Entertainment /
Little Mosque On The Prairie
As they salute their final season, we sit down with the cast for an exclusive interview
In the feature image from Left to Right are Manoj Sood (Baber Siddiqui); Sheila McCarthy (Sarah Hamoudi); Brandon Firla (Reverend Thorne); Zaib Shaikh (Amaar Rashid); Sitara Hewitt (Rayyan Hamoudi); Debra McGrath (Mayor Popowicz); Arlene Duncan (Fatima Dinssa) and Neil Crone (Fred Tupper).
Walking into the studio to meet the cast and producers of Little Mosque on the Prairie one would expect tears, as the five-year ground breaking sitcom with a comedic twist about Muslims and Christians attempting to live in harmony in the town of Mercy, Saskatchewan, will air its final two episodes on March 26 and April 2nd. It was all smiles and laughter as we chatted candidly about the accomplishments of the hit CBC television original series.
Just witnessing the chemistry, amongst the cast and producers, I asked what they would miss the most. One of the main characters, Amaar Rashid, played by Zaib Shaikh, says "It's an amazing show to work on, with the cast and the crew in both cities we got to work across the country in a real Canadian way, and this will hopefully not be the last show of its kind in this context." He says "We truly got to connect with a lot of people in this industry and we all had such an amazing time."
Looking back at what initially attracted Executive Producer Mary Darling to collaborate with Creator/Writer Zarqa Nawaz, Mary says. "Well [with] Zarqa, it wasn't so much of a planned thing, we were sitting on a couch at the Banff Television Festival and she [Zarqa] said, she wanted to do something funny about her community and that was the sell." Darling admits, "It was something we hadn't seen before… What does that look like? How can a show including Muslims be funny? How far can we go? What would we want to say? It was very much a collaborative effort to figure out what it's ultimately going to be."
With the creation of original characters and the ability to take everyday storylines to develop content for the show, Nawaz was able to give North American and international audiences an opportunity to understand the Muslim culture and community by taking away preconceived notions portrayed in the media.
"Well I think just from my viewpoint, playing a converted Muslim I heard from a lot of people who said they identified with our family life, humour, sadness, trials and tribulations," says Sheila McCarthy.
When asked if it was difficult to not take the show into a political direction or just to keep it strictly comedy and just mix it in. Zarqa replied "We mix it in, because remember there are so many interesting issues, we use political things that are happening around the world as fonder to the comedy making and spin it in an unexpected way."
Wrapping up our chat producers and cast members shared their final thoughts.
"A show is always lucky to know when their final season is, because you can tie things up for your audience", says Darling. "I think what's new or what hasn't been seen on television is a married Muslim couple in love and in season six we get to live with them [Amaar and Rayyan] a bit."
"We all had the proper goodbye I think for all our characters on the show." added Zaib. "I think the viewers will enjoy the nice little last surprise in the final episodes." Sitara Hewitt concluded.
BY TESSA JOHNSON
Sources: CBC, Twitter, Writerscafe, fundamentalistfilms,banffmediafestival
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