PopHorror Let's Get Scared
Natasha Kermani’s Imitation Girl, starring Lauren Ashley Carter (check out her interview here), was one of my favorite films of 2017, and I was thrilled to have the opportunity to talk with Natasha about the film, and what she has in store for us in 2018 and beyond. The interview was incredibly insightful, and made me that much more appreciative of what was already an incredible film. I’m proud to have been able to speak with Natasha, and I’m excited to share the interview with everyone.
Be sure to check out our review of Imitation Girl here, and stay tuned for any news regarding the film or anything else Natasha has planned.
PopHorror: Thanks for your time, Natasha. I really appreciate it.
Natasha Kermani: Of course.
PopHorror: To start, I would like to ask: what inspired Imitation Girl?
Natasha Kermani: I really wanted to tell the story about self-exploration and self-discovery through two different points of view. I had been working with Lauren for about a year at this point, and I knew I wanted her as the centerpiece of the film. I started with this foreign being – the “Imitation” – who comes to Earth and has to learn about how things work here, and then the other character – the human character – would exist on a very different path. It was all about opposing themes, which I wrote almost like a piece of music with point and counterpoint.
PopHorror: What was it like working with Lauren Ashley Carter?
Natasha Kermani: Lauren is a true powerhouse. It’s thrilling to work with someone who has a perfect pairing of technical and creative abilities. Lauren is also very funny, which is such a gift. Being on set involves long, intense hours, and she always finds a way to make the people around her laugh and shrug off some of that stress. She’s an actor that makes me want to be a better director, to push each take and each scene, because I know she’s endlessly capable of finding new truths in the moments we’re capturing. Plus, she’s got this silent movie star quality of wholly filling the frame with emotion and empathy, even when playing a character that’s making a mistake or doing a bad thing. We love to watch her because we’re totally engaged with what she’s feeling. I just love working with her.
PopHorror: Was it difficult directing someone who was playing two different characters?
Natasha Kermani: We had a really great advantage of shooting the sections separately. There was actually almost 6 months between the two main locations! So Lauren and I were able to approach shooting the sections as two different characters. The final scene of the film was shot back-to-back, but Lauren was such a pro that it felt really seamless. She had some big costume, hair and makeup resets between the shots, so we were moving at a slightly slower pace, and we had some time to reset in between. I did my best to block shoot to avoid having to go back and forth too much, but in the end, it really is about being detail-oriented and making sure Lauren felt confident and comfortable with the resets before starting to shoot.
PopHorror: A good portion of the film is in Farsi. Are you fluent, or did you have to learn to be able to write the script? Continuing on that, was it difficult to write a script in Farsi?
Natasha Kermani: I’m half Persian, and I have a very basic understanding of Farsi, but I worked with a Farsi tutor on the translations. Then, once we were working with Lauren, we really leaned on our Farsi speaking actors, Neimah [Djourabchi] and Sanam [Erfani], to help with pronunciation and any tweaks that helped make the language a bit smoother. We got really detailed with it, and Lauren is such a quick learner that she was able to master the lines after only a few lessons.
PopHorror: Imitation Girl is a very good looking film with a lot of really strong visuals. One of my favorite scenes was the final one with Julianna all in black, and the Imitation all in white. How important were these visuals, in your opinion?
Natasha Kermani: Thank you so much! Our DP, Travis, has a brilliant sense of lighting and balance, and our approach from the beginning was to make something that felt grounded but romantic. I love that you picked up on the yin/yang imagery at the end. We tried to suggest subtle differences between the characters throughout the entire film. A lot of the film, and my work in general, is informed by location, so we were very inspired by the wide open feeling of New Mexico in opposition to the vertical grid of New York. Travis and I had a blast pulling references and the mood that we were going for, but in the end, of course, we were inventing our own expression of the characters through the lighting, lens choice and colors around them.
PopHorror: You mentioned in the press kit that the film was centered around the female experience. Could you expand on that a bit more?
Natasha Kermani: We wanted to tell a grounded story about real human experiences through a science fiction lens, and so everything that our characters are faced with, the people they interact with and the places they find themselves in, are based in reality. I wanted to paint a portrait of these two sides of a single woman without losing sight of the issues that women deal with every day: whether it’s how you present yourself to the world – who am I today? – or how the world perceives you. I wanted these women in the film to be relatable, and it’s been really interesting hearing which character women relate to more, and why! Both of them stem from different aspects of myself and my own relationships with the world around me.
That term, ‘the female experience,’ is definitely loaded, and in part refers to the big, overarching plot elements that happen in the film, from the characters’ challenges, dreams, and affairs, to those tiny details that make our lives as women distinct. It’s in the small ways, like how Julianna handles moments of extreme disappointment, or in the way she interacts with the different people who float through her life, or in the way that she looks at her own reflection, that the Imitation gets to know her new body. It was really important to Lauren and I that we were portraying these characters who make mistakes and are flawed, but that we were never passing judgement on them, just showing women as they are, dealing with what comes their way.
PopHorror: What’s the one thing you would like viewers to take away from Imitation Girl?
Natasha Kermani: That’s a good question. I think, overall, the film ends on a positive note, even though there’s a sense of foreboding… There’s hope at the end, despite all the disappointment that we’ve experienced, because our girl has found herself and is free now to experience the universe. In my head, this film is Part One of our girl’s experience, the part that takes place on Earth. Now, as we move out and away from the physical world around her, there’s another adventure that will take place in the Imitation’s universe. I hope the film can spark some interesting conversations, and that viewers can think about what parts of themselves they haven’t met yet, and how to meet the yin to their yang!
PopHorror: Any word on a widespread release?
Natasha Kermani: We’ll be on VOD and in select theaters in the spring with Epic Pictures’ new genre label, Dread Central Presents! You can get updates by following @dreadcentralpresents, or follow us at @illiumpictures or me at @natashakermani to get the details as they emerge.
PopHorror: Any other upcoming projects you’re working on?
Natasha Kermani: We have a horror film titled The Dreadful that I’m very excited about. It follows a young woman in medieval England who gets caught up in a power struggle between her stepmother and her lover. Really looking forward to sharing updates on the project as we move forward in 2018!
PopHorror: Thank you so much for your time Natasha!
Be sure to check out our review of Imitation Girl, and keep your eyes peeled for th film to hit VOD sometime this spring! Stay tuned for any updates, as well, on anything else Natasha Kermani is working on!
