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¹ basics.

full name: samaneh eskandari, publicly known as sam eskandari. age: forty. date of birth: june 13th, 1986. zodiac sign: gemini. gender & pronouns: cis woman + she/her. orientation: lesbian ( not a secret, but not officially addressed ). marital status: divorced. ethnicity: iranian-american. spoken language(s): english, farsi, turkish. education: university of southern california, bachelor of arts ( ba ) in broadcast journalism and international relations.

² vibes.

charm laced with challenge, insisting that she's "fine" while very obviously running on fumes, an earpiece tangled around restless fingers, agreeing to plans she's not sure she can keep but hoping her future-self will figure it out, a mix of intellectual swagger and accidental awkwardness, stubborn belief that double texting is just "adding context" and she will die on that hill, remembering three sources' birthdays but forgetting to eat lunch, acting like she totally understands the gen z slang thrown around in conversation before googling half of it later, a smirk that betrays she's trying very hard not to say "i told you so", occasionally self-sabotaging and prone to making questionable decisions in her private life, still referring to twitter as twitter, convinced she can function on four hours of sleep because she used to do it at twenty-four, surprisingly playful when she's not stressed out, dry humor that sneaks up on people, will pivot from totally logical to weirdly impulsive without warning, occasionally says things that land way more intense than intended and then just moves on like nothing happened, can totally moderate a debate but still has her notes app full of old grocery lists, half writetn story ideas and reminders to buy batteries.

³ speech.

on air, her delivery is controlled and articulate. she speaks clearly and decisively, choosing her words carefully and with purpose. off camera, however, her speech becomes much more unfiltered, fast moving and reactive. she tends to talk in bursts, thinking out loud as she goes, often interrupting herself and over explaining, especially when she's worked up.

⁴ style.

her newsroom outfits often feature tailored blazers, fitted pencil skirts, polished blouses, designer heels. her casual look is a little more relaxed: soft sweaters, blazers over plain tees... or statement tees, jeans that look purposely worn-in, wide-leg pants, elevated basics. wears comfy clothes at home, known to favor oversized usc apparel and ( occasionally ) vintage band tees if she's not expecting company. fun fact: she owns multiple blazers that all look the same but she insists they're completely different.

⁵ family life.

hometown: brentwood, los angeles. father: arash eskandari ( retired mechanical engineer ). mother: narges eskandari, née rahimi ( retired pediatrician ). siblings: omid ( older ), cyrus ( younger ). other: hassan moradi ( ex-husband, lavender marriage ), kian ( son through surrogacy. she's an active co-parent, but hassan has primary custody ).

trigger warnings include mild mentions of sensitive topics such as forced displacement, conflict zone reporting, surrogacy and comphet. nothing too graphic or explicit, but proceed with caution.

⁶ inside story.

she is born to iranian immigrant parents who arrive in the united states following the iranian revolution, after a brief detour through türkiye and germany while their credentials are sorted out. farsi is spoken at home, alongside stories of the life her family left behind: an apartment with a large balcony, the bright yellow nursery that should have been omid's and a pomegranate tree you could see from the kitchen window. 

her parents push her towards law or medicine or engineering, but she develops an interest for current events, the habit of asking too many questions and a talent for remembering obscure facts about places most people can't find on a map. namely that lemurs can only be found in madagascar and bhutan measures national happiness alongside economic growth which she thinks is kinda cool.  

somewhere in high school samaneh becomes sam. she says the change is mostly practical because 1. it’s easier for teachers to pronounce and 2. she’s tired of hearing them try. but it's also a teenage rebrand thing ( you know, like madonna in the 90s but with no budget ). new name, new haircut ( we don't talk about it ) and strong opinions on just about everything from cafeteria food to mtv cribs to the state of the world. 

tries the debate team for a bit cause it sounds like arguing but with rules and leaves after repeated reminders that it's not "a full-contact sport" ( there was an incident. one ). then, spends most of her teenage years orbiting student journalism, early morning walkouts and whatever cause had her printing flyers in the library at lunchtime. sure, sometimes it's a campaign for longer lunch breaks but a cause is a cause is a cause.

there's an unofficial zine and opinion pieces that toe the line between teenage frustration and commentary. the whole thing is never exactly organized, but it's loud like high school projects can be and messy enough that her parents get a few polite phone calls asking for a "quick chat about sam's recent contributions." they suggest toning it down but #yolo.

by graduation, she has a college acceptance letter, a reputation for being something of a pain in the-- kind of hard to ignore and the annoying habit of not knowing when to shut up. somehow, she ends up making a career out of that. 

⁷ career.

lands her first reporting gig during her usc days. well. technically, it's an unpaid internship through a training program her college offers and it's only meant to be a kind of vague but totally overworked role at a digital-tv hybrid newsroom, but it's still hands-on experience so yay!

when the 2008 primary trail starts drawing big crows, mgmt ( not the band ) decides they should send someone out there because everyone else is also doing it. however, the newsroom is understaffed, unwilling to send senior staff on the road and the political reporter isn't sleeping on buses. so naturally, the job falls on the 22 year old at the bottom of the hierarchy. 

spends the next two months following the campaign through california and neighboring states, calls herself a multimedia journalist because "kind of vague but totally overworked role" is a mouthful and struggles to upload videos from hotel lobby wifi. she graduates with honors after wrapping the internship up, then works her way through smaller stations before securing a job as junior reporter at cnn ( not that cnn, though ) in sacramento. 

at cal news network, she becomes known for volunteering for difficult assignments rather than waiting for studio opportunities, like a wildfire evacuation coverage where her field reporting is repeatedly incorporated into regional broadcasts and gets her noticed by a senior producer from a bigger network hub in los angeles. 

joins the national broadcasting network team ( owned by nbn media group ) around her late twenties, her presence becomes a comforting fixture as a field reporter for the morning show "your day america" and she's often praised for her skill in navigating both light-hearted segments and hard-hitting stories. editors notice she can go live under pressure, understands international affairs better than most local reporters and looks comfortable in unstable environments. the network spots potential for global work and sends her overseas; first beirut, then istanbul.  

spends the next ten years as a foreign correspondent ( 2014 — 2024ish ), covering conflicts and diplomatic crises in the swana region. though mainly based in istanbul, she often travels to frontline cities, border zones and refugee corridors to report from displacement camps and transit routes.  

becomes known for emotionally charged but incisive reporting during regional unrest and develops a reputation for being unusually independent. producers love her because she delivers memorable reporting, executives get nervous because she sometimes goes off-script and she's willing to challenge even her own network's assumptions on air. 

in her late thirties, she has a live moment that explodes online ( or goes viral, as they say ). it happens during a major protest coverage, after increasing institutional pressure and personal burnout, and it draws both acclaim and scrutiny. not because she says something outrageous, but because viewers see genuine emotion while the eng operator captures moments that contradict official narratives. clips spread across social media. the network sees her as both an asset and a liability. 

officially, she's rewarded. brought back to los angeles and made co-anchor on nbn weekend report, one of the major national newscasts. nbn execs still think she's valuable, but they also know that correspondents operating overseas have more autonomy than anchors sitting in a studio. it's a containment strategy framed as a promotion. the fact that she takes it anyway is self-preservation. 

viewers trust her because she appears to have earned the anchor chair through reporting rather than simply reading a teleprompter. she's okay with that... for now. she does nbn weekend report on saturdays and regularly appears on nbn's the daily brief in a more limited capacity as a rotating international affairs commentator. the money is good ( maybe even suspiciously good ), her social media following grows, strangers occasionally recognize her in public ( a little girl tells her she wants to be a journalist just like her. the comment stays with her for weeks ) and her family likes the fact that she's not calling home from a different time zone every other week. it should be enough. it almost is, but the routine starts to itch.

the job feels a little too easy. a little too polished. a little too dependent on the voice in her earpiece telling her exactly when to speak and when to stop. so, when a veteran anchor announces their retirement and rumors start swirling about a long-overdue overhaul of the same sleepy sunday night news show, she finally perks up.

a newly hired executive producer comes in from a rival network to lead the revamp. she sees her opening and walks into their office with a rough idea that's been sitting in her head ever since the gig started feeling more like a cage than a career. they run with it together, rebuilding everything; structure, segments, pacing, the whole thing. the new sunday night news show, world in progress, lands hard with viewers and gives the network a ratings boost it hasn't seen in years.

world in progress is a late-night news show that blends political satire with genuine reporting and is built on the belief that the most important stories should do more than inform: they should provoke, challenge and demand attention. it covers the week's biggest stories, everything from international crises to domestic policy blunders, before diving into the weekly damage assessment segment, offering a deeper look at a story that deserves more attention than a typical news cycle allows. the discussion continues with a rotating panel of reporters and newsroom personalities who bring additional reporting, competing viewpoints and uncomfortable questions to the table. the show uses satire, but it's not a comedy program; world in progress isn't interested in helping viewers laugh off the week's disasters. the goal is not to make the news easier to swallow, but harder to ignore.

⁸ the scoop.

meets hassan in college and starts dating him sometime during her self-discovery phase. they get along well and it's... convenient, which is not what you want topping the pros column of a pros-and-cons list ( not hers, to be clear ). before she knows it, she's being introduced to his father, which seems fast even though she doesn't have much experience in the dating dept. what she does have experience with is reading between the lines, so when farhad moradi remarks "finally, you've found a nice persian girl" she clocks the implication right away.

breaks it off w hassan, but plays the gf part in front of farhad for a bit longer. hassan shows her the list and it's the beginning of a beautiful friendship that turns out to be one of the most meaningful relationships in her adult life. strictly platonic, of course, because by then she's already come to terms with where her own preferences lie.

though they're both kids of iranian immigrants, that's where the overlap ends. hassan's dad is putting together some massive hotel development in weho and she knows enough about wealthy diaspora families to recognize the type. even cyrus, whose talents don't exactly include being observant, has heard of the moradis, a well-known persian family with their hands all over luxury real estate and high-rise projects in town. and yeahhhh, hassan's dad is a massive jerk. a fact that is repeatedly proven true throughout the next fifteen years.

they remain best friends, keeping each other fully briefed on everything from major life updates to meaningless gossip, and somehow still squeezing in brunch dates and skype calls despite both claiming to be "so busy". before she leaves on her first overseas assignment, hassan mentions something about surrogacy. next time they see each other, he asks for her help choosing an egg donor. she proposes an alternative.

it takes a couple of years and several transfer attempts before it finally takes. in the meantime, she counts her own losses and tries not to overthink every time a source goes dark, she does it for her own sanity. she travels back several months before kian's arrival and finds a situation that's escalated the way situations do when nobody involved enjoys difficult conversations.

what follows is a "screwball comedy of a shitshow". no one corrects farhad's wildly incorrect assumption that his only son got a woman pregnant after a one-night stand, so he runs with it and threatens to disown hassan if he refuses to do the "honorable" thing ( his coursins love the idea ). cornered and desperate, hassan blurts out that he can't get married because his heart already belongs to someone else. the room goes silent. then every head slowly turns toward her.

farhad, who for some unknown reason genuinely likes her, eats it all up and claims he's always known the two of them would find their way back to each other ( lol ). narges doesn't like the idea of her daughter entering a marriage under false pretenses but she'll be a grandmother . . . you win some, lose some, she thinks.. arash's disapproval has always been the quiet kind, but so has his affection ( they're in the middle of a video call when he accidentally lets it slip that he's proud of her. she fakes losing signal and cries ). cyrus asks what he'll inherit when farhad kicks the bucket and it's funny that he actually means it. omid reminds hassan he's a divorce lawyer ⎯⎯ is it a warning or is he fishing for a client? no one can tell.

sam and hassam have an arrangement that may be unconventional but it works for them, that's what matters. kian has a mâmân that loves imperfectly but wholeheartedly, and he grows up happy, free and untouched by the prejudices that led them all here. and that means pretty much everything.

the divorce is obviously expected and it happens a year or two after farhad's passing. everything else remains largely unchanged except that she's now based in mirabella island, having moved in to the summer house she used to share with her newly ex-husband. she's home for nowruz instead of breaking a record for how many different timezones she can fit in the span of 13 days. and she takes the ferry to work rather than a flight with three layovers.

⁹ fan facts.

her online paper trail is kind of... embarrassing. old social media handles include sameskandalicious, samwiches, samtastic and eskandorable. goes by samobserves during her early journalism era & switches to samdoesitlive after securing a full-time field reporting position. it takes her a couple of days to realize how it sounds and she never lives it down. she's been sameskreports since then. her personal instagram is samgetsaround and her bio reads "i travel a lot for work" ⎯⎯ and yes, that one is actually intentional.

signature scents are diptyque's "philosykos" and frederic malle's "en passant", two fragrances created by olivia giacobetti. le labo's "thé noir 29" has recently been added to the rotation. she also has a small collection of demeter perfumes because she finds them fun to sample, but they're more of a novelty than anything else and she makes blind purchases based on the names or the customer reviews ( "people recently walked near me and asked what smelled so delicious… i carefully told them it was me." )

talks to the tv or is it at? anyway, it's not something she does during series or movies, but during interviews. she'll say things like "that's not what they asked you" or "come on, just answer the question" before realizing what she's doing. keeps doing it anyway.

prefers to read non fiction, but every now and then picks up a novel. and she'll read the last page of that book first, though she'd never admit it publicly. she just likes knowing where she's headed emotionally before she commits.