It is difficult to imagine a career trajectory for a millennial supermodel that does not involve a pivot to acting. In the case of Bella Hadid, arguably the world’s most famous model since she was 17, the crossover might have even seemed inevitable. “People probably thought,” she tells me, “that my first acting job would be something super sensual and sexy.”
Instead, when the 25-year-old makes her acting debut this fall as a guest star on Ramy, it’ll be in a slightly more unhinged role: a weirdo girlfriend.
The Emmy-nominated dark comedy (you can find it on Hulu) follows a fictionalized version of Ramy Youssef, an Egyptian American millennial who tries—and mostly fails—to be a good Muslim as he navigates adulthood. Across two buzzy seasons, the show has been lauded by critics for its general abhorrence of easy morality and its eagerness to dive into messy territory. For example, one of Ramy’s more quotidian plot points involves Ramy helping his best friend jerk off because his muscular dystrophy won’t allow him to masturbate.
And Hadid’s role on the show? “It’s probably one of the weirdest scripts we’ve ever written,” says Youssef. “And that says a lot.”
The model and the showrunner first connected back in January, when Youssef emailed Hadid out of the blue and asked if she’d be interested in a guest spot. They hopped on a Zoom and, after a long conversation, Hadid said yes. “I was like, this is perfect,” Hadid gushes. “We hadn’t even met before, but I had a feeling it was gonna be kismet.”
Hadid, who is of Palestinian descent, already shares with Youssef an overlapping network of friends and creative confidants. Youssef is close with Hadid’s brother, Anwar, and they’re both friends with the Canadian musician Mustafa, who was excited to hear that Hadid had found her way onto the show. “Bella’s been at the center of a world that doesn’t acknowledge what it’s like to be a Muslim at any of the intersections,” Mustafa tells me. “She’s sometimes the only Muslim or Arab person in a room, so it’s great to see Bella surrounded by her community.”
Hadid felt that sense of belonging instantly, she says. When she arrived on set for her first day of filming, she was surprised by the gift the crew had left in her trailer: a T-shirt that said “Free Palestine.” The simple, welcoming gesture made her weep. “I couldn’t handle my emotions,” Hadid says. “Growing up and being Arab, it was the first time that I’d ever been with like-minded people. I was able to see myself.”
I know what Hadid means. Feeling the constant need to minimize your identity can take its toll on you. Growing up Muslim, I often felt like I had to shrink down or hide that part of myself in order to seem less difficult or demanding. Both Hadid and Youssef—each in their own way—seem to be taking a different approach. By amplifying their heritage and proudly asserting their cultural identities, they’re embracing the spotlight and using it to complicate outdated expectations of what Arabs and Muslims are capable of in the culture. Part of what makes Ramy so special is its deft ability to raise heavy and spiritual questions: Underneath all the plotlines about porn stars and racist family members and what really caused 9/11, the show refreshingly offers no tidy answers, nor does it claim to represent what a “good” Muslim even is.
Meanwhile, in the last few years, Hadid has become perhaps the most outspoken American celebrity advocating on behalf of the Palestinian people. In an era of halfhearted virtue signaling, she is finding ways to dig deeper into the issues—and her own experiences—with her platform. This past winter, I was struck by an Instagram post in which Hadid highlighted the discrimination women who wear a hijab, like me, face every day. She took specific aim at a corner of the culture she knows well. “If we are seeing more and more appreciation of hijabs and covers in fashion,” she wrote, “we have to also acknowledge the cycle of abuse that Muslim women of all different ethnicities in fashion get met with on a regular basis within fashion houses, especially in Europe [and] America.” It was, to say the least, not the sort of concern that your traditional supermodel is posting.
If the Hadid we see in the culture is an honest reflection of who she is in private, Youssef couldn’t be more unlike the character he plays on television. Real Ramy is easygoing, kind. Almost effortlessly thoughtful. On the day the pair met up for the photo shoot to accompany this story, he met Hadid at her apartment here in New York and they rode together to set, where he gamely permitted her to take the lead in styling him for the photos. He made certain that he properly introduced me to his then fiancée, and now wife, who came to hang out. He was even so focused on continuing our conversation that he missed his scheduled flight out of town.
The Ramy you see onscreen is a hall-of-fame fuckboy. Like, you could retire his jersey and put it in the fuckboy rafters. TV Ramy is also on a spiritual journey, but his pursuit of inner peace comes at the expense of all the people who love him. The second season of the show concludes with Ramy cheating on his fiancée the night before they get married—with his cousin—a catastrophe that ruins the lives of everyone in his orbit.
Despite having donated his likeness to the character, Youssef knows that TV Ramy sucks. “You pick the worst side of you because then the people you meet are like, ‘Oh, you’re so much better than I expected!’ As opposed to the other way around,” he explains. “It’s all upside, really. You gotta undersell hard.”
Hadid can relate. “That’s what I’ve dealt with my whole career!” she adds. “People will meet me and think, Oh, I thought you were a bitch. Or I thought you were mean. [They assume] I’m this other person. I’m like, This other person that you saw on a magazine cover: no soul, no nothing? It’s just an armor.”
Underneath Hadid’s aura of celebrity is someone who is grappling with her own heritage and where she fits into a larger diaspora. She was born in Washington, D.C., to a Palestinian father, Mohamed Hadid, and a Dutch model, Yolanda Hadid, best known for her role on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. The family relocated to California when Bella was a toddler. “I was with my Palestinian side [of the family in D.C.],” she explains. “And I got extracted when we moved to California.”
She grew up in Santa Barbara, and the separation from her roots made Hadid feel a sense of unease. She was often the only Arab girl in her class-, and while she says her upbringing was mostly fine—there was the typical stuff, like racist name-calling when she was a teenager—she has long felt that there was something missing from her life. “I was never able to see myself in anything else, so I tried to just sit back,” Hadid says. “For so long I was missing that part of me, and it made me really, really sad and lonely.”
One of her bigger regrets is that she wasn’t raised around Muslim people, particularly after her parents separated. “I would have loved to grow up and be with my dad every day and studying and really being able to practice, just in general being able to live in a Muslim culture,” she says. “But I wasn’t given that.” Nevertheless, she spends a lot of time thinking about her family and what they endured: “I speak about [this stuff] for the elderly that are still living there that have never been able to see Palestine free, and for the children that can still grow up and have a beautiful life.”
Joining the cast of Ramy felt like a natural step in reconnecting with that side of her heritage. She’s still working through what it means to actually be Muslim, which is something that Youssef recognizes in her. “Bella’s telling you she feels this deep connection when she’s in a mosque or when she’s praying, but there’s also this hesitation to say ‘Muslim’ because of this specificity of what that can look like,” says Youssef. The pressure to perfectly represent an idealized version of Muslimhood is something that can hinder our community and keep us in a box.
Hadid’s friendship with Youssef has helped her explore some of the quieter questions about her faith too. “There was one time where Ramy came over during Ramadan and allowed me to pray with him,” says Hadid, beaming at Youssef. “And it was one of the most beautiful moments of my adult life.”
“Ramy has always had such an incredible ability to cultivate community,” says Mustafa. “The way he embraces people, even if they just have an ounce of faith—he makes them feel like the ounce is worthy of practicing and holding onto. He makes them feel like Muslim spaces are welcome to everyone.”
One of the episodes in the forthcoming season of Ramy was shot on location in Haifa and Jerusalem, and was produced by Palestinian actor Hiam Abbass, who plays Ramy’s mother. The episode had been in the works before Hadid was even attached to the show. Youssef first visited the region in 2015 when he was invited to the first-ever Palestine Comedy Festival, where he performed a set and taught a workshop.
“It was a time when the Flint water crisis was all over our news,” Youssef recalls. During his workshop, a young girl raised her hand to ask a question—a question that’s stayed with him ever since. “She was like, ‘How can we help kids in Michigan?’ And I remember just being like, wow, this is pretty surreal.”
Regularly speaking out in support of the Palestinian people has thrust Hadid into the center of entire news cycles. Last year, for example, she and her sister Gigi, as well as Dua Lipa, were the subjects of a full-page ad in a national newspaper attacking their alleged points of view. Hadid, however, remains steadfast in her conviction. “I realized that I’m not on this earth to be a model,” she says. “I’m so lucky and blessed that I’m in a position where I can speak out the way that I do. And really, the downfall is what? That I lose my job?”
For Hadid, there are certain things that are more important than her career. At one point, the three of us talk about how, at the end of the day, there will always be a side of your journey and relationship with God that exists in private. And the very existence of that relationship can be mined as a source of strength.
“That’s the trick,” Youssef says. “You think you’re by yourself. But if you think there’s an unseen—and I’m pretty sure there is—then you’re not alone.”
Sarah Hagi is a writer based in Toronto.
A version of this story originally appeared in the September 2022 issue of GQ with the title “Bella and Ramy: BFFs”
PRODUCTION CREDITS:
Photographs by Nick Sethi
Styled by Bella Hadid and Brandon Tan
For Bella Hadid:
Hair by Evanie Frausto at Streeters using Redken
Makeup by Raisa Flowers at E.D.M.A. using Mac
For Ramy Youssef:
Hair by Andrea Grande-Capone
Grooming by Melissa Dezarate using Augustinus Bader
Produced by Anima Studios
