A siren is going off. It is loud and arresting—the kind of piercing noise that makes it hard to think, let alone hear anything. The actor Mohammed Faisal Mostafa looks around, piecing together what is happening. It is mid-morning and he is in a hotel room in Abu Dhabi, he’s been camped out there for a few weeks while filming a new TV series that will be out early 2024 (“I can’t talk much about it, it’s still a secret”)—but more on that later. It’s a Saturday, and one of his rare days off from filming.
“I think it’s a fire alarm,” he says first with a look of mild concern which turns into a wry smile. He’s talking to me on the other end of a video call—the smile comes across as part embarrassment and part mischief. Not the kind of mischief that he’s done anything wrong, but the kind which says that he’s going to find out what’s going on.
I offer to call back once the situation is sorted, but he insists that I stay on the call. “No, no, let’s see where this goes,” he says with another smile, getting out of his seat and heading towards the fire escape—as he walks the phone’s camera is positioned to give that universally unflattering up-nose shot to its viewer. “Is this a drill? Or a real thing?” he asks the other people briskly walking down the flights of stairs. “The lifts are out,” someone says in the background. No one is sure.
“Are you sure that you don’t need a moment?” I ask. “No, it’s all good,” he replies, not looking at the screen, his eyes darting around him assessing what’s going on, not unlike a soldier in uncharted territory. “Sorry about this. Stick with me, I’ll be out in a minute. I think it’s a drill.”
It was.
While milling around outside he sees a friend who evacuated the building without her shoes. He takes off his slippers and insists she wears them. He then walks over shoeless to a nearby bench and we begin.
“Well, that was an interesting start,” he laughs. “It’s nice to meet you.”
Mohamed Faisal Mostafa has Main Character Energy. It is a characteristic that can be best described as a combination of charisma, drive, tenacity and self-belief. It is not something that you can fake, nor something that can be developed easily.
Born to an Emirati father and English mother, his childhood growing up in the UAE was pretty good. His mixed heritage granted him the best of both worlds—a happy childhood in safe family-filled Dubai neighbourhoods punctuated with family summer holidays spent in the United Kingdom and Ireland with his three older siblings. Always an active kid, it was football rather than acting that was his first passion and while he reached his dreams of playing professionally—he played goalkeeper for both Al Ain FC and Al Wasl FC—a combination of head injuries and what he describes as “politics” unfortunately cut that dream short in his twenties.
“I got to live my dream of being a pro footballer, but I fractured my head three times, and there was a bunch of other stuff happening which really affected me,” he says. “Although I was 27 at the time, perhaps I was a bit too naïve. In reality, playing at that level isn’t just about playing well, it’s a business. But what I did learn about myself was that I am a really determined person, and I never stop.” He’s not making it up, either.
It takes a great deal of character to rebound from having your life’s goal snuffed out before it ever got properly going, let alone transition into acting—another of the world’s most competitive professions—and within a few years be starring alongside Idris Elba in Apple+’s massive TV series, Hijack. But Mostafa is not the kind of guy to sit around and let things come to him.
A veritable polymath, Mostafa’s entrepreneurial spirit started when he was 20 years old—opening up a gym, The Burn Room, with his friend—and seen him go work in private equity in the UK, before setting up his own business, Versatile Synergy, in the UAE that focused on helping small businesses evolve with digital transformation. Today, he is using all that experience to help the family business that was set up by his great grandfather. In 2024, Mostafa Bin Abdullatif Investments celebrates its centenary, and Mohammed sees his role as essential in helping it evolve and modernize.
“I always wanted to work in the family business, and with my expertise in digital transformation, I feel I can give back in an important way to my family’s legacy,” he says. “It is an important for me to represent the younger generation in the family business. I’m proud of this.”
Remember I mentioned that Mostafa was in Abu Dhabi because he was in the middle of filming? Well, here’s a little exclusive. Mostafa is currently filming a gritty Arab-language TV series about an Emirati who becomes a MMA fighter. He is playing the lead role, and, well, it will come as little surprise that in the show he also does his own stunts.
“That was something that was important to me,” he says. “The stunt coordinator, Najmeddin Scorpion, has worked with Jackie Chan and Zac Efron, so I wanted to push myself to go up a level both as an actor, and as an athlete.” While most of the information about the series remains a tight-guarded secret, the scale and the expectation of the Arab-language project has all the potential to make significant waves in the regional film industry. “This is the biggest thing I have done filmwise, and I think is going to be a gamechanger,” says Mostafa.
The question you’re probably asking yourself right now is how does this entrepreneurial, ex-footballer not only have time to dabble in acting, but reach levels that very few Emirati actors have before? The answer is a combination of main character energy and family.
It was his older brother—the celebrated film director Ali F Mostafa—who planted the seeds early on in the youngest Mostafa. The two have always had a close bond, with Mohammed often finding himself as the subject of Ali’s films throughout his childhood as well as being cast in a trio of Ali’s films: Under The Sun (2005) and features City of Life (2009) and The Worthy (2016). His credits also include Taken director Pierre Morel’s The Ambush (2021)—the true story of an attack on Emirati soldiers by insurgents—which is currently the highest grossing Emirati language film.
“I had recently stopped playing football and Ali asked if I would be interested in being in The Worthy. It reminded me that not only I could still act, but that that I actually enjoyed it,” he says. “That was an important thing for me at the time. To find happiness again. So I started to take it seriously, and realised that acting really makes me feel in my element, much like being on the football field did, so I hired an agent and started to take it seriously.”
For someone with Mostafa’s drive, ‘taking it seriously’ meant quickly landing the role as the Emirati air-traffic controller in Hijack. With Mostafa becoming the first Emirati actor cast in a US-produced series of global magnitude it was a role small on screen time, but huge in statement.
The experience was a positive one for Mostafa, despite admitting that he was unprepared by just how large the scale of the production was, and it triggered something more in him. “There is a lot talent in the UAE,” he says. “There are major productions that are shot here like Dune and Mission Impossible, and there is always a distinct lack of Emiratis working on them.” We discuss about how there is growing Emiratisation in the country’s public and private sector, but it does not exist in the film industry, which is a detriment to its development.
“Simply by being Emirati, on set I was able to make sure that the Arabic was the right dialect, the way the Khandora is worn was correct, and even little things like on screen when the door is opened the people on the right side are let through first,” he says. “Film is stories, narratives, cultures—when you see that a production has gone into the nitty-gritty to get the details right, then it makes it hit deeper. If you are telling a story based in the UAE (or anywhere), then give the locals the freedom to share what others may not know. It will only help the story.”
The late afternoon sun is shining on ERTH. The stunning architectural landmark in Abu Dhabi was formerly the Armed Forces Officers’ Club until recent redeveloped converted it into a multi-purpose space. Strong, stark and proud, it represents an evolution of the UAE’s modern design aesthetic but one that remains in conversation with its past.
Inside the Esquire Middle East crew have just wrapped after the photoshoot. The team is sat down in a circle, their eyes closed in a moment of guided meditation led by Mostafa. Oh, did I not mention that he is also a yoga instructor?
It’s not common for an Emirati man to teach yoga. ‘Real’ Emirati men play football, not yoga. Well, Mostafa does both, and there is nothing not real about him.
About three years ago, “I was stuck in a really bad place,” he reveals, the tone of his voice changing. “I had gone through some really bad stuff and was stuck in a rut at a point where nothing mattered to me, I was numb.” By his own admission Mostafa was spiraling into a depression and it was his brother who was there to help pull him back into the light. It was through Ali’s wife—yoga instructor Adele O’Herlihy—that he started going to a yoga class. “I just wanted to get out of the place that I was in emotionally and, I’ll tell you what, a yoga class is much harder than a gym session!” he laughs.
Every morning, he would do yoga at 7am followed by an hour in the gym, “it was like hitting the reset button.” He tells the story of one class where O’Herlihy would read poetry after the sessions—the words of gratitude and grief hitting him on such a deep level he would often have tears streaming down his face.
“It was like being in a tunnel, and the light at the end grew brighter and brighter,” he explains. “I started to learn how to be more self-aware. How to read life, not just live life. It made me address the way I deal with challenges and to own up to my actions, and I feel that it also brought me closer to God. It really did save me.”
In true Mohammed Mostafa style, he went to Thailand and studied to become an instructor. He now teaches a class at Samadhi Wellness in Jumeirah, where he aims to help change the conversation around men’s mental health, emboldening others to learn how to speak to themselves, and grow the confidence to be able to speak up about their struggles. Due to the fact that the poetry readings had such an effect on him, he now takes a leading role in paying it forward by ending his sessions reciting some of his own poems to the class as they do breathwork. In front of the Esquire team, he shares a poem he wrote about overcoming grief.
Regardless of the phase that Mohammed Mostafa is in, he likes to keep moving. He is a doer, not an observer. It is what has allowed him to pursue so many avenues and, in turn, learn so many lessons. In a way, he is the embodiment of a dynamic new generation of Emirati men—a generation who have the means, but also the drive, to want to push the boundaries. A generation who are respectful of their heritage, but also motivated by it.
“The beauty of my situation now is that I’m not making the same mistakes of the past. If I hurt somebody – even myself – I address it and I apologise for it. I still make mistakes, but I feel like I am only getting better day by day and I am grateful for that and what I have.” He’s not running anymore, he’s on a smarter path, a main character’s path.
Photography by Greg Adamski / Styling by Laura Jane Brown / Make Up by Sophie Leach / Produced by Steff Hawker / Production Assistance by Sarah Kuleib
Shot on location at ERTH, Abu Dhabi