“I have no rules or regulations in my mind, I like to try to be different,” he says. In fact, as we discover, he likes to be very different.
Cohen grew up in Tel Aviv. “Both my parents were born in Israel. On my mother’s side, her mother came from Aleppo in Syria, her father came from Lebanon. My grandfather on my father’s side came from Turkey. It was a big party and I wasn’t invited!”
His mother was a housewife and his father worked for the Israeli electricity company but loved to sing; “Most of my childhood, we listened to Tom Jones, Engelbert Humperdinck, Frank Sinatra, Elvis, Perry Como. My childhood was in English.”
After finishing army service, he was going to become a hairdresser; “I had a very good neighbour, next door, who was a drama teacher. When I finished the army and told her I was going to be a hairdresser, she said, ‘You should be an actor. I know actors, you should be one.’ After two months in a hairdressing salon, I thought, ‘I cannot sweep the floors any more.’ She told me go to Tel Aviv University saying, ‘If you are not an actor, you’ll have a degree.’ She changed my life.”
But just how wasn’t immediately obvious. “After three years in university everyone told me you are not going to be an actor, even my teacher said, ‘just get a BA and do something else’.” A post-university Purim show change his life. “Priscilla Queen of the Desert was a very big film then. One of my friends suggested we do a Purim party and dress up as girls. Ok, I thought, I can do that.”
The Pessia Daughters, Israel’s first drag group was born. Long before the mainstream popularity of RuPaul, the group became famous all over Israel and changed the country’s perception of drag artists.
As one of the 'Pessia Girls'
“We did everything with perfection, the costumes, make-up and we sang, we didn’t lip-sync. I was writing lines for my stand-up which we used. We talked about politics, and women’s empowerment, we were quite different, very cutting-edge, especially at that time. I did it with a lot of heart as I do everything I do. I have a lecture that I give ‘From Pessia Daughters to Fauda’, because both projects were really start-ups, they were the start of how I see myself and how the world sees me.”
Cohen’s career was launched. He starred in the hit Israeli TV series Johnny. He also became a major musical theatre star in shows like The Producers and Hairspray. He made films, including the big hit A Matter of Size about a team of Israeli sumo wrestlers. It was another role that he wasn’t sure about but for hugely different reasons to Oslo.
Itzik Cohen in The Producers
“I think from childhood I always dealt with being overweight,” he tells me.“I had a career although I was overweight. But I was very overweight. A Matter of Size was the first time I was offered a part written for a fat guy. I said to the director, ‘I cannot walk around half-naked, can I wear a shirt?’ He said, ‘No, it’s about sumo wrestling, take the shirt off.’ It took about a year for them to convince me. I realised I was saying ‘no’ for all the wrong reasons.”
Cohen pauses and finally says: “I was ashamed of my body. It really changed my perspective of myself. Before I did the movie, I never walked to the beach. Afterwards, I had no problem. First of all, everyone had seen me half-naked, so no surprise if I turned up.”
Then nine years ago, he made a momentous decision. “One day, I met this wonderful doctor, Ilanit Mahler. She said, ‘I saw you in a musical and I love you. I want to do gastric surgery on you.’ I said to her ‘You love me, and you want to cut me? Who teaches you how to love? Freddie Kruger?’”
He hadn’t planned on having a gastric bypass, but Dr Mahler gave him confidence, telling him she had done the same operation on her mother. “I thought, if she can cut her mother, she is probably very good.”
Cohen lost 50 kilos over the next year; “It really changed everything for me. Not in the way you think, because I had a wonderful career before. People told me not to do it, that I wouldn’t work if I changed my weight. But it opened up much more for me and gave me a confidence about myself physically.”
I tell him he was brave to do it. He laughs and says: “I didn’t think it was brave at the time, bravery can come with stupidity, and I was stupid enough not to think of the consequences. It went wonderfully, just benefits. I am really happy I did it.”
Now he eats less. “I just don’t have to eat that much. And I’m not thin, I didn’t become skinny afterwards. I’m just feeling a great synchronisation with my inside and outside these days. Much more than 50 kilos ago!”
He loves to cook and entertain for dinner and Shabbat meals. His speciality is cakes. “Cakes and desserts! I make them all the time. If I turn up at friends without a cake, they send me home.” That includes colleagues: “I bake cakes for everyone on Fauda and take them in for us all every day! Today it’s my son Raphael’s tenth birthday, I got up at 5am to bake him a cake and take it to his school.”
Cohen’s private life is complicated. He married Michal Kirschenbaum and the couple have a daughter, Daniel, now 20, an actress. Cohen came out as gay in 2002, and the couple divorced in 2005, but in 2012 they had Raphael together. The boy lives part of the week with his mother and the other part with Cohen, who tells me: “I’m happily single. I have many, many things I’m doing now.”
He’s certainly busy. When he returns from Uruguay, he goes straight to film the next series of The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem, playing Avraham, a money lender and clerk, a character that is not in the original novel. “Of course I read the book, I know the author from many years ago. They told me they were going to do something especially for me which is of course wonderful. I really, really put my heart into this character.”
He can’t reveal much about Fauda 4, but tells me he has a massive storyline throughout the series; “I can tell you it is very, very hectic for me! It’s like everything I did until now on Fauda doesn’t really compare to what I am doing now! It’s a big stretch for Gabi and for me.”
I had been told by the show’s producer that he ad libs a lot on set. When I mention this, Cohen laughs and says: “Well I tell you what the guy who dubs my voice on Netflix told me.
He said, ‘30 per cent of what you are saying is not in the script. You said you didn’t know Arabic so how come you are improvising in Arabic?’ Before we start shooting, I talk to people on the set, crew, actors and I say, ‘if I want to say this and that, or add a joke, how do you say in Arabic?’ Because I like to be a real participator in what I am doing. So, I am ad libbing. I put my heart into it, it’s the only way I can do it.”
Like most of the cast, he was taken by surprise by the success of Fauda. “None of us foresaw how successful it would be. But when we filmed the first season, on set we felt like something different was happening. I sensed something was going to change my world and rock my world. It really did change my world.”
He agrees that the show has helped build bridges between the Arab nations and Israel: “First bridge is communication and language. Many people in the Arab world watch Fauda, in Lebanon, Jordan, Emirates I have all these destinations on my Instagram account. One of the Emirates just contacted me and said if you come here, we’ll do the full shebang with the red carpet and everything.”
It’s not that Cohen is much of a follower of social media. “I have an Instagram account. I don’t live my life by this. Every now and again, I post a photo or a story but it’s not my life. It’s a wonderful way to get connections and to know people. But I have more important things than social media.”
Cohen comes over as fun and jovial, but his answers are all considered, and he spends a lot of time exploring his own psyche; “During the years I have many, many people helping me and nurturing me. My hobby is going to bio energy sessions, healing, Indian shamanism. I want to learn, develop and understand. Not just physically but inside as well. Living in a world that is very, very hectic and harsh, without having an inner perspective of yourself and what is your role in this world, it is very confusing.”
His career has been so varied, from drag, to musical theatre, Fauda and now international films, how does he see himself as an actor? “I have a chameleon quality; I like to change; I can’t do the same thing over and over again.
“Even when I am on stage doing the same production 500 times, I feel the character should be very specific for me in emotions and gestures.”
Because of Fauda, the doors are open for a huge career outside Israel, but Cohen isn’t one to ponder the maybes of life: “If the West End or Broadway called, I’d pack in a few minutes! First of all, London is my favourite city in the whole wide world. I love London, I’ve been more than 20 times.”
Hollywood? “If there was a good role, if I can do good for a role, and the role can be good for me, then great. I never have had a dream role or character; I play it by heart. I have a unique way of deciding without me reading too many lines if it’s right for me. I always say, dreaming is for sleeping persons.”
Fauda1-3 and The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem are streaming now on Netflix with more Beauty Queen episodes due in July
