The entertainment industry is a difficult one to break into, especially when a person doesn’t fit into the stereotypical check box. This is what the upcoming biographical graphic novel MY YEAR AS EMMA is about in Amena Kheshtchin-Kamel’s debut with Dark Horse, with art by Giulia Giacomino, and letters by Frank Cvetkovic. Here’s its wild premise:
In MY YEAR AS EMMA writer, actress, director, and lawyer Amena Kheshtchin-Kamel, a woman of Persian and Egyptian American heritage, embarked on a yearlong social experiment. She legally changed her name to Emma Kinsley and adopted the appearance of a blonde, white woman – to see what results may happen. What followed was a whirlwind experience of navigating newfound social acceptance, receiving invitations to the Cannes Film Festival, and enjoying the privileges that came with her new persona. But as her success grew, she faced a difficult choice: would she continue as Emma Kinsley or return to her true identity?
We found out more with our exclusive interview with Kamel, which you can read below.
This interview was condensed and edited for clarity
CHRISTIAN ANGELES: First and foremost, who is Amena and what drives her?
AMENA KHESHTCHIN-KAMEL: I think very early on I knew I was a storyteller. Being a child of immigrants from Iran and Egypt, I grew up trilingual. Knew that I was a little bit different than other people. I was excited to learn about my background. There’s a lot of lore and myth from those areas. We have Egyptian mythology, the gods and goddesses, and Pharaohs. In ancient Persia, you had all of these ancient kings, who were you know, the first ones to write human rights on a tablet.
Genetically I’ve come from a long line of storytellers. So my self-discovery journey was linked to storytelling. So I took up games, comic books, musical theater, and even was a gamer.
ANGELES: What games did you play?
KAMEL: Like OG Smash Bros tournaments with the kids in the neighborhood. On a national level too. I’d even go to Comic-Con just to game. I still am a nerd and a geek, and I’m part of the gaming community. My intro to storytelling had been comic books and games early on, around the age of five. Dad got me my first games and comic books. He paved this path for me.
ANGELES: Did you have a favorite comic book as a kid?
KAMEL: I read The Killing Joke in junior high. That was when I realized that was so cinematic. Wonder Woman, my dad got me all the Wonder Woman comics that you can think of. DC was my beginnings, then I kind of ventured into Marvel, and in high school, started gravitating towards independent comics. My 20s it was very Vault comics. Then there was Dark Horse.
I remember being in the line for Dark Horse and I was talking with someone there and said, “I want to debut with you guys. I don’t know when. But I love how you treat your creators.” Lo and behold, a couple of years later, I debuted.
ANGELES: You literally manifested it.
KAMEL: I kinda did. It was strange. I remember they had all the Dark Horse swag and I realized I wanted to do this professionally. I was unsure if I wanted to be an actor but knew I wanted to tell stories. Speak stories. Write stories.
My parents had always been supportive. They supported me completely in every possible way, which I’m grateful to say. They were with me in line getting the next game console. With me at Comic-Con, trying to show my portfolios to people. It’s been a long process. Then I did the acting thing, and I still do improv and sketch comedy. I love being a performer.
ANGELES: I read that you were in the Groundlings.
KAMEL: Yes. it’s been eye-opening. They’re very focused on character and I write character-driven works, so for me, it’s another way to express myself. My Year as Emma explores the dark side of what it is to pursue acting. So it’s one of those things where my year as Emma, my journey was from actor to writer, and I’m still an actor, but I don’t think I would have found my voice as a writer had I not had my journey as Emma.
ANGELES: How did MY YEAR AS EMMA begin?
KAMEL: I’ve always embraced mixed-race identity and multiculturalism. I sought out people who shared a similar beliefs and backgrounds. It’s a different experience to be more than one thing and I’m a mutt in every possible. It made me open-minded early on.
But that’s not how people viewed me in return. Who are you? What are you? Where are you really from? Those impolite questions people asked. Going out to auditions as an actor was strange if I went out to audition for an Egyptian character as I didn’t look ‘Egyptian enough’. The pool is small already, and most of the time, very stereotypical. Typecasting can be very demeaning. So I’m just like, man, this can’t be it. This is terrible. There’s nothing out there. It was a really sad thing, you know? The girl next door role was always white. Mind you, this was years ago, I think it’s gotten much better, but I think we can still work to make things better.
All of that went into my creation of Emma.
ANGELES: How so?
KAMEL: Well, I knew something needed to change. I was stuck. A person in my very early 20s with a different mindset. So I turned to mentors and casting directors, some of them were writers, directors, and they all said the same thing: to lean into my racial ambiguity. Lean into my ‘whiteness’ and that’ll help. Maybe change my name to Amy.
I thought about it. Worst case scenario, I try this for a bit as a social experiment. So I went into a courthouse and legally changed my name to Emma Kinsley. I chose Emma because it was close to Amena and was just the whitest name I could think of, plus a lot of the actresses I admire are named Emma. Kinsley is like the white Kamel. It was a very comedic approach.
I did that, and then it was night and day. I go into a grocery store and they see my appearance but then they see my credit card or my license, and saw Emma. At first, I thought what if it was psychological? Then I came across some applications that I had applied to before as Amena, and tried as Emma, and it was different.
ANGELES: This specifically for acting or across the board?
KAMEL: Everything. Internships. The job market. Hollywood. Low and beyond, everyone loved Emma so much. I traveled a lot that year and it was so different at airports. Creative mixers had a huge shift in conversation. As Amena they’d ask things like what I thought about my parent’s countries? It would become political. But as Emma, none of that was a problem. We’d get straight into my passions, what I wanted to do. Suddenly I was a goal-worthy person!
ANGELES: It’s strange, right? One treats you with generational trauma. The other one is hey! You’re the fun girl, right?
KAMEL: That is exactly it. Emma was fun. Young. Has a lot of goals to try to help her. But Amena was immediately grilled into uncomfortable political questions for the first time. I grew up in America so they were asking things I didn’t even have any authority to answer. A couple of other times too, as Amena, people would say my English was so good… when I grew up here!
The sad part is while they were well intentioned, it’s hard not to draw comparisons that Emma never got those questions. Quite frankly, living as Emma was a breeze in a lot of ways. But I was happy when I changed my name back because it wasn’t real.
ANGELES: What it was like growing up first generation American. The difficulties in how people treated you?
KAMEL: As Amena, it was more difficult in grade school. For instance, I’d bring to school some authentic cuisine and I remember kids would ask what’s that? Though it made me tougher and I’d let them try some after so they could learn. The most difficult experience was in high school. I remember there were a couple of white students, but also people of color, who’d say, yeah, I’d never date a Middle Eastern person. Blatant racism. What else can you call that?
Come college, I think that was the breeziest experience for me because it was very diverse. Classrooms filled with international students, Americans, and different walks of life. I think my college years were just the easiest and my favorite from my education. Particularly film school.
ANGELES: What was the film school like?
KAMEL: Pretty organic. Everyone’s an artist, so people are open-minded, and suddenly, I know this word is controversial now, but at the time, I went from seen as ‘foreign’ in grade school, to mixed in high school. But in college? I was exotic. College was different because people are introduced to different things. Suddenly I was this person that was mixed and mysterious.
The toughest thing was trying to define myself in those years. But that’s the through line in my experience from grade school to high school to college, always being forced to define myself. I learned that I’m all of these things. So I think that was kind of my character development, so to speak to say, “Hey, I’m mixed, I’m multicultural, I have many different influences.”
ANGELES: Bringing it back to the graphic novel, how do these themes arise in your story?
KAMEL: I really tried my best to make the book about self-love and self-acceptance. Things a lot of people can relate to. Body positivity too. The book is a love letter to the mixed-race community and multiculturalism. I want people like me to feel seen when they read it. My Year as Emma is that journey.
But there was a conflict with Emma because she’s almost a separate person for me. I remember even having a different cadence for her. I spoke differently. My voice registered a little higher. Striking. Feistier. But not mean. A girly pink loving girl persona. Even my closet was divided by Amena and Emma.
Amena–I was more neutral. I had a lot of manga and anime shirts and comic book stuff. Emma was more like pinks and purples, very pop. But when people started accepting Emma more I saw the differences between us and I leaned more into Emma for that year. The big switch was getting into the Cannes Film Festival internship as Emma. That’s when I went full-blown Emma, blonde highlights and everything.
ANGELES: What that was like, going to Cannes as Emma?
KAMEL: A liberation. Like being a completely different person. That’s such a glamorous place where you’re already a different person for that time being. You’re hitting the red carpets like you’re talking to people, you’re meeting celebrities, and you’re going to these amazing press events. It opened my eyes to that side of the industry, which is very glamorous, and a lot is going on. That’s when I got into my Emma character.
The opportunities I got there were because of that Emma persona. There was something about introducing someone who has nothing wrong in her life. She’s just Emma. It made the Cannes experience what it was, which was hustling. I’m not gonna say which celebrities but there are legitimate A-listers who know me as Emma, which is funny to me. I shook hands and introduced myself as Emma, and we exchanged business card, as Emma.
ANGELES: It worked for what you were trying but not really you?
KAMEL: it was not me. I feel there is a level of guilt where I felt like, Amena deserved that opportunity, how dare I give it to Emma. It should have been Amena. So I hope I can return there one day as a filmmaker because I’m also a screenwriter, so there is hope for me to return.
ANGELES: What was the straw that broke that camel’s back as the saying goes?
KAMEL: I made this terrible joke “This is the straw that broke this ‘Kamel’s back’. I think it was my closest friends and family started to not recognize me. That’s when they sat me down, and said they were glad to try this and collect their data, but they told me – I legitimately changed.
That’s when I knew this separation was no longer something I could get lost in. Having the most trusted people in my inner circle say that scared me. At the end of the day what am I achieving with that if I’m not myself, what am I doing for other people?
Nothing at all.
If I’d made as Emma Kinsley other women of color wouldn’t be able to look at me and feel inspired by her. It was important for me to make it into the industry as Amena, specifically. It was almost like wiping away the existence of Amena that was the realization I don’t deserve that.
ANGELES: What about now are you happy essentially just being yourself?
KAMEL: No regrets. Some of the same issues come up, like invasive questions and ignorance. But I became more well-equipped to educate people. I grew up so I knew how to handle it more but I know how to handle it a bit better. I have no regrets about coming back to Amena.
ANGELES: That’s good.
KAMEL: I will have to stress one thing. I thought living a blonde white girl’s existence was easy. It wasn’t until I did it that it dawned on me they had their own list of problems. Their own set of issues and it made me empathetic. Being in those shoes now, I can see it’s not perfect. It made me appreciate some of the stuff they had to go through too.
ANGELES: Like what?
EMMA: A few things. As Emma, people approached me in a different way that was demeaning – objectification and not being taken seriously at all. And then, I remembered I made friends with other white girls who thought I was white and I became privy to some conversations. Some racially driven. A bundle of charged issues that were never part of my world.
My worldview opened. It was seeing their different problems too. Like getting into that physical preparation like straighting your hair, and dolling yourself up before anything. These girls work hard to give off an image. It was new to me. I’m a gamer. I put my hair in a bun. I roll out of bed – that’s my natural habitat. So this was a new world. I had to be taught curling irons hair straighteners. Heels? I thought 1 inch was enough but 4-5 inches.
It was fun but eye-opening. They had their world problems.
ANGELES: Did you throw any of that in the graphic novel?
KAMEL: I sure did. I strongly believe the comic book graphic novel format was the perfect telling for this story. It’s such a visual journey and some of it is so surreal and ridiculous and humorous, it’s a satirical dark comedy. I think with the panels during the pages and lettering – seeing that transformation from Amena to Emma, it required this medium.
ANGELES: What are you doing now for your own artistic work?
KAMEL: Right now I am doing my part to back up my book. I’m meeting with people and working close with dark horse marketing. I’m working with the letterer and the artist, who are amazing masters of their work. From what I’ve seen, It’s looking so gorgeous. I feel so lucky.
ANGELES: Right? I believe Guilia Giacomino did Lilo and Stitch
KAMEL: And Gargooyles too! Frank Cvetkovic also has done incredible work. I’ve known about their work even before they joined. I remember it was a moment between me and my editor, Megan Walker, we looked at her work and knew this was it. I got to review some kickass pages the other day and it’s looking so gorgeous – it’s a testament to her art. She understood it and elevated it.
I’m also starting to meet with other publishers because I have more stories to tell. I’m a genre writer who loves supernatural and fantasy and that’s my comfort zone. My year as EMMA is definitely more a YA coming of age story. Then I have a games studio project I can’t talk about.
It’s a game from Sony based on their game and I’m adapting their game into a feature film.
Then on the producer side, I wish I could say more but it’s a big global franchise. Me and my producing partner on a basketball film shopped it around and we found dream partners to sign on and I’m excited. I’m an executive producer on a big live-action feel good basketball film. I’m a big fan of sports. My dad played pro soccer. I grew up with it.
For now those are my big 3. Dark Horse. Game Studio Project. Basketball film.
ANGELES: That is a lot to be proud of. If you could give a bit of words of encouragement to anyone trying to start what would it be?
KAMEL: My biggest piece of advice is to not underestimate seeking reads from professionals. The second is to rewrite. I was so precious about my early scripts and works and I read them now, and I realize they’re not great. Be open to great feedback because it’s there for a reason. It’s like collecting data. If enough people read the scripts and see if they all said the same – then I changed it.
But low and behold, I got representation on the 6th round. So seek out people who are doing what they’re doing. Ask for mentorship. Then take action. See what you can do and elevate your craft. That’s my overall piece of advice. I wouldn’t have gotten there – unless i took my craft seriously to try and elevate it. I wasn’t a master but i can work to become better.
My YEAR AS EMMA will be published on March 18, 2025. It’ll be a 96 full color paged trade paperback sold at $19.99
