While everyone’s overwhelmed with ‘La totfe2 el shams’ and its cast, there is a brilliant Syrian actor – Bassel Khayyat – who is literally slaying his performance.
When we all saw the promos and the humongous ads and banners, we went yaaaay because Asser Yassin is having his own show this Ramadan. Although Yassin is the protagonist in the series ’30 Youm’, Khayyat completely overshadowed everyone with his brilliant performance as a villain. So, without further ado, here is why Bassel Khayyat is Ramadan’s unsung hero.
His choice of music
His character is a psychotic villain who loves chaos or, as he says, justice. So this lunatic, who influenced the lives of almost every single character in the series, casually does so, whilst listening to Jazz music. This smooth and happiest genre of music, gives Khayyat’s character pleasure while he performs his evil deeds.
His way with the ladies
Although Khayyat’s character isn’t angry, I wouldn’t describe him as a calm either. He is a crazy villain who takes pleasure in torturing Asser Yassin, and his friends. On the other hand, Khayyat’s character is charismatic and romantic, when it comes to interacting with the opposite sex.
This creates even more confusion, and adds to the complexity of Khayyat’s role: the ladies he seduces – much like us – do not really know, whether he is a frantic guy, or he is that sweet talking saxophone player.
The way he applauds himself
Khayyat’s character has truly been on top of Yassin and his cop friend, always emerging as the victor and staying one step ahead. But in the couple of episodes, where he truly ruins Yassin’s life to a huge extent, his reaction is just a laugh. Indeed, he laughs from the bottom of his heart, whilst applauding himself – for the harm he has inflicted upon Yassin – in the craziest and scariest way imaginable.
His devious way of putting pressure on people
He is the type of villain who doesn’t have a single drop of blood on his hand. He doesn’t kill nor steal nor personally harm anyone, nor does he do anything for money. He absolutely killed it an episode, where he put Yassin in two consecutive moral dilemmas that no one could possibly handle. He made Yassin the main reason behind the murder of one of the characters, and the imprisonment of his killer (both the killer and the victim where notorious businessmen).
Being a dead man walking
SPOILER ALERT!!
In the early episodes of the show, he faked his death to get the police officially off of his back. Instead of avoiding the police at every possible situation following his fake death, however, he’s been provoking them, showing off his evil wit in front of the police, getting them involved in his experiments, without leaving behind any single trace of his existence because – as far as the police knows – HE IS DEAD!
Batman’s infamous archnemesis, the Joker, has been played by phenomenal actors like Heath Ledger, Jared Leto and the great Jack Nicholson. While I can’t compare Khayyat to any of them, I am going to say that they’d be proud of him following their footsteps.