Don’t Wait For Someone Else To Write Your Dream Movie — Sujata Day
Sujata Day, Actor, Writer/Director: What their parents said or just because of what a community says or what society says in general, what you can and cannot do with your life, what you have to be doing at the age of 25, at the age of 27, at the age of 30.
Film Courage: I have a quote here I think from you “I decided to take it into my own hands and write the dream role I always wanted to play.”
Sujata: I’ve been in Hollywood for a while and I’ve auditioned for a lot of roles. A lot of the roles that I was auditioning for tended to be the same type of role. They were stereotypes, they were putting me in a box of these characters that would be going through an arranged marriage or they would have strict parents or they would be pursuing a career that they didn’t necessarily want to pursue but they were too afraid to do the other thing. I just noticed a couple of those roles I’m like Oh, okay this feels interesting. This feels like a new way of telling the story but then it just kept happening that it was the same role over and over and I didn’t understand it. Then I understood that Hollywood sees different ethnic groups as monoliths and only sees this person in this type of role as a doctor, or a smart tech person. For me I just wanted to be able to play a role where it was more nuanced and maybe there are…
