[Source: BBC News]

Reflecting back on the Netflix hit based on his own life, there are two things that come to mind for Palestinian comedian Mo Amer.

Pride and hurt.

“It’s very difficult to talk about without breaking down at some point,” he tells BBC Newsbeat.

He is the star of the semi-autobiographical show titled Mo, playing the role of Mo Najjar.

The character is a Palestinian refugee learning to adapt to his new world as he seeks to gain US citizenship by navigating a complicated immigration process – all while trying to bring together his cultures and languages.

Making a show so closely tied to his life was “very taxing” because of “the sheer amount of emotion” involved.

“I’m extremely proud of it. I put my soul into it and I’m still hurting from making it,” Mo says.

There was another challenge to navigate – when this second season would be set.

The final episode, which depicts Mo’s visit to his family home in the West Bank, is set on 6 October 2023.

That’s a day before the armed Palestinian group Hamas launched an unprecedented cross-border attack on Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages.

This triggered a massive Israeli military offensive in Gaza, which has killed more than 48,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

Avoiding 7 October in the storyline was “very intentional“, Mo says.

The show is ultimately “grounded in comedy“, he says, and episodes set post-attack drew focus away from the storyline and the characters.

“You weren’t really tracking them, the emotions of them,” says Mo.

Mo says he wanted to keep the “greater context” in mind and that focusing on 7 October and its aftermath “almost insinuates this just started“.

“That couldn’t be further from the truth,” he says, referring to the long history of the conflict.

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