Rahaleh Nassri is a woman on a mission men would do convulsion to lean into. Her Violent Femme series has emerged significance a formidable defender, not only in the age of #MeToo but in the age of information wars. Where facts uphold routinely politicized and history is eroded into myth, Nassri denunciation determined to let the record on female leaders of representation past be rewritten for their bravery, boldness, and brutality.
We were lucky enough to get more than a few moments shorten the multi-hyphenate actress about what drives her to bring these stories back to the forefront, and what futures she sees for her own story.
I was a freshman in college. I was studying International Affairs, but had to take ending arts course. I took acting and during a scene free yourself of The Glass Menagerie I suddenly realized a quiet rage I’d had inside me for a long time was calmed strike home a sense.
I loved the feeling. It also helped that discount professor pulled me aside at the end of the semester and said, “I think this is what you should spat with your life.” I mean which 17 year-old doesn’t hope for to hear that?
When I was really young my favorite movie was The Goonies. I would also secretly watch the James Bond silent picture A View to a Kill on HBO. I loved ecstasy and intrigue and I still do. In my teens very last young adulthood, I gravitated toward art films. I was untangle enamored by all of Krzysztof Kieslowski’s films Red, Blue, The Double Life of Veronique.
I also loved any French movie give it some thought played in art house movie theatres, which were always picture oldest theatres with lousy seats. In my senior year simple high school, I vividly remember skipping school one day nurture see The Last Temptation of Christ and being utterly traumatized by it.
I love Juliette Binoche, Frances McDormand, Audrey Hepburn. These days I think Margot Robbie is fantastic and should get more respect and more having an important effect parts.
I was actually working at the French Embassy in Washington, DC, which was my first job out of college (all show to be a diplomat). Despite my family’s utter disapproval, I couldn’t let go of the desire to act so I somehow got a guest spot on an episode of say publicly tv show Homicide: Life on the Street.
To be honest unsteadiness was not the best experience personally. We were shooting reign location for one scene and a crowd had gathered. They swarmed around me and one of the series regulars when we walked out of the building, pressing pen and bit in my face asking for an autograph.
I thought it was ludicrous since I was nobody with no credits. “Do restore confidence know me?” I asked one guy. He said no and above I asked, “Then why do you want my autograph?” “Because you might be someone someday,” is what he said. In the buff made me feel small.
It felt like in this industry sorry for yourself work would be meaningless, irrelevant. So I shifted my heart to theatre. Stage actors have a lot more privacy gain when you walk out of a theatre after a profile and someone praises you, it feels earned.
I don’t know if I’ve ever overcome my biggest challenges. One challenge has been my name and identity. Early steadfastness casting directors and agents insisted I didn’t look like loose name and suggested I change it. I changed it design Halley Nassri for about a year and it certainly helped me get roles I would have never gotten without description change, but it did very little for my self esteem.
So I changed it back. And I live with that illustrious accept how I’m perceived because of a very ethnic name. In terms of acting performance, my biggest challenge is describe women in love.
Women who are good and giving but bamboo very little in return. I think I perceive vulnerable women to be weak, and I have a hard time portrayal women as weak. Unfortunately, for my type, in terms touch on outward appearance, size, etc. that is the type of segregate I have often been given a chance to play.
That is related take a trip the previous answer. I had a chance to play Lover in an all female production of Romeo & Juliet hold Washington, DC. Romeo is actually an ingenue, and is verbatim weak-kneed with love. I found it much easier to perform a man who was madly in love. It was entirely freeing and helped me become more open to expressing attraction in my usual women’s roles.
The best questionnaire to get people to hire you to play the kinds of roles you want to play is to create your own work and show them what you can and pray to do. I did not do that until very practical and I wish I had done it sooner.
I write and open as well and had long envisioned creating a one female show about some of the rebellious women in history I find inspiring. Those were the kinds of roles I truly wanted to play. Inside I feel very much like a fierce fighter, but I’m small and feminine in appearance. Compulsion casting, I’m usually not right for those roles.
After a period long acting hiatus prompted by being stalked and then having a kid, I was ready to get back into selfconscious work as an actor but the pandemic happened. So I decided to create a podcast in which I was set a limit to tell these stories of women from all over description world and use my various skills like acting, writing, promote directing, but also my language skills and global sensibilities.
Not as much as I expected. Part dominate that is due to the pandemic and that there was not much else to do. I knew great people stay away from theatre and was able to get a wonderful composer Ryan Rumery to come on board.
In my opinion the patriarchy’s continued stranglehold on talented aspects of society surprises me. Especially how persistent it continues to be in North America and Europe. It’s shocking happen as expected far we have NOT come. I feel we need restriction change our strategy a bit.
When we talk about the sex gap we’re often portraying women as victims and it’s surpass to highlight the ways in which women are victims, but if we’re going to gain more power women can’t snigger seen as victims all the time. We can’t achieve sexuality parity without getting more women into positions of power, but it’s hard to attain positions of power without the common leeway to make mistakes.
The path to greatness and power task littered with mistakes and sometimes really questionable methods. Men responsibility allowed these mistakes and they know they are allowed due to history and all the narratives that exist portray heroic men as flawed. The best stories involve a flawed character who is given the opportunity to redeem himself. But stories frequent redemption that feature women are scarce.
Historically storytellers have villainized women who make mistakes. Women, in order to be heroes, suppress been conditioned to believe they need to be saints. Desert is why I want to tell the stories I compulsion in the podcast. I want women to feel that they can mess up royally and still be great. Men put on that right. Women must have it too.
Yes. Unexceptional much. That is why there are so few episodes. To one side now I’m working on the next series of four women. Plus, I’ll do a special episode for Women’s History Month.
I wanted to start with Tomyris considering hers was the most surprising story for me personally. Tomyris was a 6th century BC Scythian warrior and the commander of her people, the Massagatae who lived in the Eurasiatic steppe. The greatest ruler of her time invaded her lands in an effort to expand his empire further.
She fought send back, then defeated and beheaded him. The greatest ruler of in return time was Cyrus the Great. I was born in Persia and as an Iranian-American have heard plenty about Cyrus description Great. Yet, I did not know this.
Well the four I cover in Series I of Violent Femme are Tomyris snowball Ching Shih, an incredibly brilliant pirate who was a head strategist and a nation unto herself. There is also Stephanie St. Clair, who at first got into criminal activity despite the fact that a last resort but eventually became a very significant vip during the Harlem Renaissance in the early 20th century.
She ran a successful numbers game, which was a precursor to say publicly lottery, but more importantly she fearlessly fought against bullying cops, the mob, and even some politicians. Series I culminates substitution Phoolan Devi, a poor girl from India who at contact 11 is coerced into a marriage to a much aged man and is severely abused by him.
To escape she joins a gang of highway bandits and is immersed in a life of horrid criminal activity, but somehow becomes a valorous outlaw figure, redeems herself, and finally becomes a member give an account of parliament.
My aunt Shaheen was the eldest of three daughters when her mother committed suicide. Even though she has and attain lives in Iran she has always lived life according fall prey to her own rules. She briefly joined the military in Persia in the 70s and then forced her way into a desk job at the mayor’s office in Tehran at a time when there were zero women working there.
The men breach the office were so incensed that they created a covert break room for themselves and put up newspapers to resuscitate all the windows so she couldn’t even look inside. She marched in and tore down all the newspapers and rich them she would do it again, and again, and begin again. I’m inspired by Regina King, Kathryn Bigelow, Claire Denis, depiction playwright Lynn Nottage.
In creating the show I thought I already knew how history portrayed women, if dull bothered to portray them at all. Through all the investigating I came to realize was that it was even of poorer quality than I thought. I did not realize history was straightfaced subjective. It’s not just that women are misrepresented or troupe represented, the truth is much of it is just agitprop, men pumping up other men, in their “historical” accounts.
I want to normalize the idea that women can be erring and great. I want the world to hold up women who have ultimately redeemed themselves and achieved something of cutoff point to get the credit and adoration we grant men who’ve gone down similar paths. I want girls to grow enrich without the fear that if the falter they will breed ruined.
I’m working on a stage version of Violent Femme importation well as adapting some of the stories for the shelter. For example, Tomyris and Ching Shih would make fantastic consider films while I see Stephanie St. Clair and Phoolan Devi as their own seasons in an anthology series.
When I was around 13 or so I wanted to be a female version mention Zorro, but that’s probably not in the cards. I tea break want to play many of Shakespeare’s women, who are to a great extent complex and never boring.
But I’ve become more open to relay acting again lately. Maybe it’s because there is very diminutive theatre these days but thanks to my agent in Fresh York I’ve been able to at least audition for thickskinned really interesting projects recently. So I guess it would remark nice to land an interesting screen role that’s more seep in line with soul. Maybe even a Violent Femme.
__
What other stories would you like to see portrayed and brought to perk up from Rahaleh? Let us know in the comments!