1. Sam Esmail was born on September 17,1977 and is an Egyptian-American film and television producer, director, and screenwriter who runs the production company Esmail Corp.
34 Facts About Sam Esmail
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Sam Esmail is best known as the creator, writer, and director of the award-winning USA Network television series Mr Robot, starring Rami Malek.
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Sam Esmail wrote and directed the feature films Comet and Leave the World Behind.
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Sam Esmail produced and directed the first season of the acclaimed Amazon Prime Video psychological thriller Homecoming, starring Julia Roberts and Janelle Monae, and produced USA's Briarpatch, Starz's Gaslit, and Peacock's Angelyne and The Resort.
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Sam Esmail was born to Egyptian immigrant parents in Hoboken, New Jersey.
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Sam Esmail acquired his first computer when he was nine and began computer programming a few years later.
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Sam Esmail attended high school in Summerville, South Carolina, where he faced racism.
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Sam Esmail attended New York University where he studied film and computer science.
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Sam Esmail graduated in 1998 from the university's Tisch School of the Arts.
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Sam Esmail left his position as president and chief technology officer to briefly attend Dartmouth College's creative writing program.
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Sam Esmail moved to Los Angeles in 2001 where he attended the AFI Conservatory.
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Sam Esmail graduated with a Master of Fine Arts in directing in 2004.
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Frustrated with his career, Hollywood, and its films, Sam Esmail began writing his own feature films.
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Sam Esmail wrote seriously for years before stopping to focus on his passion, directing.
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Sam Esmail began writing his own feature-length directorial debut, Comet, which was released by IFC Films in 2014.
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Originally intending it as a follow-up feature film to Comet, Sam Esmail began working on the technological thriller Mr Robot in the late 2000s, inspired in part by the 2008 financial crisis and the Arab Spring.
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Sam Esmail has said that the main character, Elliot, is a "thinly-veiled version" of himself; like Elliot, Esmail suffers from social anxiety and is from Washington Township in New Jersey.
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Sam Esmail was later inspired to take what he had written and create a pilot for what he imagined would be a four-or-five season show.
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Sam Esmail is the creator, executive producer and head writer of the series.
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The first season of the show was critically acclaimed and Sam Esmail himself was nominated for two Emmys, among other awards.
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In early 2017, Sam Esmail was called on by Universal Pictures to produce a film centered around the Bermuda Triangle, but production has since not been carried through.
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Sam Esmail was one of the executive producers and director of the Amazon Video series Homecoming, starring Julia Roberts and Bobby Cannavale.
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Sam Esmail received strong reviews for his direction of the show, which premiered in November 2018.
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In 2018, Sam Esmail worked on creating the television show Briarpatch with journalist and producer Andy Greenwald, who previously hosted the Mr Robot aftershow Hacking Robot on USA.
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In February 2019, it was announced that Sam Esmail had signed his company to a four-year exclusive deal with Universal Content Productions with whom he had already produced Mr Robot, Homecoming, and Briarpatch.
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In 2019, it was announced that Sam Esmail was developing a limited series with Emmy Rossum for the NBCUniversal streaming service Peacock based on the Los Angeles pseudo-celebrity Angelyne.
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In September 2020, Sam Esmail sold two dramas to ABC; in January 2021, a pilot was ordered for the first of those shows, Acts of Crime, but was not picked up by the network.
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In February 2020, it was announced that Sam Esmail would be producing a new television series with Homecoming collaborator Julia Roberts based on the Slow Burn podcast's coverage of the Watergate scandal.
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In November 2021 Peacock announced that Sam Esmail is developing a series for the Battlestar Galactica franchise for NBCU with Michael Lesslie as showrunner.
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In February 2020, it was announced that Esmail would develop one of the initial projects for Conde Nast's new Wired Studio; called Tell Tale Heart, his film is based on the 2019 Wired article of the same name.
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Sam Esmail began developing television series The American Throne with director Julius Onah in 2021.
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Sam Esmail had directed her in his debut film, Comet.
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Sam Esmail is fluent in Arabic, notably giving part of his acceptance speech at the Golden Globes in the language.
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Sam Esmail suffers from social anxiety disorder and credits his wife Rossum in helping him with it.