Cherien Dabis

Cherien Dabis (born 1976) is an American actress, director, producer, and screenwriter. She was named one of Variety magazine's 10 Directors to Watch in 2009, and in 2010 received a United States Artists (USA) Fellowship. In 2022, she was nominated for the Outstanding Directing For A Comedy Series award for her work on the television series Only Murders in the Building. In March 2022, Dabis was named Laureate for Cultural Excellence by the TAKREEM foundation, for her work on authentic Arab representation in Hollywood. Early life Dabis was born in Omaha, Nebraska. Her father is a physician of Palestinian descent, and her mother is from Salt, Jordan. She grew up in the small town of Celina, Ohio, and spent many of her summers in Jordan. Dabis at 8 visited Palestine for the first time. She and her family were held at the Israeli border for 12 hours, and she was strip-searched along with her sisters. This incident would make her understand "what it meant to be Palestinian". She would not return to Palestine until 20 years later. Back in the US, Dabis' hometown was populated predominantly by middle-class families from German backgrounds. Upon her return from trips to the Middle East, she would be asked if there were telephones and cars back in Jordan. As a Palestinian American, Dabis refused to be seen as an outsider, and instead chose to assimilate to the culture she found herself within. However, when the Gulf War commenced in 1990, things changed for her and her family. Her father lost many of his patients, her mother was called an "Arab bitch", and her family began receiving death threats. Although Dabis has no brothers, a rumor began that her father's "son" was fighting in Saddam Hussein's army. It is also at this time that her family was investigated by the Secret Service because of a rumor that claimed her sister had threatened to kill George H. W. Bush, who was the president at the time.