The Hollywood Chai

As promised, we are finally delivering our Part 2 Oscar Special – Oscars Breakdown on the 2022 Front. Yes a pun for a film that was nominated heavily and sweeped some of the technical categories and name dropped quite a bit in today’s episode. We bring back ELIA NINO, aka the Hollywood Chai’s Arab Godfather of Cinema! Just as a reminder, in part one, we talked about everything from this year’s telecast, adding new categories to the...

Another week, another special guest! The wonderfully talented DINA NAJJAR joins us to talk about Breaking Hollywood Stereotypes of Arab and Middle Eastern characters and stories. Dina is a first generation Palestinian-Jordanian award-winning actor and filmmaker whose mission is to bring diversity without stereotypes to the screen and stage and to tell important stories that inspire, empower, and include. Some of the roles she’s pro...

Just in time for this week's Tony Award nominations announcement, we have a very special guest, the iconic STEVEN CONROY. He is an award-winning Brooklyn-based actor, writer and producer. He portrayed Elias Appleby in a recurring guest star role on the third season of AMC’s TURN: Washington’s Spies; and some of his national commercials include BDO and Mastercard, among others. He co-wrote, produced and starred in "18 Grand...

Continuing with Arab-American Heritage Month, we have another special Arab guest today. Today's special guest is SALIM LAHAM, a filmmaker andmusician from Lebanon that calls Dearborn home now. A storyteller by his own right, he fell in love with movies from a young age when his father used to take him to a movie rental store in Detroit, yeah remember those? As he started memorizing his favorite films and his love grew for cinem...

We're breaking from our interview episodes for Arab American Heritage Month and bringing you a special conversation with none other than the Arab Godfather of Cinema, writer-director ELIA NINO, about all things Oscars and the 95th Academy Awards. In part one of this talk, we discuss everything from this year's telecast, about adding new categories to the ceremony and about the new diversity and inclusivity rules that AMPAS ...

Continuing with Arab-American Heritage Month, we have another special Arab guest today. Today's special guest is GAMAL ELSAWAH, a queer Arab-American writer, actor, and comedian, born and based in New York City. He is the co-founder of Showdogs, a New York based independent film and theatre production that is committed to the creation of work that is provocative, diverse and accessible to all.

Gamal’s plays have been workshopp...

We are back with Season 3! A new look, new sound, new style! All in the name of Independent Artists Breaking Hollywood in their own right! Today's special guest is WALID CHAYA, a Middle Eastern actor, director and writer based in Los Angeles. He is known for his breakout film “Driving Ms. Saudi” for which he won “Best Comedy Short” from Dubai’s prestigious WOW Middle East Film Fair and numerous festivals worldwide, incuding a s...

Ahlan wa sahlan and welcome to the Hollywood Chai! A podcast that spills the real chai on Hollywood with interviews with artists and storytellers on their craft and their individual and independent ways of breaking into Hollywood, some heavily researched educational episodes on Hollywood-related topics & groundbreaking pioneers and your occasional pop cultural zeitgeist episodes about what’s hot in the industry both on and off ...

On this week’s episode, we give you a special preview episode of the new screenwriting podcast, The Script Doctors! It is a co-production between JAKKAWI Studios and Cooper Home Entertainment and is co-hosted, co-edited and co-created by myself and by one of my closest and best friends, Jonathan Cooper, who you may recognize from Episode 120, Coping with Screenwriting. The Script Doctors is a podcast showcasing two professional scr...

On this week’s episode we have our very first Hollywood Chai Roundtable with the topic of the 2022 Austin Film Festival and Writer’s Conference that just took place a few weeks ago. Joining me on this episode are previous Chai Spillers, Melissa Graves, who you may remember from Season 1’s epic two-part Spec episodes, episode 112 and 113, and Elia Nino, from this season’s Halloween special, Episode 130 and new Chai Spiller, Pierre J...

We are doing things differently this week and taking a look at the industry from an Actor's Perspective. And for that, I’ve brought on a very special friend of mine to talk about the art of acting – Isaac Ramsey! Born in Southern California, he hails from the Mojave Desert. He developed a love for writing and literature at a young age, and his love for movies fueled his love for acting. He joined the U.S. Army after high school and...

This week, we are celebrating Halloween with a Horror-filled Chai Spill! To help us, we have my cousin, the Godfather of Cinema in our Family and horror film aficionado, Elia Nino. Elia is an Arab-American screenwriter, director and a graduate of the UCLA Professional Program in Screenwriting and is based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He balances his time screenwriting, directing and self-producing shorts along with his tech job a...

This week, we are back after a lengthy mid-season hiatus with a special guest. We are blessed to have the iconic, the hilarious, my bestie from another testie, Leyla Lacombe. Leyla is a French Tunisian multi-hyphenate: an actress, streamer, content creator, podcaster and associate producer for Video Game Developer Ubisoft. She has a long history and background in theatre and is looking into moving towards Voice Acting as her next p...

FAIR WARNING: This episode is another nerdy one...because we invited on, none other than cinephile and Doctor of Film and now Chemistry himself, Dr. Nicholas Akkawi, for another genre masterclass of sorts but this time about a niche in the sci-fi genre that is the Star Wars Universe. In this episode, we specifically talk about the different trilogies, the pros and cons of the series, and our thoughts on the ever-expanding stories t...

It's a GREATEST HITS Episode!!! We've had such amazing guests on that we wanted to curate some of the advice and tips that they've given us and package them for you in a mini-episode! Enjoy!

1:49 - Tara Abboud: A Conversation with "Amira" Star (Ep 117)

2:46 - Rana Sobh: An Arab-American Girl, UN-INterrupted (Ep 123)

5:14 - Amanda Dieli: The Art of Self-Producing (Ep 126)

19:14 - Jonathan Cooper: Coping with Screenwriting (Ep 120)

2...

I am joined this week by a special friend of mine, the Queen herself, Amanda Dieli. Amanda is an award-winning Brooklyn-based actor, writer, and comedian. She holds a BFA in Acting from the University of Southern California, and a Graduate Certification in Television Writing from the University of California, Los Angeles and has studied screenwriting at Columbia University. She has trained professionally with The School at Steppenw...

I am joined this week by a special friend of mine, the iconic Diana Abousaleh. Diana is a Syrian-Venezuelan independent writer/filmmaker, mental health advocate, and educator based in Texas. She insists that writing is a journey, and not a destination. That being said, she loves to encourage writers to aim for progress, not perfection, something I try and practice in my everyday writing thanks to her. She is passionate about amplif...

I am joined this week by a special friend of mine, the iconic Sabine Kahwaji. Sabine is a Lebanese Canadian director, writer and music videographer. Her narrative-focused directorial style has led her to work actively in the music industry with prominent labels and artists with a combined total of over 1.4 million views across her projects. As a proud Lebanese woman with a passion for storytelling, Sabine strives to eradicate cultu...

This week we have another very special and unique guest. I am joined this week by a special friend of mine, the iconic Rana Sobh. Rana is an Arab American actress and model. Her passion for storytelling, interest in psychology and understanding emotion and motivation is heavily influenced by the film “Girl, Interrupted.” She speaks Arabic fluently and has a Bachelors degree in psychology from Oakland University. Syrian actress Amal...