FILE PHOTO: Arian Moayed/ REUTERS./

By Nazanine Nouri

Iranian-born Arian Moayed has  been nominated for an Emmy Award: He is in the running in the category of Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series for his performance as Stewy Hosseini in the HBO series “Succession.”

The series, which scooped up the most Emmy nominations last year with a total of 25, has garnered another 27 nominations this year — and made Emmy history. It’s the first show ever to have three actors from the same series simultaneously nominated in the lead actor category: Brian Cox, Kieran Culkin and Jeremy Strong.

“What a group! Thrilled Thrilled Thrilled! @succession,” tweeted Moayed on the day of the announcements.

“Congrats to all of these incredible people for their Emmy nominations,” he posted on Instagram the next day. “And to allllll of the @succession family on their 27 nominations!

 

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Stewy – Moayed’s character in “Succession” —  is also of Iranian descent. Moayed told the New York Times in late May that he and Jesse Armstrong, the series’ creator, had discussed early on which wave of immigrants Stewy’s family might belong to, and Moayed preferred his own.

“I said, I think they came in the ‘80s, which means that he came under duress, lost a lot of money,” he said. “I just like that trajectory, that Stewy climbed the ranks real fast. And was good at it, and went to a bunch of fancy private schools, got in somehow and became friends with Kendall, and then the rest is history.”

Moayed recently joined Jessica Chastain on Broadway in “A Doll’s House” – a radically new production of Henrik Ibsen’s play written by the Pulitzer finalist Amy Herzog and directed by Tony Award nominee Jamie Lloyd. The production opened on March 9 for a 16-week limited run at the Hudson Theater. The play has received six Tony Award nominations, including one for Moayed for best featured actor in a play.

Moayed is also co-starring with Julia Louis-Dreyfus in the movie “You Hurt My Feelings,” which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival last January and will stream on Prime Video on August 8.

Arian Moayed was born in Tehran in 1980, the year that the Iran-Iraq war broke out. In a US television interview, he said his brother fought in the war.  His family emigrated to the United States in 1986, settling in Glenview, Illinois.

After graduating from Indiana University in 2002, Moayed moved to Manhattan, where, together with the director Tom Ridgely – his former college roommate — he co-founded Waterwell, a civic-minded and socially conscious non-profit art and education company.

Each year, the Waterwell Education Program provides more than 250 students with world-class arts training and education in advocacy at the Professional Performing Arts School, all free of charge.

A recent Waterwell production, “The Courtroom: a re-enactment of one woman’s deportation proceedings” was named “Best Theater of 2019” by the New York Times.

In 2018, as a partner at the for-profit Waterwell Films, Moayed wrote and directed the Emmy-nominated digital series “The Accidental Wolf” which was acquired by Topic Studios. (The three seasons of the thriller are currently streaming on Topic (from First Look Media)).

Moayed played Todd in the popular Netflix series  “Inventing Anna” (2022), and portrayed Agent P. Cleary in “Spider-Man: No Way Home” (2021) and in the Disney+ series “Ms. Marvel” (2022).

His prizes and nominations include: a Drama Desk Award for Broadway’s “The Humans”; a Tony nomination for “Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo,” set during the Iraq War in 2003 where he played alongside Robin Williams; and an Obie Award for “Guards at the Taj.”

In other TV roles, Moayed played Kian Parsa in “Love Life” (2021) and Mohammed ‘Mo’ Alwash in Madam Secretary (2017-2019).