Omar Ayuso has made his return to the Netflix hit series Elite, and he recently talked to The Hollywood Reporter about what it’s been to come back to his character, Omar Shanaa. He said that he feels a responsibility when playing the character a gay, Muslim young man figuring out who he is in life.

“When building your character, you are actually building an audiovisual role model in fiction on a national and international level,” he said to Brande Victorian for THR. “Being able to be that role model and to play that role model is something that is really special.”

Ayuso’s return to the series involved him overcoming his own personal feelings of failure regarding his past run on the series.

“I had this feeling like I had failed an independent project, but it took some time for me to understand that Elite 7 was like an independent, different project from the first one and my success as an actor doesn’t depend on whether I do something that is similar to what I did before or not,” he said. “I can do several projects that are related, and it doesn’t mean I failed. Once I fought that, finding Omar in me was very easy because it’s a character that I’ve been playing for seven years, so he comes out alone.”

Now that he’s moved past his own reservations, Ayuso talked about what he embraces about the character, including their similarities and what he receives from fans regarding the impact his character has made in their lives.

“…The reality is that I’m closer to him [besides his character sharing his name],” he said. “I’m gay, I come from a small town, I have an Arab background, my father is from Morocco, he’s not Palestinian, but he is from Morocco, and even though my family isn’t as conservative as his family and I didn’t have such a hard time coming out, I can relate to many things from that character…You do feel a responsibility as an actor in the building up the character and conveying certain things for a character with a certain reality. There’s a moral responsibility.”

“You have to be honest; you have to start from an honest point, especially if you’re talking about a minority that has been marginalized over time,” he continued. “Everything you do has to help them eventually get to a better place. I would say in my day-to-day life, being a gay man in Spain, it’s also a responsibility I feel in how I behave myself. There’s a great beauty in the feedback from the fans. I think one of the few things that you can say is great from social media is that you receive messages from faraway cultures that have nothing to do with you, from people you don’t know and they convey the difficulties of trying to be who they feel they are and realizing that your job may mean so much in the life of other people is something that is really rewarding.”

Ayuso also confirmed that he’s shot scenes with his on-screen sister, Mina El Hammani (Nadia) who will return in season 8.

“Mina is my friend in real life, and I’ve kept in touch with her,” he said. “We’ve already shot some scenes together in season eight and I think there is just some kind of poetic justice to close the circle together. It’s the best thing that could happen to me to finish the final season with her. And Mina’s coming back means my parents’ characters have come back, too. So, to be back with the family that we started with in that fruit shop in season one is wonderful.”

Elite season 7 is currently streaming on Netflix and the eighth and final season is expected sometime last year.