The evening before this interview was spent by Kobi Maor in the opera "La Traviata".
He dressed festively, took care of the arrangement for the children, stocked up on tickets, teared up in the hall with his wife, Dana, and to complete the experience he ended the night at an Italian restaurant.
This situation, the 44-year-old actor admits, was previously far-fetched and quite imaginary.
"For me, going to Tel Aviv and being moved by an opera was like reaching the final stage of a computer game. How can I possibly beat it? I didn't grow up with such things. Therefore, today there is something in this experience that is far beyond. I was excited all evening in front of the stage because I said to myself: A segment that you hold for three hours and really like it, even though it's not you.'
"Every time I am moved by the thought of what I was and what I have become. As a child born in the Mosrara neighborhood in Jerusalem, I grew up without culture. I did not absorb it at home. Should I leave stage rehearsals and sneak into an open rehearsal of the Philharmonic? Or should I take my son to the Tel Aviv Museum to see Art? Today I keep saying to myself, 'What kind of thing you're chasing after this. How come you like it?'"
What is the answer you give yourself?
"I've always wanted to be one thing, but many things. As a child, I went through groups, I hung out with punks, with ultra-Orthodox people, with people who return to the Shalah. Thanks to this, today I love punk and heavy rock, as well as singing episodes, classical music and opera.
"I grew up in a house of Moroccan origin. A very traditional house, which today is already religious, and I learned to live with both worlds. I still keep kosher, but no longer keep Shabbat. We lived according to the Jerusalem faith, with combinations that painted Judaism for me as sweet and stunning. Let's say, no We would light a fire on Shabbat, there was a Shabbat plate, but we also had a Shabbat clock for the television - it would turn on and off so we could watch an Arabic movie on Friday evening.
"When my grandfather wanted us to come with him to the synagogue on Shabbat, he would tell stories and add parables. In the morning he would say, 'Yaakov, I have a new story. If you want to hear it, just accompany me to the synagogue.' On the way there he would tell the story , stops the story when they arrive and says: 'I have to go into the synagogue. If you want to go in too, you don't have to.' Anti-religion".
"Today I look at the photos from the series and I look pale and scared there", photo: Ilanit Duanis
How much did you feel the cultural differences in your childhood?
"After my parents divorced, when I was in the fourth grade, I moved with my mother to the Rehavia neighborhood. A very privileged neighborhood, a neighborhood of Anglo-Saxon Yakims according to the book. They didn't welcome us there, and they showed us that by looking at us on the stairs. They would knock on our door every day to ask for silence Between two and four. In short, we don't want you here. We really don't. My mother had the opportunity to buy the house we lived in, and the landlord didn't sell it to her on that basis.
"After the army, when I arrived at the center and studied acting at Beit Zvi, I felt that I needed to define myself. I only felt the real pain when I arrived in Tel Aviv. Racism exists. We are not that enlightened. I think we are the most racist people in the world. We are very categorizing."
"Suicide letter" at school
Speaking of self-definitions and a jingle between identities and cultures, these days Maor plays the character of Lazer Wolf in the iconic musical "Fiddler on the Roof", which premiered this summer at the Hebrew Theater.
He plays alongside Natan Dettner, who directed and returns to the role of Tovia the Milkmaid, Sandra Sade, Shari Tsuriel and Shay Gabso.
"I saw this play for the first time when I was a young actor at the Chamber. I was playing in 'Hamlet' then, and I went in to watch 'The Fiddler' backstage. I remember seeing Dettner and being moved. Then I went to see the musical from the audience as well - and again I was moved, I said 'Wow '.
"It's true that it's a show about a very Ashkenazi Eastern European town, and it tells about a period in history, but everyone can easily find themselves in the story and identify with it. It reminded me of the place I came from; dealing with the conflict about where you let go and where you stay fixed and fight for the principles with whom you came from home."
Don't you get slapped for actually "getting together?"
"A lot of people told me, 'You're crazy, because you changed your last name to Maor.' Mine from the family, when I wanted to renew my life. My father accepted the change very nicely and charmingly, and my mother also flowed with Maor.
"In my childhood, there was a long period when I didn't have friends, and I would do plays as if I had. My father owned a well-known restaurant in Jerusalem ('Baget Marciano'), my mother was a highly regarded librarian, and both of them were at work a lot. My sister was in the army, my older brother already had A girlfriend and he almost got married, so my little brother and I were at home most of the time and occupied ourselves. I plowed the city on foot out of boredom, walking around it and looking at houses. Jerusalem loneliness. I was a bit of a lonely child.
"I studied at the Hebrew gymnasium in Tahira, and I was kicked out of high school in the 9th grade. The teachers didn't treat me at all, I was a bit problematic, and even though there were other kids with the same number of negatives as me - they left them.
"Years later, when I played 'Hamlet' at the Jerusalem Theater, one day the director of the theater said to me after the performance: 'A guest is waiting for you outside.' the scenes
"After all, she was the one who told me, 'It will be very difficult for you to do anything in life without mathematics, and therefore nothing will come out of you.' And suddenly she says to me: 'Koby, how beautiful! How proud I am of you.' Come on, you forgot that at the age of 13 I walked around alone In the halls of the gymnasium? No one called me. I was depressed because you told me I was zero in math. I would walk into class and want to die.
"At one point I wrote a seven-page 'suicide letter' to the principal of the school, and he didn't pay attention to me. They invited my father to a meeting to scare me, so I said: 'Okay, I won't commit suicide, but don't read the letter I wrote to him.' I feel very bad.
in his childhood
"For many years I lived with myself in peace",
"In the end, the great luck of my life was that I was thrown away. The high school I transferred to, Ort Nebiim, shaped me into who I am today. From the first moment they didn't stop picking on me. They were nice to me, and that made the change because I was a good boy. One day There was a history lesson, and the teacher said, 'This time we won't learn, and Kobe will make us laugh.' She sat in my chair, I stood at the blackboard in my leather jacket and started telling jokes. I had the whole class laughing. That's where my connection to laughter and art began.
"From there somehow I became the king of the high school. I was the chairman of the student council, a member of the national council, and it all started - girls, trips, laughs and punches."
How to portray a transgender
tape cast?
As far as Maor is concerned, there is no connecting thread between all the characters he played throughout a career spanning two decades.
"I jump between roles and worlds," he explains.
"The previous role I played was Victor Hason in the play 'Givat Halfon Ina Ouna' at Bhima. I was Manny in 'Sabri Marnan', Hara in 'Taxi Driver' and Nessim in 'Friends'. In the series 'Dumb' I played a transgender, and in 'Saving Neta' Nir Bergman's I Played Gay".
When asked to choose his favorite character - he doesn't think twice.
"Ribi in 'Dumb' is the character I liked the most. Although she is transgender, I connected with her with every inch of my body.
When I was preparing for the role and trying to figure out how to do Ribby, I looked at trans people and drag queens, and I couldn't find myself.
Until I decided to just play my older sister, Marcel.
I did it one by one.
"In the first season, everything was good, but a little before the second season, my sister died, at the age of 43. She had blood cancer. She recovered, then returned to the hospital, contracted a bacteria there - and died quickly. At that time, Rivi's role in the plot increased significantly, and in the filming I had to To 'revive' my sister because she was the inspiration for the character, and you explain that you don't have a sister when you have to play her. That's why the second season of 'Dumb' was much more difficult for me mentally. It tore my soul apart, but also somehow connected me to Marcel Z "To.
At that time I felt that I was communicating with her through Ribi.
As if my sister is speaking from my soul.
"I would think about how Marcel would say every sentence from the script, and that's how the character just came out of me, through the thought of my sister. As mentioned, it tore my heart. I would come home after shooting completely broken. But it also softened me, and I had a great opportunity to reunite with her memory".
How close were Marcel and you?
"My sister was the closest person to me, and her death shook me. I was just on a family vacation in Thailand. I asked her professor if it would be okay to fly, and she replied, 'Yes, she is in excellent condition.' Two days before the end of the trip, they called my wife to inform us that my sister had passed away My wife took me and our son to eat ice cream, so she could tell me. We sat down in the lobby of some hotel and then she told me: 'Marcel passed away.' .
"Suddenly, a journey began to advance our return to Israel. Phone calls to a travel company - and no tickets. I went through people in the hotel, full of ice cream, explaining to them that my sister had passed away and that maybe they had heard of someone who would be willing to sell me their ticket back to Israel. I did not find a ticket, and in the meantime I am calling to ask if I'm coming to the funeral. I didn't come."
Maor stops the flow of his speech for a moment, wipes his tears and swallows saliva.
"Five years have passed since then, and it didn't cross my mind. I lost my sister in a second and a half. She had a difficult and not simple life. She was much funnier than me. She made the doctors laugh until the last moment.
"Basically, everything you see about me now is from her. Why? Because my parents weren't with me much. Marcel was my mother and father and grandmother. I would tell her everything. She knew all the secrets about me. When I met my wife, she was the first to know, And when I wanted to study acting - it was thanks to her. She was the one who walked around Jerusalem with me until we found a high school that agreed to accept me. She was my whole world and really raised me.
"A friend Kadisha wanted to bury her in a wall, so I called someone from Thailand to come to the cemetery with money, so that they would bury her in the ground. When I returned to Israel, I returned the money to him. It's good that there are connections sometimes. At the funeral, I called my brother on WhatsApp and told him to 'photograph everything for me.' I sat in the room A hotel in Bangkok and I watched my sister's entire funeral journey on the phone. At the end I heard the rabbi ask: 'Does anyone want to say anything else?', and I said to myself, 'Oh God, how come I'm not there.'"
The tears flow again from Maor's eyes continuously.
"I told my brother, 'Put me on loudspeaker and stick the phone to the microphone.' She used to make me feel like she was dead and hiding in my closet. To me it felt the same. I said out loud, 'Come on, get up and stop your nonsense.'
"My brother said that they heard me in the whole cemetery, and everyone broke down crying. I hung up, and went straight to the Chabad house in Bangkok, and there I did a tear.
Suddenly, in the middle of the Chabad house, someone came up to me and asked: 'Tell me, are you from Jerusalem? You won't believe it, I studied in class with your sister Marcel. Say hi to her.'
I told him she had passed away a few hours ago, and we both cried.
My wife was waiting for me outside.
A flood came down, and the bars brought the chairs inside.
There was only one bar that continued to work, and as if God played me the song 'Knockin' On Heaven's Door' from it.
I had chills."
"The doctors shouted 'Dad, move'"
Maor's choice of an acting career led to a break with some of his family members.
"I took a very, very long break from them," he says.
"Except for my father, we didn't really cheer for me in the family. Somehow it was a dream of his. He was the bard of the synagogue, and even sang in the band that appeared in the movie 'Salah Shabbati.' His voice. In the 90th minute, my father got cold feet, also because my mother didn't agree with him doing it, but he stayed in the band anyway - and you see him in the film. He was very supportive of me at the beginning, he paid for my acting lessons and the rent, And I paid him back with the scholarship money and the advertisements I made.
"In front of my older brother and my mother, I had a segment about this thing, the game. I always felt that I had to sell my profession to others, explain why it's okay to be who I am. My brother repented and told me: 'You have to start a house, get married and raise children.' That's why distance started.
"My mother thought that acting was not a profession and that there was no money in it, and she was anxious. Today she very much lives my career. When I was in 'Survival,' for example, she was very much into it. I had to explain to her that you don't get a role every two days. It's like waves . She doesn't understand how it's not a 'permanent job'. Somehow she's right."
How did your renewed rapprochement with family begin?
"It happened thanks to my two months in 'Survival'. The hardest thing about the island is the homesickness. Through the homesickness, I began to dive inward and said that maybe the demon is not terrible and I can live with it. I felt that I was hard on the family, and in the meantime I grew up and let go a little.
"And really, when I returned to Israel I felt that I wanted my family back. A family is not chosen, but I wouldn't want another family either. I've been with them all my life. On the other hand, I'm very closed to them, they know almost nothing about me, and I don't share ".
What, for example, are you hiding?
"I recently discovered the world of anxiety. Abdominal pain, chest pressure, shortness of breath. I didn't know what it was. They told me, 'It's anxiety, stress.' My eldest, Ariel, was born with one kidney and was teetering between life and death, they didn't know, and it took me a while to tell them. Only my wife and my agent knew what I was going through."
Today Ariel is 10 years old, dreams of becoming a basketball player, but in the first year of his life his condition was particularly sensitive.
"During his birth, the whole hospital went crazy like in the movies. The kidney pressed against his lung, and he stopped breathing. For two minutes my son did not breathe. More and more doctors started running down the corridor, shouting at me, 'Dad, move.' And I was standing there with a camera and no Understand.
"I went out into the corridor, and people stop to take pictures with me. The doctors managed to stabilize his condition, and they also immediately made me sign a document confirming that I am aware of all the terrible things that could happen. I was shocked."
They spent four months together in prematurity.
At the age of one month, Ariel underwent critical surgery, which drained the kidney fluid and closed it.
"I slept in the hospital for months. I would sit and study texts in the morning, and in the morning a taxi would pick me up from Ichilov for the filming of 'Sabri Marnan'. Today I look at the reruns of that season on TV and I look white, pale and scared there.
"In those days, I was jealous of other people's happiness. I cried inside and in tears, only that my son would get well soon. Fortunately, God sent him health. By the way, the time I was in the hospital used up all my money. 3,000 shekels on parking lots, thousands of shekels in Aroma It grinded me down. And I kept doing auditions and I didn't get what I needed. Work for me is occupational therapy. It fixes me, and I wanted a job to fix my mind."
He also attributes the correction in his soul to his wife, Dana (42), a marriage counselor by profession.
"I started with her at a club in the port of Tel Aviv. You can't fight with her, because she has a solution for every problem. 'Let's sit down and talk about it. Where does this meet you?'
I love to see how Dana changes people's lives. She makes peace between people, tells the truth without filters and gives tools to solve problems.
"Sometimes I sit outside her clinic, studying texts, and people stop on the way out and say to me: 'Your wife has changed my life.' On a perceptual level - to allow myself to experience and be myself. All the insights I talked about are thanks to conversations with her."
With his wife, Dana, and children Ariel and Heleni.
"During the time Ariel was in the hospital, I was jealous of other people's happiness. I cried inside, in tears,"
what kind of father are you
"I work hard to be a father and give real value to my children. Ariel was with me in the shows, he is supportive and appreciative. From a young age I put it into his head that it is not important if you are famous, but what is important is what you are famous for. He is an amazing boy, I am proud of his generous and broad heart.
"My daughter, Heleni (4), has no wisdom. She moves things around. 'Dad, sit! Don't eat while standing, it's impolite.' She makes me laugh. We have a home of heart and sensitivity. I teach them that there is no such thing as 'sensitive Too much. When I was a kid I was told all the time, 'You're sensitive,' as if it's not something positive. But it's okay to be the way you are, and being sensitive is powerful."
"I can give strength to others"
Although his resume is loaded with dozens of plays, series and movies of all genres, two television appearances put him in the mainstream consciousness - "Sabri Marnan" and the last season of "VIP Survival".
One of the most difficult moments he experienced on the screen was dealing with manophobia in the reality show in the Philippines, from which he was eliminated after surviving 23 days.
"Before 'Survival' I lost 25 kg through intense fitness training, and on the island itself I lost another 14. I worked really hard because I didn't want to be the show's freak show.
I didn't want the weight to be personal.
It turns out that no matter how hard you work, in the end if someone wants to say something - they will say it."
Have you had issues with yourself regarding weight?
"For many years I lived with myself in peace. I didn't feel monophobia, and it didn't bother me. But as soon as a confused Yuval said ('It's not Kobe, it's Kubba. He's fat... At some point I didn't know if I was hugging Kobe or the ball' ) was broadcast along with a sound effect and a comment by the moderator, and I was also called 'fat' online and wrote horrible talkbacks about me, and mothers of fat children sent me messages - so I said: wait. I realized that from the position I reached I can give strength to other people. That's why I said I don't Ready to hear it more. Don't vote for anyone, at any age. It hurts and sucks."
You also clashed on social media with Jackie Azoulay.
"I had a hard time with Jackie's disrespectful and rude speech. You can't talk to people like that. Words have power, words are knives. When I saw on TV what language they used behind their backs, I said it's not 'survival' in my eyes, it's not the game. I don't want to belong to those who vote and define.
"I was also angry on the island, but I didn't dirty my mouth, I didn't curse, I didn't call me derogatory names. Yes, I shouted and got angry, I'm not better than others, but this is a war for education. And with all that, I would do 'survival' one more time to To fix everything, because now I already know what I'm going towards."
In "VIP Survival".
"Before the filming I lost 25 kilos",
He left "Sabri Marnan", where he played Manny Hasson, at the end of six seasons.
Working on the sitcom helped him, according to him, identify with the sad clown syndrome.
"During the seasons, shocking things happened in my life. I lost my sister and I was next to my son in the hospital - and I was less suited to this job. As I said, they would pick me up from Ichilov to the set, and I arrived at the wrong time for the photos themselves. It made me less connected to them. I had to laugh, and I had Too sad face. I take responsibility for that, because you have to come to work ready in any situation - and no matter what.
"'Sabri Marnan' is my second family. Yehoram Gaon is my second father, and Yona Elian is my second mother. Rotem Abuhav is really my sister. The whole cast was like family. They keep asking me, 'Where is Manny?', and I answer: Manny in Italy I miss Manny, sick of this character."
So why did you leave?
"It was a joint decision between me and the creators. I felt exhausted, and I'm fine with that. I wanted to discover more things. I thought it blocked me from getting more roles, because there is a lack of appreciation in the industry around this series.
"But the ratings are not wrong. When I walked around Ichilov, the doctors called me Manny. Everyone is watching it, so everyone is wrong? What, did I commit some crime by participating in 'Sabri Marnan'? Why should people apologize for playing in 'Sabri Marnan' and be proud of Eran Kolirin ( A respected director, who, among other things, directed the film 'Visit of the Orchestra'; N.V.).
It's art and it's art.
If we lived in the US and did 'Sabri Marnan', we could live for several years without working. But in Israel there are templates and there are catalogs."
appetite to devour roles
These days he is filming for the second season of "The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem", where he plays the evil Morduk.
According to him, he still has an endless appetite to devour roles.
"I want to play and be emotional. I feel like I haven't started yet, I'm still a child," he says.
"From the beginning, I was constantly looking for what else to do. At some point I opened a restaurant and sold it. I started giving lectures and taught acting a bit. I work at a repair shop and a friend, I volunteer at associations that help children with special needs or children in need. It keeps me alive.
"Now I want to laugh. It's closing a circle with the teacher who wanted me to make the class laugh. After the tragedy with my sister and the fallout with the family, it's time to laugh. The theater for me is like the warm-up in the car - very pleasant and soothing. It's fun, but stand-up is who I am.
"I'm writing a show now, and it's very funny, because there's a very thin line between tragedy and comedy. Small tragedies can turn into a very big laugh. Now I ask myself, if you think I'm funny at all. Am I funny?"
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