To start, can you give me a broad sense of what the past few weeks have been like for you?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\tI live in Abu Dhabi. That\u2019s my company\u2019s base and that\u2019s where I\u2019ve been based for eight years. I\u2019ve been in the region nearly 14 years \u2014 I was in Saudi five years before, but I couldn\u2019t open up a film company in Saudi during that period \u2014 and we left on day 10 [of the war]. I had to go anyway to Vegas and New York for a conference I\u2019d been speaking at. The people that I work with were like, \u201cLook, you\u2019ve got to go, you\u2019ve already planned this.\u201d I didn\u2019t want to leave my kids in case I wasn\u2019t able to fly back. So we decided to relocate the kids the day before I had to fly. And then I flew back after 12 days in L.A. and America, and we were going to go back home, but it escalated to a point where we kind of said, \u201cLet\u2019s stay somewhere for a while until we know we can physically go back.\u201d And Abu Dhabi was hit more than Saudi Arabia. We\u2019re actually not far from the synagogue.<\/p>\n
\n\tI\u2019m hoping the ceasefire does hold so that we can go back. But let\u2019s just see. That will really tell us what we\u2019re going to do as a family. I mean, we own a house there, we\u2019ve invested everything in there \u2014 that\u2019s our life, our kids. My kids were born in Saudi. They\u2019re blonde with blue eyes and they think they\u2019re Saudi, so they speak Arabic; their identities are a little bit confusing themselves. In that sense, it\u2019s been a little bit of an unexpected turn.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tNearly 14 years ago when I moved there, I\u2019d been with the mindset that this place is changing and really moving forward \u2014 and what I\u2019ve seen happen over the 14 years and how I\u2019ve seen it grow, I didn\u2019t think this day would come.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tWhere were you in terms of production when this broke out? How have you gauged that initial impact?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\tI was meant to be shooting a film in April. We were actually going into production on a feature film, and we had two actors from the U.K. flying in \u2014 we\u2019re doing an Abu Dhabi, Romeo and Juliet<\/em> love story, and we\u2019ve had to postpone that to October. Four days in, we decided as a team we couldn\u2019t bring actors from the U.K. over\u2026. I was also meant to be filming a feature with a local woman director, local story, which is what I\u2019m all about. It was part of a slate of features that we\u2019ve been putting together and that we now have interest in doing and the region\u2019s really pushing. But that\u2019s just been put on pause.<\/p>\n\n