Forget The Buzzwords & Statistics About Refugees, ABC's 'Stateless' Hits The Heart

It takes some heavy hitters to bring to the screen an issue as complicated and fraught as refugees and asylum seekers who, looking to begin a new life in Australia, find themselves enmeshed in a bureaucratic limbo of red tape and detention that’s frustrating at best, dehumanising at worst. 

Fortunately, the new six-episode miniseries Stateless on the ABC, had no shortage of such talent on either side of the camera.

Co-created by Tony Ayres, Elise McCredie and Cate Blanchett, whose credits and accolades include The Slap, Glitch, Jack Irish, Ride Like A Girl and, oh, two Academy Awards, Stateless deftly intertwines disparate stories of people fleeing persecution – eager to start over, keen to make a difference in society or simply desperate to provide for their loved ones – into a vivid and compelling mosaic that brings humanity to a topic often dominated by statistics and rhetoric.

Stateless has gathered an all-star cast to do so, with Blanchett, The Wire’s Dominic West, The Handmaid’s Tale’s Yvonne Strahovski, Jai Courtney, Asher Keddie and Marta Dusseldorp. And while he may not be as immediately recognisable as his co-stars, Fayssal Bazzi makes perhaps the most powerful impression of all with his impassioned performance as Ameer, an Afghan refugee whose efforts to give his family a new life in Australia result in betrayal, heartbreak and tragedy.

The subject matter of Stateless and the role of Ameer struck a personal chord with Bazzi, whose own family fled conflict-torn Lebanon for Australia when the actor was only three years old, and when he first read the script, “what struck me was how real it was”. 

“Coming from a Lebanese and Syrian background, I know these people,” he says. “Every person in this show stems from a real human being I have been in contact with. Every character has the same heart, the same needs and desires, whether they’re a refugee, a guard or whatever else – everyone is trying to make a better life for themselves. So the thing that I connected with so greatly was that underlying similarity of all the characters. Only their circumstances are different.”

That feeling of connection does underpin Stateless – whether a character is seeking asylum in a new country, wrestling with personal demons or struggling to bring humanity and dignity to a system where such things are in short supply, a sense of powerlessness, of being cut adrift from society, pervades every situation.

"The fact that it is set in a detention centre in the middle of the desert speaks to that,” says Bazzi, whose recent credits include the black comedy Down Under and the dystopian miniseries The Commons. “You couldn’t be further removed from life – even natural life, like trees or water. So you’ve been turned into an afterthought, something to be dealt with later... maybe. Everyone was trying to figure out what to do with this issue as they went, and the easier thing to do is put things out of sight, out of mind.”

Bazzi’s own family history informed his performance as Ameer. “I always talk to my family about the roles I’m going to do and what they entail, but I didn’t speak too much about Ameer because Ameer is everywhere I look in our community,” he said, adding, “There’s a lot of his heart in my father, so that was easy to tap into.” Equally vital in giving the character life and authenticity were co-workers on the Stateless set who had actually experienced the situations and circumstances faced by Ameer and his family. “Some even more heartbreaking,” he says. “Listening to their stories every day, it showed how important it is to represent these poor people and put a human face on their tragedies.”

Representation of people frequently misrepresented or denied a voice at all was a key concern for Bazzi, who knew going into Stateless that the project had the potential to be viewed as social and political dynamite. 

“I know that Cate Blanchett had been trying to get this made for a number of years, and people had been hesitant to deal with the refugee issue,” he says. “No one wants to look like they’re taking sides, and I don’t think Stateless does take sides. It’s putting a human face on the matter rather than tossing buzzwords and statistics around the place.” 

It's easy to forget these are real people, Bazzi adds. “We get so caught up in the fear that's been spun around refugees and why they’re coming here. For a lot of these people, leaving their country is the last thing they want to do. But because of persecution and trying to ensure a future for their families, they have to. It’s not a case of trying to queue jump; it’s a case of people looking for a safe way to raise their families and lead normal lives,” he says.

“You or I, would we want to leave Australia for any reason? If war came and we were in danger, we would have no choice. No one would; everyone would be looking for a way out. It’s easy to forget that. But these people aren’t paying for a cruise – they’re putting themselves through life-threatening situations to [find] better their lives.

“My aim for it was never to make Ameer political at all. His is a human story, and he is a man trying his best for his family, trying to keep them safe from danger. That was my mantra, my focus, and I feel anyone would do exactly the same thing. Take away the politics and that’s what it is.”

There was plenty of emotional and psychological heavy-lifting that went into Bazzi’s performance, but he admits with a laugh that the greatest challenge was a more practical one. 

“Well, the thing about Ameer is that most of his dialogue is in Dari [a variety of Persian], and I don’t speak Dari,” he says. “But I was lucky in that the beautiful young actor who plays my eldest daughter, Soraya Heidari, her father is a translator and interpreter, and he was my Dari coach. He was on-set with us all the time, and he was amazing – I couldn’t have done it without him. He told me I was his best student, so if you want to put that in writing I’d appreciate it!

“I did have an advantage in that I speak Arabic fluently and read it, and Dari is written with the Arabic alphabet. So I could read it but I didn’t know what I was saying. I’d learn it slowly, and he would say the intonation wasn’t in the right place or whatever. But when I would act it for him, say it in character, he would say, ‘Yes, you got it!’ Once I finish a job, I’m pretty good at erasing all the dialogue from my head. But with Ameer, I still remember all the Dari, all the speeches, and I think he’ll be with me for a long, long time.”