Loading ...Pathbreakers of Arab America—Alia Shawkat
By: John Mason / Arab America Contributing Writer
This is the sixtieth of Arab America’s series on American pathbreakers of Arab descent. The series includes personalities from entertainment, business, sports, science, academia, journalism, and politics, among other areas. Our sixtieth pathbreaker is Alia Shawkat, actress, producer, singer, and painter. Her father is an Iraqi Christian, and her mother is American. Alia is best known for her role in ‘Arrested Development,’ a popular, long-running Fox/Netflix TV sitcom series. Joining that series at age 14, she has spent more than half her adult life as a professional actor.
Alia Shawkat, one of the film industry’s renaissance women
Alia Martine Shawkat was born in Riverside, California, on April 18, 1989, to Dina Shawkat and Tony Shawkat. She grew up in Palm Springs and has two brothers. Her father is from Baghdad, Iraq, and her mother is American. Tony owned a strip club, a subject Alia explored recently in a short film. In an interview with Aubrey Plaza, Shawkat described the context of her dad’s club: “It was weirder being in the strip club and meeting all the dancers. I don’t judge it—some people look down on strip clubs and think it’s terrible for women. I don’t agree with that, as long as the women are treated well and get paid well.” The audience doesn’t know the owner, her dad, until close to the film’s end.
Wikipedia’s series on Arab Americans reports that Alia is known for her performances as Maeby Fünke in the Fox/Netflix television sitcom ‘Arrested Development’ (2003–2006; 2013–2019), Dory Sief in the TBS and HBO Max dark comedy series ‘Search Party’ (2016–2022), and Gertie Michaels in the 2015 horror-comedy film ‘The Final Girls,’ as well as her roles in ‘State of Grace’ and ‘The Old Man.’
As Maeby Fünke, Shawkat was a regular cast member of ‘Arrested Development’ for the entire show run from 2003 to 2019. “The series received nearly universally positive reviews, with Shawkat’s performance occasionally singled out for praise. Pop-culture commentator Brian M. Palmer remarked that she was ‘one of the brightest lights on a show populated solely by bright lights’ and Scott Weinberg of eFilmCritic described her as ‘one funny young lady.’” Alia remarked along her journey that many of her ‘formative moments’ as an actress took place on ‘Arrested Development.’ She attributes to the show’s creator, Mitch Hurwitz, a father figure role.
Apropos to starting her acting career at a young age, in a recent article in ‘The Creative Development,’ Alia discussed what it means to be a “jack of all trades, the emotional differences between acting, singing, and drawing, and why young girls should always feel free to make whatever kind of art they want.” She continued, “I started acting when I was pretty young. I was nine, and I was put in an environment for adults. Instead of necessarily being exposed to art, I was more just put in an environment where my opinion mattered suddenly. When you’re a kid, you usually feel like no matter what you say no one is listening to you. Because I was given a certain gift or whatever—just like dealing with adults— I got really confident at least with acting when I was younger.”
Alia continued discussing her acting career, noting, “I didn’t live in L.A. until I was 22, so even though I worked in L.A. all the time, the lifestyle part never affected me. I would go back to Palm Springs, this small desert town, so if anything, I was actually less exposed to arts or cultural things happening around me. I was isolated in the desert, but I think there’s something to be said about suburb towns and that small town ‘gotta-get-out-of-here’ feeling. You create your own things.” At age 18, Alia moved to New York as part of her acting career.
When not acting, Shawkat says she enjoys singing, drawing, and painting. She occasionally sings in jazz bars, though she only sings jazz standards, which her grandfather taught her. He owned a nightclub in New Orleans, the source of many of the songs she knows. At one point, Shawkat attempted to learn welding, hoping to make metal sculptures. She considers it essential for her to pursue different forms of art, stating, “They feed each other. If I didn’t have the other ones, I don’t think I could just act.”
In a publication, ‘The Thing,’ in 2022, ‘Arrested Development’ was described as follows: “The huge success that the series saw launched many of its actor’s careers to new levels of stardom. As many of [its] cast members continued to develop their on-screen acting careers, one, in particular, seemed to take a slightly different route. Alia Shawkat not only went on to further develop her acting career following the show’s finale, but the talented actress also explored many other career paths and roles.”
Alia’s career is further described in that same publication in the following positive manner. “By looking at the actress’ filmography, it’s clear that Shawkat is deeply devoted to her craft. From her first credited acting role in 1999 at only ten years of age, the 33-year-old actress has accumulated just shy of 100 on-screen roles with 95 credits. From films to television roles, Shawkat may be recognized for credits such as Pash in the 2009 film ‘Whip It,’ and Young Hannah Rayburn in the early ‘00 series ‘State of Grace.’ Most recently, the young actress formed part of the Jeff Bridges drama series, ‘The Old Man.’
Shawkat has taken her career beyond acting through her off-camera role as a director. She has two directing credits to her name. One was her directing role in her 2015 Prema Cruz series episode, ‘Sugar.’ Her latest directing project saw her take on the role in 2021 for an episode in ‘Search Party’ in which she also stars. “Rounding off the list of significant production roles, Alia has also taken on the role of writer in her past. The 2018 film ‘Duck Butter’ not only starred Shawkat but was also written by her.” Finally, she took on the role of executive producer for the film, ‘Youth In Revolt.’ In her personal life, Alia is self-identified as bisexual, and in 2023, she gave birth to a son.
Shawkat participates in actors reading out the South African indictment of Israeli genocide
In January 2024, Alia participated with 28 other actors in reading portions of the South African government’s formal complaint against the state of Israel before the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Quoting the indictment, “The complaint charges the murderous onslaught of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) with being ‘genocidal in character’ because it is being carried out with the ‘specific intent,’ in violation of the 1948 Genocide Convention, ‘to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group.’” Some 13 million people viewed the website in little more than a day.
Details of the South African indictment include such reports as by the end of December 2023, “the deaths of more than 21,110 named Palestinians, including over 7,729 children—with over 7,780 others missing, presumed dead under the rubble.” On top of these deaths, “over 55,243 other Palestinians” have been injured, with many of these injuries involving amputations or permanent disfigurement. The complaint continues, “Israel has also laid waste to vast areas of Gaza, including entire neighborhoods, and has damaged or destroyed more than 355,000 Palestinian homes.”
In a section entitled “Destruction of Palestinian life in Gaza,” the South African complaint documents Israel’s targeted and systematic destruction of courts, libraries, universities, museums, historic structures, religious sites, schools, buildings housing records and historical artifacts, and even graveyards.
The complaint also documents Israel’s obstruction of “essential food, water, medicine, fuel, shelter and other humanitarian assistance for the besieged and blockaded Palestinian people,” citing warnings by experts that “silent, slow deaths caused by hunger and thirst risk surpassing those violent deaths already caused by Israeli bombs and missiles.”
While Alia does not have a long record of publicly supporting the Arab Palestine cause, she made clear her commitment to that cause by reading this essential South African statement out loud with many other committed actors.
Sources:
–“Alia Shawkat,” Wikipedia Series on Arab Americans, 2024
–“On expressing yourself as honestly as possible,” interview with Alia Shawkat, The Creative Independent, 1/18/2022
–“Alia Shawkat is the film industry’s renaissance woman,” Interview by Aubrey Plaza, 10/9/2017
–“Actors reading out South African indictment of Israeli genocide viewed 13 million times,” World Socialist Web Site, 1/14/2024
John Mason, Ph.D., focuses on Arab culture, society, and history and is the author of LEFT-HANDED IN AN ISLAMIC WORLD: An Anthropologist’s Journey into the Middle East, New Academia Publishing, 2017. He has taught at the University of Libya, Benghazi, Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York, and the American University in Cairo; John served with the United Nations in Tripoli, Libya, and consulted extensively on socioeconomic and political development for USAID and the World Bank in 65 countries.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Arab America. The reproduction of this article is permissible with proper credit to Arab America and the author.
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