Tina Kakadelis
As a dancer, Shanti Lowry uniquely understands how to make a full-bodied performance. It’s a skill that comes in handy for her role in the upcoming feature film, Persona. Lowry plays a woman who wakes up alone in a house she does not recognize with no memory of who she is, how she got there, or who put her in this house. Persona quickly becomes a race against time for Lowry’s character and another woman, Sam (Sophia Ali), who also has been trapped in this house against her will.
In anticipation of Persona’s launch on video-on-demand platforms, Shanti Lowry sat down with Film Obsessive News Editor, Tina Kakadelis, to talk about the physical nature of the role, how she created a diverse crew behind the camera, and her future goals in the industry.
Film Obsessive: I want to start with having you talk a little bit about Persona and why it’s such a special and personal project for you.
Shanti Lowry: I get sent scripts from time to time and I got this script. I found myself just gripping it like 20 pages in. It just had so many things that were new, different, and exciting to me that I immediately felt that I wanted to be a bigger part of it. I didn’t want to just show up on set and do the role. I wanted to take care of this project.
In the first ten pages, there’s no dialogue. Who is this person? What is she doing? What’s happening? I thought that was amazing. You rarely see that for women. Also, because I’m a fan of true crime, I wonder, what would it be like if I was in that situation? Whatever the situation, what would I do? How would I react? That’s what this entire first ten minutes of the movie is.
It’s like, wake up, here you are. What are you going to do? What would you do to try to get out? What would you do trying to figure out where you are? I love that. I love that as an actor. I love that as a producer. I love that as an audience member. If you shoot that well, I would be so engaged watching that. Then, the script just unfolded and it was so much more amazing. It’s so smart, but it’s also so layered. It also gets at mental health, friendship, hope, and trauma. It’s also just a really great intense thriller. There were just so many layers that I wanted to be a real part of making this the great movie that I think it became.
I had this question pinned for later, but since you brought up the first ten minutes, I feel like I have to ask it now. You were a dancer first, and I feel like those opening ten minutes without dialogue could be like a modern dance. Did you see it that way? It’s a very physical role in general, so I’m assuming that your history of dance was helpful to you when you took on his role.
I’m so glad that people see that because I was busted up from this movie for probably two months. Honestly, I put my whole self into it, you know? Sometimes I look at myself on screen and I’m like, maybe you didn’t have to do that. Maybe you could have just been a little easier on yourself. I’m glad you see that physicality.
I think my dance background absolutely helped because I’m not nervous or embarrassed or insecure about emoting with my body. I think a lot of actors might be intimidated. In that instance where it’s ten minutes of not speaking, you’re feeling a bit naked. And yeah, I think maybe you’re right. I had not processed that. I think because I’m a dancer, that didn’t frighten me, talking with my body and moving through a space. That was one of the easiest things to shoot, honestly. Just get up, look around, try to figure it out.
Going back a little, you took on so many roles beyond just acting. I want to talk a little bit about the specifics of some of them, but what aspect of taking on all these roles did you find to be the most unexpectedly rewarding?
Definitely the ability to hire the people that I felt like deserved to be hired. When I decided to produce this movie, I thought, well, I can’t produce a movie with two female leads about the fact that females, especially women of color, are completely forgotten and not looked after when they’re taken or any of that. I can’t do that and then have an all-white male crew around me. That doesn’t feel authentic to what I’m trying to make. That’s not authentic to me either.
I’ve been in the industry a long time, and it’s sort of the gripe I’ve had. Every set is like, I wish there was a little bit more representation of all different facets of life. I think that would make the sauce a little bit tastier. So that was what I chose to do. I said, I’m going to do 50% women and 75% people of color, top to bottom. At first, it was pretty hard to find those people simply because I didn’t have those connections. Once you open the gates to all the different people who have the resources, it was so rewarding to get somebody who’s been working for 30 years under someone else a chance to key a position. Even more rewarding that they knock it out of the park too. Now that they have this on their resume, they can go off and do anything. That was really valuable.
Yeah, that’s so important! We have to talk about your scene partner for the majority of the movie, Sophia. You had a hand in the casting as well. So what about Sophia from a casting perspective made you excited? Then, from an acting perspective, too.
She’s probably the most mysterious part of this whole project. She came up as an option, and I’ve seen her work before. I don’t know her personally, but I saw her picture, and I just thought, it’s her. I’m a very visual person and I started visualizing the scenes and the way that I imagined she would build this character. I knew it was her. We were still talking about a bunch of other people, and we put an offer out to her just to talk about it. The way she wrote back to me about her understanding of the script and the way she felt about it was so awesome. It was so spot on. Again, it was like, it’s her. So we offered her the part and she was busy. She was going to be shooting the whole month. We were like, okay, moving on. Everyone else was like, what about her? What about her? And I was just sitting there like, no, it’s Sofia. Sofia is the one.
I wrote her an email and I straight up said, I can’t forget you, I’m sorry. I need you for this part. You’ve got to find a way. It turns out that her other movie had been pushed. It was meant to be. I honestly don’t know how I didn’t make her audition. We didn’t rehearse anything. I just knew. It was also the language, the conversation back and forth. I knew she understood Sam and where we wanted to go with that. She killed it.
For the entirety of the movie, your character’s stress level is at a 15. So as a performer, how are you bringing that level of intensity day in and day out? You have maybe one scene where you get to breathe. How do you take care of yourself during this process?
That was actually something that I planned ahead of time. When I say I planned everything, I mean, I planned everything. I had a one-year-old daughter at the time and I didn’t want her life or my relationship with her to be affected negatively because of this thing that I want to do. I want her to be inspired by me, but also not feel neglected.
I would plan little times with my daughter off set because I didn’t ever want to even see my daughter on the set. That set is a place of trauma and fear. Every time I entered that place, that’s the feeling I needed to have, but I also needed to exit the set and be able to leave that entirely. My daughter would be standing right outside. I would leave, see her, and all of it’s gone. Then I would step back on the set and all of it would sort of come back.
I planned a lot of unwinding time, like 15 minutes to myself after set so that I could really process. I planned time where I could answer my email privately so that I could focus on my producing role. I planned an hour with my daughter where no one could bother me. That was helping me unwind as well. It was a really important part of this project to plan the downtime and the unwinding. It ended up being so much easier than any other project because I planned it, even though it was kind of more intense than a lot of other projects.
Wow. I need that kind of planning in my day-to-day life. I think we all do. You also had a hand in costume design, which I think is so interesting because as somebody who’s not great at fashion, I’m always interested in how people are picking out items of clothing. Like they’ll see a flannel shirt and that speaks to them somehow about the character. There’s not a lot of clothing in this movie, so what about each specific article of clothing were you trying to convey about each of the two characters in the film?
I chose to do the costume design because, as you said, there’s very little of it, but it’s very important. When I was visualizing and seeing these characters, I had a really clear idea of what they would be wearing and what they would look like. Also the writing of the script was very specific. I’ve done a lot of costume design for other things, and I felt I was capable of doing it here, and I didn’t want to bring someone else in and just tell them what to do.
The first thing I wanted to do was find that flannel. That thing that she puts on feels like it’s her armor against everything. It was a color palette thing. Colors evoke feelings from people and they also are foreboding sometimes. I wanted Sam to be in these different colors. Again, it kind of just happened. You see it and you go, yeah, that’s how I want them to feel. Sometimes you pick a couple of things, you see them on camera, and it’s not right. We knew right away what we had and what we wanted. The fun part was actually some of the camouflage stuff that you’ll see, it really was actually kind of fun to go through and pick out.
Why was that? Because the camouflage, to me, it just seems like it’s, you know, plain camouflage.
Right. I would have thought the same thing. Who knew there were so many colors of camouflage and different types of camouflage. It’s a whole new thing I learned. I had no idea.
You mentioned this briefly earlier, but the film opens with a news report about missing women of color and then the unfortunate reality that they are not given the same media attention as white women who are missing. Why choose to tell this story in a thriller genre instead of a more straightforward drama?
You know, it’s interesting. It wasn’t a decision of like, oh, here’s a drama I could tell the story with, or here’s a thriller. This is just what came to me, and I’m glad it did, honestly, because I think a drama about this might just be sort of like, eat your vegetables. Whereas this is like, you’re getting the message, but you’re also being entertained. I guess that’s kind of the only reason I would say that it’s a good idea to do a thriller or a horror or something like that, because people want to be entertained but they can also learn something from it. We try very hard not to shove anything down their throats. There is a message of resilience and hope in the movie.
Absolutely. My last question for you, having now been such a huge part of what goes on in front of the camera and behind the camera, do you see a future now where you fully take on the directing role? Is that something that interests you now?
Yes, definitely. I feel I still have a little bit to learn about the directing side of things, which I’m eager to do, but it’s also about the project. When you’re a director, it’s your life not just for a little time, but for a really huge amount of time because it’s your project top to bottom. Or at least that’s how I would do it. It’s just going to be the right project coming to me at the right time in my life. But I think I’d like to.
Would you write too?
I have written, but it’s probably the thing I think I’m less strong with. I have so many lovely ideas, but sitting down and writing a script, it’s quite a task for me. Some people, it just pours out of them. But yeah, I think I would love to collaboratively write. I would love to collaboratively do literally everything in film. I love it. I mean, I would stand there and hold the boom. I have! I sit there and hold a boom because it’s like, well, I’ve never done it. Like, what is this? How do you do this? Why is the sound like this? Why do you choose this angle? It’s just all fun, really. To me, I’m just playing.
It’s so obvious how much you love film and it comes across in this movie.
Oh that’s great. Thank you. Thank you so much.
Thank you for your time. Have a great rest of your day and happy holidays!
Thank you. Happy holidays!
