Sides of justice
SHAMMAS ENDEARED BY EQUALITY AND COMMITMENT ON BOTH SIDES OF THE CAMERA
When PalestinianAustralian actor Hazem Shammas was filming the new Australian legal drama The Twelve in Sydney, his son was born at the hospital right next door.
Conveniently, the baby was born on one of the Logie-winning actor’s days off the hectic shoot but when Shammas visited the hospital, he was struck by what a microcosm of multicultural Australia it was.
“Every professional working in the hospital was either Asian of some descent, Indian, South Asian, Arab, mostly people that look like me,” he says during a break in filming on the set in the former ABC studios in Artarmon, in Sydney’s north.
“That’s from the specialist obstetrician right down to the person bringing the food in. So, if you did a hospital drama tomorrow, I’m hoping that’s what the cast would look like.”
Shammas, who won the 2018 Most Outstanding Supporting Actor for his role as an asylumseeker in the SBS drama Safe Harbour, says he got a similar feeling on The Twelve, which examines a complex and ambiguous murder case through the eyes of the jury.
The cast is led by Sam Neill as lead defence lawyer, Marta Dusseldorp the prosecution lawyer and Kate Mulvany as the artist accused of killing her niece, and the multicultural actors playing the members of the public chosen to decide her fate include Pallavi Sharda, Nicolas Kassim, Brooke Satchwell, Ngali Shaw and Catherine Van Davies.
After years of rarely seeing anything other than white faces on Australian TV, Hammas says that strides towards more casting diversity and representation have been made in recent years – but the road is still long.
“We’re getting there,” he says. “Every job it seems like things are getting a little bit better. But there’s still a long way to go. I feel like the jury has been cast beautifully and as an industry we can maybe take this as a little example and keep working at a true representation of what Australia looks like.”
But diversity aside, Shammas says he was initially daunted by the “freaking talent” of the powerhouse cast, who formed a tight-knight bond during the sometimes-tricky shoot disrupted by Covid and bad weather.
“I said at the start, ‘Haz, there’s big guns playing here, just don’t f--k it up’,” he says with a laugh. “Not only such amazing, beautiful human beings, and wonderful friends – some are new friends and some I had worked with – but very talented. It’s been an amazing quality of work and a pleasure.”
Shammas describes The Twelve as “an exploration of the justice system, in the hands of the wonderfully flawed and colourful and contradictory and complex people that we are”.
He plays Farrad, an Iraqi asylum-seeker, who was a lawyer in his own country where his wife and daughter still live but lacks the qualifications and means to practise law in Australia and
instead is working as a ride share driver to make ends meet.
Shammas says he was attracted to Farrad’s quiet confidence and dignity and a sense of justice that stems from fairness, equality and human rights, shaped by his own experiences of fleeing his homeland and trying to fit in somewhere new. Although he’s “not necessarily the loudest voice in the room” he may be wisest, and takes his duties as a juror seriously.
“He gains confidence as the series goes on,” he says of the 10part drama that premieres next week. “When he’s not driving rideshare, his outside life now, he finds himself on a jury in a court in familiar surroundings, in a system that he has given his life to, so he’s probably the most positive on the outset. Like, ‘hey, this is great’.”
Likewise, Shammas took his research seriously – reading up on juror obligations (coincidentally, he was called up to jury duty at
Parramatta Court, where The Twelve is set), digging into the maze of immigration laws in the country that might or might now allow Farrad to be reunited with his family and downloading a rideshare app to figure out what makes Uber drivers tick.
He didn’t always like what he discovered, particularly in researching the mess of Iraq and the complex process by which asylum seekers attempt to come to Australia, he now has a grudging respect for the legal profession.
“I can get a sense of how actually difficult it is,” he says. “The narratives that win or convince a jury aren’t necessarily born of truth and fact, so there’s that kind of ambiguity. I’m not going to pretend to be an expert but I kind of appreciate the professionals in that field and the weight of the task that they have.”
We can maybe take this as a little example and keep working at a true representation of what Australia looks like