The Somali-born, Minnesota-launched actor has quietly been building a rock-solid career after blowing up in 'Captain Phillips. Created by two skilled veterans of intentional squirm, Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie, the new Showtime sci-fi comedy takes viewers through a gauntlet of extreme discomfortโsocial, racial, class-based, you name it.
One close-up shot of physical distress, however, takes the cringe cake. Another tight look at micro-pensises comes in second. In it, a struggling East African single father named Abshir is more or less coerced into a massage to placate Asher, our white-guilt-stricken protagonist played by Fielder. There are cracks. There are winces. But that high-profile role in The Curse serves as a welcome reminder that he never went away.
Things changed with terrifying urgency in early Abdi says he was supposed to start elementary school the day the war broke outโ"I had my school uniform on.
Bullets all day, all night. People screaming. We were stranded in Mogadishu for about a year or twoโฆ it was very scary times, but we managed to escape.
Abdi, alongside his mother, sister, and two brothers, eventually fled the country to join his father, who was teaching in Yemen. The refugee family would stay on the Arabian Peninsula until Abdi turned But we came to the inner city and there were also drugs, policeโthere was a lot happening.
