From a young age, Natacha Karam always knew that she was destined to be in showbiz. “I really am one of those kids who has been saying it since I was three years old,” the 27-year-old exclusively tells GRAZIA USA. “I was relentless about it and had such a tenacity my whole life — it was like a magnet and still is.”
Now, the actress currently stars on 9-1-1: Lone Star on Fox — a role she still has to pinch herself about.
“In my opinion, it was our best season so far,” she gushes. “I think the characters are super lived in by now, we have already gotten to know them by now, so there’s less time doing exposition and informing an audience about a character and more time just experiencing them, which is always a good place to be in.”
It’s also a bonus that Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk — who worked on Glee — and Tim Minear are executive producers on the Fox show. “They have all been known to be really good at creating a space for marginalized people and putting marginalized people in center positions on TV in a multitude of different ways over all of their different shows, and this show is no different,” she declares.
The brunette beauty’s face lights up when she reveals one of her favorite parts about working on the show is spending time with the cast, which includes Rob Lowe, Brian Michael Smith, Gina Torres and more. “I am so lucky to be on a show where I love everyone I work with, and we all choose to spend time with each other outside of work,” she gushes. “After spending 16 hours a day with each other at work, we’re still not sick of each other, so that is nice.”
Karam, who plays firefighter Marjan Marwani, also gets to “do quite a few stunts,” which is a plus. “I do a lot of repelling. I have repelled quite a few times in our show down the side of a buildings or I go up the ladder when that is considered a stunt,” she shares. “Fight choreography, I punched someone in an episode recently. We did an episode where there was a car hanging off a bridge and me and Brian [Michael Smith], who plays Paul, were suspended in the air kind of climbing onto the car and trying to get into and pull someone out – that was fun.”
“I am an adrenaline junkie in general, but you have to do these things so many times over and over and over again that you kind of lose any and all adrenaline,” she says of the process. Karam is excited that she gets to show other women that they are capable of anything. “Any time I get a choice and I get a chance to be powerful and do something cool, I am always stepping up,” she admits.
“It’s funny because any time there is a piece of heavy equipment that needs to get off the engine or the ladder, they will ask Marjan to do it, and I am like, ‘Guys, I think people get it, she is physically capable now,'” she quips. “But it is even just small reminders like that because if someone new is tuning in and they come in with preconceived notions of, ‘Oh, you are just a little woman.’ Well, I am not, and if I am in this unit and I am a firefighter and I passed all of these tests, I am extremely physical capable and picking up a piece of equipment is no problem to me.'”
Karam’s character is also a devout Muslim in the series, and she notes it’s “refreshing to break the stereotypes” while on TV. “It’s time that those kind of narratives change and that people get to see themselves accurately represented. I believe that my character helps people with that, I believe that Brian Smith’s character helps with that — he is a Black trans man, and I think the first Black trans series regular on a TV show, which is so amazing, and he’s making history. That is so cool for our show to be a part of that.”
Prior to landing on 9-1-1: Lone Star, Karam appeared in The Old Guard alongside Charlize Theron, in addition to Homeland on Showtime, but it took a long time to find a steady job.
“I had the exhausted feeling,” she recalls of auditioning. “I had the worn down in my soul feeling where you just hear no and no and no again, or worst yet, you hear absolutely nothing.”
Despite the ups and downs, Karam knew she couldn’t give up. “I just never stopped dreaming because I learned how to not take it personally,” she says. “I said, ‘When the time is right, that thing is sitting there waiting for me to step into it and that has been proven with different parts in my career.'”
“There have been a lot of chapters,” she adds. “No one is surprised where I am now, so it really does affirm for me that dreams can come true. And I get to inspire other people — I am here, I am living proof that it is possible, but you have to be determined because I have had determination since I was tiny. Believe in yourself! If you can dream it, you can live it, you can have it. Believe in your dreams and you really can achieve whatever your mind can dream of, but you have to work hard and you have to stay the course, that road is rocky, that journey is rough sometimes, but it is so rewarding to get something that you dreamed of and know that you worked hard for it.”
As for what’s next, Karam’s dream role is to play a boxer in a movie — she would love to “have my Million Dollar Baby moment.”
“It’s the dream,” she states. “It’s the perfect combo of having a narrative where there is something to overcome and it’s also my favorite sport. That is what I am manifesting and have been for years.”
