The visionary Prince Nasir is played by actor Alexander Siddig. “Nasir has so many new ideas he would like to implement,” says the actor, “such as freedoms for women, freedom of the press, all of these very progressive ideas that this new plan could make a reality. These two characters find each other at this one moment in their lives where they really catalyze each other.”

Nasir’s ambitions are complicated by outside pressure from the foreign corporations whose massive profits depend on business as usual. The Emir is getting on in age, and soon will have to name his successor. Nasir has worked at his father’s side for years, building hopes for a stronger country and better lives for his people when he ascends to the throne. But the Emir has been made vulnerable by strife within the royal family, and when Nasir becomes more vocal about the empowering future he sees for his people, American interests are quick to step in and put pressure on his father to name Nasir’s more materialistic, compliant younger brother Meshal as his successor.

“Meshal is willing to be more of a puppet,” says Akbar Kurtha, who plays the younger prince. “He’s quite happy to play that game. He and Nasir don’t have a very comfortable relationship. While Nasir is pro-reform, Meshal would probably prefer to have an even more flamboyant lifestyle than he already has. And there’s a resentment there, because while Nasir has been groomed all his life to be king, Meshal has pretty much been left by the wayside.”

As soon as he read the script, Alexander Siddig was eager to take on the role of Prince Nasir. “I unashamedly chased down this part because Nasir is the voice of the Arab world that I wanted to represent right now,” he says. “It’s the sense of humanity that he has. Some contemporary Arab leaders have an enormous humanity, but in the West, it’s a point that’s easily missed these days. When I grew up, the only time you would see Arabs onscreen would be in something like Sinbad where they’re climbing over the side of the ship with a saber in their mouth. When you have the opportunity to speak through a character like this who wants to use his power as a force for good, for real progress, you have a chance to let the Western world know that men like these exist in the Arab world. That’s the kind of contribution to a greater dialogue an actor doesn’t often get a chance to make.”

For Samia Adnan, teaching the English-speaking actors to speak an Arabic dialect as if it was their second language was understandably easier than teaching those playing Arabic characters how to sound as natural as a native speaker. “Prince Nasir and Prince Meshal, for example, are two of the most important native Arabic roles in the movie,” she explains, “but neither of the actors knew Arabic before they began, and Alexander Siddig did not know the Arabic alphabet. Both were raised in England and first had to overcome their English accent. They both worked very hard, not only to speak with a standard accent, but also to sound like princes.”

“Being an English actor,” says Alexander Siddig, who plays Nasir, “my challenge when delivering lines in Arabic was that an Arabic audience will not only understand what those lines mean, they will understand all the nuances of this prince character that culturally is part of their mindset. So in a way, it necessitated employing two acting styles for different idioms at the same time.”

“I unashamedly chased down this part because Nasir is the voice of the Arab world that I wanted to represent right now,” he says. “It’s the sense of humanity that he has. Some contemporary Arab leaders have an enormous humanity, but in the West, it’s a point that’s easily missed these days. When I grew up, the only time you would see Arabs onscreen would be in something like Sinbad where they’re climbing over the side of the ship with a saber in their mouth. When you have the opportunity to speak through a character like this who wants to use his power as a force for good, for real progress, you have a chance to let the Western world know that men like these exist in the Arab world. That’s the kind of contribution to a greater dialogue an actor doesn’t often get a chance to make.”