing, start creating, write a monologue or shoot, or do a school play and the steps will reveal themselves in their own magical way.”

She’s also fully aware of the societal and family pressures and goes on to address them. “The tricky part is if you come from a family that’s like ‘absolutely no’ – I really want to take the pressure off these young girls and talk to their parents and reassure them that it’s not this scary, horrible world where they will be taken advantage of and put in a dangerous situation. It’s not shameful to be in the service of storytelling, it is so embedded in every tribe, every tradition and every culture, this is a career worth believing in. It’s a beautiful career. It’s not a shameful one.”And Dina Shihabi is doing a beautiful job of proving that.

Photography: by KWAKU ALSTON. Styling: ABID HAQUE

Hair: Kat Thompson at Tomlinson Management Group. Make-Up: Carissa Ferreri at The Wall Group. Photographer’s Assistants: Braden Moran and Lee Stevens. Stylist’s Assistant: Ashley Aronson. Producer: Jesse Vora. Post Production NS1 Media. Production Assistant: Adam Robert Perez.

From Harper’s Bazaar Saudi’s Spring 2022 issue