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No one but Mohamed Ramadan knows what he’s climbing towards. Not his fans, not his business partners, not his wife Nisreen. He won’t even tell Mahmoud what he has planned, his manager and big brother, the man with whom he rose from poverty to become Egypt’s biggest and most hotly-debated star.
“Everything is run by me and Mahmoud, but we only discuss current projects. I can’t talk about my future plans with anyone because no one can see my vision. I can only trust myself. I just go with it and I explain it to people as it comes,” Ramadan tells Esquire Middle East.
When we push him, he’s willing to talk about his ambitions in broad terms. For instance, he’s already the number one actor at the box office and music charts in Egypt, and in the Middle East—and, this month, he becomes the first Arab star to ever appear as a playable character in the world’s number one mobile game Garena:Free Fire. Next, he’s got other borders in mind.
“I also want to be number one in Africa. That would satisfy me. My country, my language, and my continent,” says Ramadan.
“And then everywhere else in the world,” he adds as an afterthought.
We’re at this month’s cover shoot in Dubai with the innovative and experimental photographer Abdullah Elmaz. A few hours earlier, when Ramadan had sauntered into The Grip—a white-washed studio in Business Bay with his entourage in tow, there were a few immediate changes that needed to be made to give the room the energy he required. “Play my music,” Ramadan said. “Loud.”
The 2020 viral hit “Bum Bum” came on first. Immediately, Ramadan was a man transformed.
At first, he closed his eyes and began to bob his head. When he found his groove, a smile hit his face, his eyes darted up at all the people in the room and he started dancing his signature move from the music video, pointing at his hips and then gyrating them quickly to the rhythm.
He laughed as he did it, boyishly looking around at us to be sure we saw it. He wanted us in the moment with him, too.
“In 2016,
I became the highest paid actor in the Middle East, and I had the biggest fan base. But I felt like it came too early.”
Like most high-profile celeb shoots, on-set requests had come to us before the shoot. There was to be a selection of sunglasses on hand, not to be used in the shoot, but because Ramadan feels more comfortable wearing sunglasses in between takes. Our favourite part of the ‘rider’ was the request for chopped guava and dates, just in case things ran overtime and we were to break our fast together.
Ramadan seemed tired. The Holy Month had just begun earlier that week, and we were only a couple hours away from Iftar. By the time we had the chance to sit down and talk, ostensibly about the honour of appearing as a playable character in Garena: Free Fire, we were half an hour from sundown, but Ramadan didn’t complain as we dove into a more personal discussion.
“What was the first ambition you ever had?” we ask him. “I just wanted people to believe in me,” Ramadan says.
Let’s jump back to a pivotal moment in Ramadan’s life for a bit. It’s 2007 and Ramadan is 19. He is on Egyptian television, the camera zoomed is in on his face, and the presenter is playing a recording of comments made by the legendary Egyptian actor Omar Sharif, the star of Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago.
Sharif, who had starred in a film with the still green Ramadan a year earlier, is gushing about the young actor. Sharif says that he thinks Ramadan is the best actor working today, that he’s the future of Egyptian film, and that when he finally dies, it is Ramadan who will take his place atop the pyramid.
Ramadan is sobbing. He looks more vulnerable than he’s ever looked on camera, before or since. He took that moment to make a promise to himself that someday, even if it took 50 years, he would make sure Sharif’s words came true.
Flash forward to 2016. Ramadan has spent the last 10 years rising higher and higher in the world of Egyptian television and film, a box office star and the winner of numerous awards, named the best actor in Egypt several years in a row.
He’s done it.
“In 2016, I became the highest paid actor in the Middle East, and I had the biggest fan base,” says Ramadan. “I felt like it came too early.”
This was the first time that Ramadan encountered a problem that has plagued him ever since. His ambition and work ethic may drive him to every destination he sets for himself, but he’s never actually satisfied when he gets there.
“That’s when I went into music, because it was a different challenge, different ambition, and a different audience that I could take by storm,” says Ramadan, “and then move on to the next thing.”
Will any of this satiate him? It doesn’t seem like it.
“Every time I get closer to where I want to be, I feel like it moves further away.”
Parsing exactly what Ramadan’s metrics for success are is a bit more difficult. Yes, his catch phrase “number 1” lays this out seemingly clearly, but at times in our conversation it seems that what Ramadan wants is success for the sake of success, winning at anything in particular as long as people are watching. In fact, when he lays out his end goal, he doesn’t seem to know exactly what it may look like when he’s finally done.
“I’m going to get to a point of success that no one else reached in the whole wide world. I want to reach a level that no one else has seen before. How, where, and when it’s going to happen, I don’t know,” says Ramadan.
One of the key metrics, he lays out, are eyeballs. He talks about the billions of views he’s received on YouTube, and the hundreds of millions of impressions his hashtags and shared sounds become on TikTok. Getting into music was about finding a bigger and different audience and getting into Garena: Free Fire was driven by the same goal.
“I’m so happy to be in Free Fire, because it’s the first time I’ve ever been in a game. Games are different from songs, and there’s a lot of people who don’t listen to songs or watch movies. I’m happy to finally reach gamers, because I probably couldn’t have reached a lot of them with my singing or acting. They are a new category to themselves—they are the gamers,” says Ramadan.
Ultimately, everything comes down to clout, impressions and reach in the current lay of the land, and that isn’t just a metric for Mohammed Ramadan, that’s the way of the world. And with his ever-increasing multiplatform fanbase has come a level of fame that he never dreamed of.
He’s clear to point something out, though—it’s not the fame he wanted, it was how the fame could help him reach his ambitions.
“My reward is not fame, that’s just how I touch people. I don’t think about fame. I just think about my ambitions, and I go out there to get my ambitions.”
Ramadan says he doesn’t think about money either. He claims that the money that has come his way, which he often flaunts for the world to see in his social media posts, is the by-product of his addiction to work.
“I just want to reach the top of the pyramid. Yes, I’ve got more money than I’ve got fulfilment, but money comes to those who don’t chase it,” says Ramadan.
“There’s bad things that come with fame too,” we say. Ramadan laughs. “Yes, I know,” he says as he shakes his head. “I know, I know, I know.”
Ramadan is currently one of the most controversial figures in the Arabic-speaking world. His latest Ramadan television series Mousa, which has been one of the top trending subjects of the month, has been under fire for allegedly criticising classic actors of the Egyptian film world, something Ramadan and the writer of the show have both denied on social media. He also continues to field criticism to nearly every one of his posts, with strangers and even public figures in Egypt questioning his motivations and his respect for Arab culture.
None of this, however, gets Ramadan down, he says.
“I was very ready for it. I always knew that the bad was going to come. With the fame, there’s haters, and I was always prepared for that. I was very realistic. I knew that I’m not in heaven, and with every good thing that’s going to come, a bad thing is going to come with it. I knew that with every good thing, you have to pay some sort of price for the thing you get,” says Ramadan.
For Ramadan, the only judgment that he has for himself comes when he believes that a higher power is disappointed in him.
“I knew that with every good thing that was going to come my way, I would have to pay some sort of price for it.”
“I am only disappointed in myself if I feel that God is not happy with what I’m doing. I always think that God will be with me, so the only thing that could make me feel bad is if I feel that God will leave me,” says Ramadan. “I put my faith in everything that I have and my will into God, and that’s why I feel I get everything I have. I put my ambitions to God, and if it comes to me, then God is willing.”
The only actions that he regrets, he says, are the ones that hurt people on a personal level.
“If I do something to hurt someone without meaning to, or I hurt someone unintentionally, that is what hurts me the most. Trust in god, success. That is my slogan,” says Ramadan.
“That hashtag on TikTok reached around 150 million people. My slogan did that.”
We bring up the thought experiment that perhaps some people may choose not to work with him because of the controversies that swirl around him, which could in theory get in the way of him achieving his ambitions.
“What is your actual question?” Ramadan asks.
We ask him if he’s ever experienced this.
“It’s never happened, but if it did happen, I would completely believe that it’s the other person’s loss, and I would just let it go. If it’s in Egypt, I would bring an audience that no one else would bring, so it would be the other person’s loss. I also reach all the Middle East countries. So it’s his loss in the end,” says Ramadan.
Last December, Ramadan told the Abu Dhabi based newspaper The National that he keeps a book in his home, a ledger, where he writes the names of people every day who were kind to him, as well as those that were hurtful to him. He calls the list of unkind names his ‘blacklist’.
“I document what they did and said and it makes me strive to prove them wrong. That’s always worked for me,” he told the paper.
Since Ramadan was a young boy, Ramadan’s idol was the legendary boxer Muhammad Ali, who was famous not only for his boxing skills and his high-profile conversion to Islam, but for his conscious adoption of a public persona to deal and fuel both the positive attention, and the negative.
Ali learned it from pro-wrestling legend Gorgeous George, whose flamboyant self-promotion and willingness to play the heel to the audience was something that aided Ali throughout his career, both as a boxer and a public figure.
Ali and Gorgeous George understood, through the wisdom of professional wrestling, what Shakespeare once wrote about hundreds of years earlier—that all the world is merely a stage. The public sphere, especially for high-profile celebrities, is theatre, and to not only thrive professionally but to insulate oneself personally, a disconnect should take place between the two.
For Mohamed Ramadan, that character first began in his films, often called ‘the Thug’. It’s a character that Ramadan’s mother wonders where he got it, considering it does not reflect the gentle boy she raised, he says.
If his film days gave rise to ‘the Thug’ character, his turn as a pop artist and rapper cemented it and pushed it further, playing a character who was a flamboyant, arrogant showboat who flashed his wealth and laughed at his critics in music videos such as “Ana El Batal”, released in March 2021, in which he wears a Joker mask and declares that all his critics are still his loyal audience.
Muhammad Ali would be proud.
While that persona may be a key to his success, it is still one he needs to separate himself from. When he goes home to see his wife and children, the entirety of his work life is left outside the home.
“I take off the celebrity suit before I enter the house. I’m a different character before I enter the house and after. That’s how I balance,” says Ramadan. “When I see my mum, my wife, my kids or my brother, they remind me of the person I’ve always been, and what I like and what I don’t like, and the foods I love. It keeps balance from the bad and the good qualities I’ve always had, because I can see the person I’ve always been in their eyes.”
Even Ramadan’s trophies, pictures and other important keepsakes from his career are kept out of the home, so that they are never visible to him or his family when he’s finally able to be with them.
He’s not home as much as he’d like to be, however.
“In every big success I have, everyone around me is so happy for me, but I’m always so busy working on the next project. My loved ones, wait to celebrate with me, but I have no time,” says Ramadan. “My wife understands my life, and she’s coping with it,” he adds.
Still, you get the feeling that part of him does wish that those that criticize him knew him better, or judged his actions less harshly, as he still works to fully figure out the person that he is. As grand as his plans to take over the world are, it seems the most important plan, the one he keeps most secret, is the man that he wants to become.
“People don’t understand my plans or my strategy, or where I want to be. Every artist has a painting, and he paints what people would see of him. I haven’t finished my painting yet, so I’m asking people to wait.”
As Iftar nears, our free-fire questioning closes, and Ramadan beams a smile one last time before giving me another hearty embrace as we depart. Thank you, habibi, but Ramadan’s Rolls-Royce can wait no longer.
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