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 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 like 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 and I just I didn't really understand it but then but then I understood that Hollywood sees
different ethnic groups as monoliths and only sees this person in this type of role as as a doctor or
or a smart tech person and so for me I just wanted to be able to play a role where
where it was more nuanced and maybe there are bits and pieces of that as as in in Definition Please
Monica does have a science background which is somewhat of a stereotype but I wanted to take that
that that genius stereotype and that science background and merge it into something new
and that I hadn't seen before and and and I said okay well she smokes weed and she hooks up with
guys and and she's pretty chill except in this one family department and so it was exciting for me to
play and create a role that had so many facets to it instead of this one thing and and that's what I
set out to do in terms of casting the roles in my film a really fun story for me was when I
got a hold of Anna Khaja who plays Jaya the mom in my film and she said yeah of course send me
the script and then I sent her the script and she responded by saying I've played a lot of south
asian moms she has played Priyanka Chopra Jonas’s mom in Quantico. She has played Jameela Jamil’s
mom on The Good Place. She has played Ritesh Rajan who is plays the role of Sonny in my film.
She played his mom on his tv show Stitchers. She had already played his mom before and she said
I've never seen this role before and this is really exciting because the mom in my movie
has such a fun arc and she said that it was just going to be really fun to play that role because
she had never been offered something like that before and and that was exciting for me to hear
because I wanted to not only write the role for myself that I wanted to play but I wanted to write
other characters that my friends who had maybe been offered certain types of roles in the past
that they would also be excited to come in and be like oh I've never gotten to do this before
thank you for giving me this opportunity and your brother has an arc too
yes yes yes all the characters I definitely wanted to make sure that every single character has has
their own story in their own journey how do you feel about actors who refuse to write roles for
themselves create their own work so they don't want to be put in a box they don't want to
have to play the same type of person over and over again but then they're not willing to create work
that they actually want to watch I feel that a lot of people are different and and some
people just don't have like the patience or the discipline to sit down on a computer and write
their own roles but then I say you gotta go out and make writer friends
you gotta make these writer friends you gotta make these filmmaker friends these are director friends
and and get them excited about your story get them excited about the roles that you want to
play and that you haven't seen so if you feel like you can't do it yourself then surround yourself
with other creative people who maybe can do that for you and in this day and age do you think it's
reasonable for people not to want to create their own work because it's it's not about sitting home
waiting for someone to call anymore so much of work is self-generated today I think in this day
and age you really do have to go out and create your own work and there's no excuses anymore
like I said the iPhone 13 just came out and if you've looked at the cinematic mode of that iPhone
you can make an amazing short film shot on the iPhone 13 and get sound equipment from amazon
and just have it have really great cinematic quality and have really great sound and
you don't even have to go that far there are tick tock videos that I watch of different people and
their parents and their grandparents that are just as exciting and even if you don't feel like you
can go as far as to make a short film you can make little videos on tick tock or
youtube or instagram live and figure out what works for you and maybe put videos up on snapchat
and if that doesn't work for you then take another path like I said it's all about taking risks
it's all about actually doing it so even if you think oh I can't write this for myself then
make a friend go to these ucb sketch writing classes go to these improv classes you'll make
friends in those classes that's what I've done and then you continue to work with those people that
you really gel with and that's what's exciting so find your community and all create work together
do you wish you had started writing earlier in your career I started writing pretty young
so I started writing short stories and poems and songs since I don't know second grade or something
I was always really into my books I was always really into stories when I would go to
the Indian parties with my parents on the weekends graduations birthdays and
anniversaries and thanksgivings I was always sitting in the corner reading my book just
into my stories and that inspired me to write my own stories and so I've i've written stories
that I've transferred into scripts and so I started writing very young and I was always really
good like I mentioned I was really good at math and science but I was also good at english too so
that was part of it and I enjoyed writing it gave me a break from the from the rigid structure of
math and science and and it was always a stress reliever for me so I really enjoyed writing from
a very young age so transferring it over to screenwriting wasn't a hard thing to do for me
so when you would be going to those parties and family barbecues whatever and you had the book
where people like put the book down come join us what are you doing
never never that that's not an Indian thing to do okay like oh she's studying reading like
babysitter's club or sweet valley twins or sweet valley high I wouldn't necessarily be studying
but but in the Indian American community you don't really stop a kid from reading okay ever
do you feel you have a choice to write direct and act or it's a compulsion like you can't not do it
it's a compulsion and I think it goes back to your first question of having a backup plan and
there's honestly I think there have been various acting classes that I've been in
out here and they always say if there's anything else that you want to be doing
you need to go out and do that instead of being in entertainment there's honestly nothing else
I would rather be doing and I know that if I had stayed at that job at Accenture
I would be making billions and millions of dollars at this point and been promoted and
that just wasn't it for me and it it's not about the money and it's about waking up every day and
getting to live my dream and that's what keeps me going and that's where the compulsion comes from
do you ever have friends that took that path and there's nothing wrong with that path who say why I
secretly envy you I love that you went out on your own and you kind of forged your way and you didn't
worry about whether you had this title or that at this point all the time lots of friends who went a
certain path that they were maybe supposedly had to go down because of 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. and
yeah there are a lot of friends that are envious of what i'm doing and um i'm just really happy
to be living the life that i'm living how many characters have you actually created for yourself
multiple I've created so many characters for myself and some of those characters have
probably never made it to the screen but they're still on the page or they're still in my mind and
and it's exciting because none of them are the same and they're all based on maybe something
small something real that has happened to me an experience or a thought or an inspiration
um but but all those characters are so different and that's what's exciting because there are
so many roles that I've created for myself that i'm excited to play very soon and to
imagine them visually on screen is is what I live for what's one that you haven't created yet that
you want to play like it would really take you out of your comfort zone or challenge you I feel
like my role in Definition Please was pretty challenging that's one of the most dramatic
pieces that I've ever written it's definitely a dramedy but but it it leans into that drama
for bits of the script and I think going to those vulnerable places as an actor I was just really
lucky to surround myself with amazing actors that truly brought it and and made me a better actor
and so playing the role of Monica in Definition Please was very challenging and very fulfilling on
its own and and and I believe that there are roles percolating in my head that that i'm not aware
of that that will come out at some point and i'm excited to face the challenge of those roles too
and I know you get asked this a lot but how much of Sujata was in that role not a lot not a lot I
think like I mentioned the the entire script was based on me winning the my class spelling bee so I
obviously never won the national spelling bee or else it would be Googlable but
that Definition Please and that character was based on a lot of different experiences and people
that I've come across in my life um being around a really large flourishing Indian American community
in western Pennsylvania and then also college and after college I took little pieces of
of my life to create the fictional world of Definition Please and so instead of a coming
home story it's a leaving home story because the character has options she just chooses
her surroundings yes okay and I don't care maybe I’m I don't know spoilers here but how come not
not a coming home story where you've where you decided to come home to um the same situation but
you you had the career what was the difference why did you why did you do the opposite I think
what was really exciting for me to explore with Monica is the idea of a stunted growth the idea of
I've been successful I've had the peak of my life what is ever going to be better
than winning the national spelling bee and those thoughts in your head oh nothing's ever going to
top that it's like being the quarterback of the winning team senior year of high school
and then 20 years later you are not really doing much and so that that kind of story is exciting
to me of like a stunted growth of of how is this how is my life like and how can I get out of it
as opposed to a coming home story I feel like I've seen that many times before and and I
wanted to explore something new in terms of in terms of what you said a leaving home story so
reliving the glory of these different because some people high school was not their glory time
yes and and that was actually an awful time and they don't want to relive it but then there's
others that they do you're right they peak at a certain age and I do I would imagine that would
be very difficult and and and then they don't nothing sort of the magic never happens again
yes yes I think that's that's what's exciting to me that that story.