“I still get letters of thanks from people who had a slightly tougher time in life than the ideal American Dream unraveling, which is sort of that myth. People who didn’t see America that way, didn’t feel their lives follow that path. So I got those people. A lot of gay guys, young gay guys who were clearly vulnerable at that time, because AIDS was sort of at its apotheosis at that time, so they were not comfortable in their own skin. People who weren’t comfortable in their own skin, people who didn’t feel like the quarterback on the team, or the cheerleader, they were the people that really liked Bashir.”
My absolute favorite Alexander Siddig story - and oh boy I have a lot of favorites - is that one day he noticed everyone on the DS9 set was suddenly asking him these weird very carefully phrased gentle questions like hey buddy, how you doing? you feeling alright? Can we get you anything? you know you can always come to us for help if you need it and he was like wtf why is everyone being weird and it turned out that he had been showing up to set late and generally looking tired and the whole crew thought he had gotten into hard drugs but in reality what he was doing was staying up till 4 AM every night playing Ultima Online
when he gets goin he basically tells stories constantly but it is somewhat sobering because a solid percentage of them are just about casual racism he has experienced and often seems amazingly unbothered by
anyway let’s see
- a fan approached him at a con and very very nervously thrust a magazine into his hands…with a photo of James Callis. He tried to explain to them repeatedly that he was not James Callis but they were so nervous they were basically not responsive so he finally signed the photo “Alexander Siddig is not James Callis” and gave it back and they thanked him and walked away
- He was sent to the UK from Sudan on a plane alone (running from political unrest in the country) when he was maybe 3 years old and the only thing his family sent with him was a suitcase full of mangoes because he loved them and they were hard to get in the UK (this would have been the late 60s)
- He desperately wanted to be an elf in Lord Of The Rings and they offered him a different part (I forget which one) and he was like ???? okay but I would like to be an elf and they told him flatly that they only wanted white people for the elves and he very rightly turned down all involvement in the production in response
- Not only did he spend all of the 90s playing video games he very much still plays them and now and, hilariously, is always the group healer which is something to unpack if you wanted to
- He took his kid to Disneyland and the person in the Mickey Mouse costume broke protocol to say “OH MY GOD IT’S DR BASHIR”
- The first review he ever got for being in a play spelled his name horribly wrong
- there are so so many more but after a year of hearing them it’s all a soup in my head PEOPLE WHO’VE BEEN LISTENING TO HIM ON ZOOM AND REMEMBER PLEASE ADD YOUR FAVORITES
Also since this post is doing numbers now I want to make sure everyone knows because I think almost everyone following me already is part of this but this is getting outside my standard circle: Alexander Siddig is an Angel. The reason I know all this stuff is that he has spent the last year+ essentially donating what is now hundreds of hours of his time talking to his fans on Zoom. He listens to everyone’s stories, comforts people, reassures people, offers advice (of varying quality, but we love him anyway), listens intently to every single infodump, answers pretty much any question asked of him, has gotten very into trans and nuerodivergent rights, remembers people, checks up on people, and is generally so incredibly gentle and sweet and kind to absolutely everyone and as of right now is still doing this when he has time despite no longer being in quarantine and currently filming on the other side of the world. If you are new to this fandom or otherwise don’t know a lot about Sid or his zoom outreach I am delighted to let you know that every bit of kindness and gentleness and generally nice vibes you get off of Julian is just Sid being Sid and he is every bit that and better in real life
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