Maxance Vincent
In Maryam Keshavarz’s The Persian Version, Niousha Noor delivers one of the best supporting performances of the year as Shireen, the mother of Layla Mohammadi’s Leila, whose emotional journey is the central point of Keshavarz’s film. And it was not the role she was initially slated to play.
Speaking to Awards Radar on Zoom, Noor explains that she had come in late into the project after shooting Netflix’s Kaleidoscope and was set to play someone else. After discovering that she would play Shireen, Noor knew how extensive and heavy a role it would be, and prepared questions for Keshavarz’s mother, which she is based for the movie.
“One of the first things I did was to see if I could talk to her. I wrote my questions and just wanted to talk to her mother because this is based on her real-life story. I was trying to understand her better, and that was super helpful. That was the main conversation we had with Maryam, setting that up for us. That was my way of trying to understand what life was like in the 80s. It was various perspectives or questions. In my work, I was trying to understand this person’s motivations without vilifying her and understanding her relationship with her daughter. When you play that part, as an actor, you’re not aware of why you’re doing certain things that you’re doing, but you also have to be aware. It was an interesting balance to figure out until the very end when she’s finally confronted with her choices and gets it.”
The core of The Persian Version lies in the complex relationship Leila has with Shireen. In establishing this mother/daughter dynamic, Noor explains that, in the beginning, the two actors didn’t have much time to talk since their scenes weren’t together, but this helped shape their relationship once they eventually got to work on the same scenes:
“In the beginning, Layla and I didn’t have many scenes together. We didn’t get a chance to hang out or talk. We later discovered that we were using that distance and not knowing each other well in the movie. I had done my homework, and she had done her homework. But there was a space between us – there was a distance. I think we both used it, and it wasn’t until later on in production that we got close and became friends. Now she is one of my closest friends. When I got to work with her on the Thanksgiving scene, she’s such a gifted actress. She was so present. It just made it so much easier because of our connection. That was one of the first moments that I was like, Okay, she’s bringing it, and this is great, but we used that distance to our advantage of not having a lot of hangouts and knowing each other on a personal level at the beginning of production.”
During our audio conversation, seen below, we also talked about Noor’s connection with the screenplay, the challenges of approaching the dynamic between Leila and Shireen, balancing out the multiple emotional swings the film takes in its dynamic approach, and what she hopes audiences ultimately grasp out of The Persian Version.
You can listen to the full interview below and buy or rent The Persian Version on video-on-demand on December 5:
[Some of the quotes in this article were edited for length and clarity]
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