“Mo” the series—which kicked off in 2022—explores Amer’s and his family’s lived experiences as Palestinian refugees navigating the U.S. immigration system in Houston, Texas. Through the fictional Najjar family, Amer retells his more than 20-year-long journey to citizenship after fleeing Kuwait during the Gulf War at the age of nine through a sharp yet vulnerable comedic lens.
The Peabody Award-winning series returned for a second and final season in January, serving as an emotional homecoming for both fictional and real-life Mo. Opening with titular character Mo Najjar stranded in Mexico with no passport and scraping by on odd jobs—working as a mariachi and as the not-so-talented luchador El Oso Palestino, “The Palestinian Bear”—the season ends with the Najjars’ sentimental return to Palestine.
Despite the series’ “bittersweet” conclusion, El Oso Palestino has found new life through Amer’s current tour of the same name, coming to the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Tampa on Thursday, July 31. Although the show has wrapped, it bears repeat watches as a multifaceted and heartfelt exploration of the immigrant experience in our current political climate. In the second season’s first and second episodes, “El Oso Palestino” and “Gone Fishing,” Amer’s Najjar is forced into crossing the U.S. /Mexico border illegally in hopes of making it home in time for his asylum hearing, but is eventually caught and placed in a detention center.
Amer says highlighting the detention centers was always intended to be part of the series, including consulting with immigration attorneys and a detainee to portray it authentically.
“You just would see these images of people being corralled, which was insane,” Amer says. “And it’d be so hurtful just to see those images, but you don’t really get to get a peek inside of them. And it’s just like there’s no real faces, no names to the faces, or like any stories to tie into them, and it’s really so dehumanizing the way you see these images and you don’t really get to explore it.”
Following the writers’ strike and the events of Oct. 7, 2023, Amer says it was largely a collective decision to end the series’ timeline before the Hamas attack and ensuing war in Gaza, as exploring it within the series would make it lose its “heart and spirit.”
“It was really dangerous to go down this road and write something with very little information out. Then the show would come out almost a year later—that’s also problematic,” says Amer. “Then [we] just lost all the characters and character-building, and all the things that we loved about the show disappeared.”
Despite the show’s critical acclaim and timely commentary on the political state of the U.S., Amer says he’s still disappointed about Mo’s lack of recognition at this year’s Emmys. “Honestly, it’s like, just a super bummer that the TV Academy missed how important this show is,” Amer says.
The ongoing war and atrocities in Gaza won’t be dismissed from the comic’s work; he hints the “elephant in the room” will be addressed on tour as he prepares to record his upcoming special in August.
Following Amer’s successful Netflix comedy specials—2018’s “The Vagabond” and 2022’s “Mohammed in Texas”—Amer says the key to this latest comedy special is maturing and taking his time to hone his voice. “I’m very, very excited to … just be really real and raw and just be myself,” says Amer. “That’s what stand-ups do, right? Spend all of these years just trying to be yourself on stage.”
Throughout the comic’s 26-year career—going from performing for troops overseas at 19 and joining the Muslim comedy trio “Allah Made Me Funny” through his acting appearances in Ramy Youssef’s Ramy and superhero flick “Black Adam”—Amer’s comedy has always held a space for perseverance and grief.
After losing his father at 14, Amer’s teacher encouraged him to try performance as a method of coping. Amer says that to this day, he still uses comedy as a coping mechanism as he navigates the ongoing occupation in Palestine and the loss of his brother and sister.
“I always imagined when I’d make it, I’d have all the fun in the world. I thought I’d just be on top of it and just be enjoying it [to a] certain degree. But I just feel like I can’t get away from grief,” Amer confesses.
As far as future projects, following this latest tour, Amer says he is currently working on a movie and show, with a possible sabbatical in his future—although he’s notorious for not taking any time to relax.
Neither will Amer stop using his comedy and media platforms to spread awareness about Gaza, and he is very much aware of the state of the discourse and potential backlash surrounding celebrities making their voices heard.
“You got to keep informing, but also you got to keep being great at what you do, which is your art form. You know, it’s really also very important, so you can be a part of the culture. So I just think it’s all balanced. But as a very basic foundation of a human being, [you] should be able to speak out when there’s something that’s really, really wrong. Grotesquely wrong. Surely, when they’re carpet-bombing an entire population, you can at least talk about that.”
A version of this post first appeared at our sibling publication Orlando Weekly.
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This article appears in Jul 24-30, 2025.