Navid Negahban (Jonathan Baskin)
FAMILIAR FACE: Navid Negahban stars as terrorist Abu Nazir in “Homeland.”
FAMILIAR FACE: Navid Negahban stars as terrorist Abu Nazir in “Homeland” (inset). (
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Abu Nazir, the al Qaeda terrorist manipulating US Marine Sergeant Nicholas Brody on “Homeland,” makes the gangsters on “Boardwalk Empire” look like boys at a costume party.
Menacingly played by Iranian-born actor Navid Negahban, Nazir is the real deal, a terrorist kingpin poised to launch an attack against the US by having Brody run for vice president in the Season 2 premiere, which airs Sept. 30.
Negahban is an expert at playing a terrorist. He’s been cast as a Middle East menace 50 times, as well as roles on “24,” “CSI: Miam
i,” and in the film “Charlie Wilson’s War,” he says.
He’s been doing it long enough to see people getting savvier about the portrayal of these villains.
“First, they wanted a boogeyman,” says Negahban, 48. “Now, they’re going deeper and deeper into character, showing both sides.”
He doesn’t mind playing a terrorist as long as the role has something underneath.
“Homeland” met that requirement in episode 9 of the first season when Nazir’s son, Issa, was killed in a drone attack. It is the pivotal plot twist in the hit show because Brody — who had bonded with the boy — agrees to avenge the boy’s death.
“The Nazir character is someone who is an introduction to the dark side. He is opening a window to look behind the veil, for you to get to know those people, to see what’s really happening to them,” Negahban says.
“I don’t like to call them terrorists. From our point of view, they’re terrorists. From their point of view, we are terrorists.”
With Brody, he says, Nazir is “trying to raise a messenger who can talk for him.”
He chose Brody as a confidant because “it was the first success he has explaining his pain as a man who has been losing everything he loves.”
Negahban, who was raised a Shiite Muslim, started acting in Iran as a young boy.
He fled the country during the revolution, settling first in Turkey and then Germany, picking up acting jobs along the way.
Of his religion he says, “I believe in Islam, but not as a weapon to harm people. You have to treat people the way you want to be treated.”