Paul Chahidi

Paul Chahidi was born in Iran to an Iranian father and a British mother. His parents met while they were students studying at the Sorbonne in Paris. Chahidi was raised in Iran until the family left during the Iranian Revolution in 1979 and settled in the United Kingdom. Chahidi grew up in Summertown, Oxford^[2] and attended the Dragon School and Winchester College, before enrolling at University of Cambridge where he studied Arabic and Persian and wished to become a foreign correspondent. After graduating from Cambridge, he attended the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.^[1]

Chahidi is an associate artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company.^[3] He appeared at Shakespeare's Globe^[4] and on Broadway in all-male productions of Twelfth Night and Richard III.^[5] He was nominated for both an Olivier award and a Tony Award and won a Theatre World Award and Clarence Derwent Award for his portrayal of Maria in Twelfth Night, where he appeared alongside Mark Rylance's Olivia in 2013.^[6][7][8] He played defence minister Nikolai Bulganin in Armando Iannucci's 2017 historical comedy The Death of Stalin.^[9]

He had a recurring role in the BBC Three television comedy series This Country (2017–2020), in which he played the Rev. Francis Seaton, a vicar who tries to help the characters created and played by siblings Charlie Cooper and Daisy May Cooper.^[10] For this role, he was nominated for the Royal Television Society Award for best Comedy Performance (Male).^[2]

Paul Chahidi has appeared on a number of popular podcasts, including The QuaranTea Break Podcast^[12] with Simon Ward, and Seven Stages^[13] the podcast from The Stage.