Every time Canadian actor and filmmaker Aisha Evelyna sees an unhoused man of a certain age or build, she does a double take. The last time she saw her father, she said, his housing situation was unstable. And she wouldn’t be surprised if in the intervening time, that housing had fallen through.
That terrified feeling, along with a myriad of other ideas, spurred the creation of “Seahorse,” a film written by and directed by Evelyna that played at this year’s Atlanta Film Festival. If you missed the screening, “Seahorse” is one of the films playing in the festival’s virtual event, which lasts through May 11.
“Seahorse” stars Evelyna as Nola, a sous chef at a high end new restaurant run by her friend Adelaide (Ruth Goodwin) and her awful fiance, Rob (Brett Donahue). After a particularly terrible shift, she runs into her estranged and unhoused father Cyrus (Joseph Marcell, of “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” fame) on the way home. The film wrestles with Nola’s relationship with her father and the weight of her own mental health issues.
“Seahorse” was one of the more fascinating films I saw at the festival, and I got the opportunity to speak to Evelyna about the making of the film after the in-person screening. We had a lovely chat, talking about everything from her thoughts on criticism and how she digests notes on her writing, to some of the more emotionally challenging aspects of the shoot. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
I know you’ve created stuff before, like “The Drop” and directed some short films. But this is your first feature, correct?
Aisha Evelyna: Yes, it is my first feature.
I noticed there’s a short called “Nola” that seems to be a sort of concept for “Seahorse.” Where did this idea originally come from?
Evelyna: “Nola” was kind of a proof of concept short film. It was twofold: it became kind of a testing ground for the creative relationships and the language that we were trying to develop for the full feature, as well as a tool, for lack of a better phrase, to help us garner support and make introductions, that kind of thing, to industry partners that would come along for the full ride of the feature.
I think the biggest thing when it comes to being a filmmaker trying to get your work out there is finding eyeballs and visibility. If you don’t have a lot of money, you can take advantage of time. We had a long runway up until the point of making the movie. In order to start to plant seeds about a forthcoming feature – because we’re not Warner Bros., we can’t just drop a trailer – [the short] was the tool and a way for us to make in ways with different festival programmers.
I’ve never heard someone dscribe it as a testing ground for creative relationships before. Is that just figuring out the vibe, making sure you guys work well together?
Evelyna: When you don’t have a lot of money, time becomes very valuable. We wanted to make something that had a language of its own. I had worked with the cinematographer, Ian Carleton, before on a short I made called “ShoeGazer.” This was eons ago. Then, my pal Ruth [Goodwin], who plays Adelaide in the feature, was also in the short film.
[It’s] the best way of getting to dip our toes into these relationships – not to make sure they work, but to just begin to start trying to speak the same language. It’s way easier to go back to a conversation about, like, this character’s arc, and talking about how the language can relate to the character’s arc with Ian, because we had the shoot in 2022 to start building. It’s more like a revisiting and a building, as opposed to an onboarding from the jump.
Even the restaurant where we shot – we had a really hard time finding a restaurant that would let us shoot there for next to nothing. We shot “Nola” there, and then we came back being like, “Can we shoot a feature there?” They knew who we were. You know what I mean? [The short] was in order to help these relationships evolve so that we could make something.
Speaking of the restaurant of it all, where did the story beats themselves come from? What inspired the story?
Evelyna: I think my voice is drawn to the sociopolitical. I’m always looking outward at what doesn’t make sense to me, and then I try to break it down and make sense of it via a movie [laughs]. Which, like, there are better ways to do this! There are more efficient ways to do this – I could be an academic instead.
Toronto has a housing crisis … Little things would irk me, or I would get curious about them. That’s how the little nibbles started. I remember walking in an area not too far from where I live, and I’m just seeing a lot of people who are unhoused, who are struggling, or on the subway, living poorly. There was a curiosity of, I am just like them … So what happened here?
I had worked in restaurants for many years, just trying to make ends meet. You come across a lot of people who do live in housing precarity in [the restaurant] industry as well. People that are functioning with substance abuse issues. So the idea came from my intersection with this world, and with Nola’s world, and seeing myself in it and then trying to understand it further. It was never intended to solve the plight of the unhoused. A movie cannot do that. However, my hope was just in the exploration of this, making audiences [and me] more aware of how much I have in common with the person who’s fallen on hard times.
And beyond that is my dad. Whenever I’m out – still, unfortunately, to this day – if I’m out and I see a person who is unhoused who kind of looks the general age of my dad, my cells do something. I do a double take. Because the last time I saw my dad, I remember him living in a level of housing precarity. I don’t know where he is. I think he’s fine, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s not. So, it came from me looking outward and just being like, what’s going on here? And really trying to break it down into something that’s digestible. Because my hope is that if we can understand it with our hearts, then maybe our minds can change around certain decisions we make as well, when it comes to extending care to others.
Well, what’s sort of striking about that idea is – and we shouldn’t need this. There shouldn’t need to be that personal connection to make you care – but, in this case it’s literally putting the face of someone who is so intrinsically connected to you on the issue.
Evelyna: I think that many of us have been that version of this person. It’s interesting you say that, because in earlier conversations, I received notes being like, “Make [Nola] more poor.” But the thing is, I didn’t want to dance into poverty porn. There’s still an “us versus them” type thing, because the average person does not live to that extreme of poverty. And unfortunately, the people who could advocate for those who do not have access to a lot of resources are the average person who’s living with some level of privilege. For example, I live in a city. I have food in my fridge. But also, I don’t have a lot of money. I have peers that are also living in a similar circumstance, where we all feel like we can’t get ahead.
I feel like tapping into that experience, and intersecting that experience with Nola’s character, who’s kind of in the same zone, could be demonstrably more powerful when it comes to shifting a heart, and getting a heart to shift a mind, as opposed to, for example, something like “The Florida Project.” The average person does not know a person living in a motel. Those two people in the story live in housing precarity. I think, when we watch it as a viewer, it allows us to be like, “Oh, well that’s them. That’s not me.” My hope was, to be the most effective is to put the average audience member trying to make their life work in the movie by virtue of Nola, and then connect the audience member, via Nola, to somebody that’s living with even less resources, and they have more in common. Which is very cerebral. It’s just a movie … but when I think about how I wanted to engage an audience and why, in my head, I was like, “If we make this person too – for lack of a better phrase – ‘poor,’ then it puts us further away from them.” With any movie, you want to draw the audience closer to the subject matter.
How do you as a writer engage with the note taking process?
Evelyna: I treat it like music. I got that note from a couple people, but then those couple people were like, “This would be effective – you have to show it to be real! You have to show her living in real poverty!” And I’m like, I live in poverty to an extent. You know what I mean? To an extent. If you’ve ever had to couch surf between houses, which is a lot of people, that’s housing precarity.
So, when I receive notes like that – it’s interesting, because when we’re listening to music, you always know when it sounds wonky. When I would ask a person, can you read the script and give me your thoughts, or watch a cut of the movie, I was like, “Where is it wonky for you? Where do you bump?” And then I look at the tea leaves. I sent out the script to eight people for this round, and five of them came back saying they had something with this character. One person said he’s too mean, one person said he’s not mean enough. I’m like, okay, well there’s something wrong with this character. [It’s] less so about the specifics of the note.
So, with the note about Nola being not poor enough … There were just questions about Nola the character. It was less so about how poor she was, but it allowed me to get firmer on my decisions, so I could just fix the kinks within this character.
Was the too mean/not mean enough note about the boss character, Rob? Did that really happen?
Evelyna: 100 percent. I kept on getting notes about Rob. I wanted to redeem him more, but people didn’t buy it.
I think you did it just enough. One of the things I liked about the movie was that he was someone I would have never expected to feel bad for. And at the end, there is a little sense of that.
Evelyna: The note I got – one person cracked it wide open. I had been having trouble with this character. It was [from] a distributor, and he was like, “This guy doesn’t feel real, because usually chefs like food.” I took that back, and I was like, well – I hope he is real, and this chef doesn’t like food. What does that mean? I used to work for a company, and they didn’t really care about the communal whatever food. They cared about butts in seats, making money, and going to a place to be seen. There are people that will use – and I think this is across the board – a thing to go viral. This is my thing that I will use to find virality. With Rob, who was coming off as too mean without having a basis for it, I decided well, what is his character wound?
Love and belonging. Most people want to be loved and to feel like they belong. Nola’s character flaw is that she wants to be loved, but believes she’s unlovable. Cyrus believes that he doesn’t belong. I transferred those same kinds of attributes to both Adelaide and Rob. Rob believes that he is not lovable, therefore he, with the resources he has, seeks out love in a way that makes sense to him, ie: social media status. He didn’t have a basis for his actions before, and I tried to give them more of a basis. It worked to an extent. But I actually would have liked to redeem him further. But I only had 85 minutes, because money! [Laughs]
What was your experience starring in something that you were also directing? How did you juggle those two jobs?
Evelyna: I have a pal, her name is Grace [Glowicki] … She is also a multi-hyphenate filmmaker, and she made this movie called “Tito.” I was talking to her about acting and putting yourself in a thing. It’s interesting, when I think about the experience and why a person does it, it was kind of always out of necessity.
For “The Drop,” my co-creator and I won development funding to make a show. We crunched the numbers, and we didn’t have the money to pay two leads. We were just like, we both went to acting school [laughs]. She had been filmmaking on her own, and I had been writing and putting myself in shorts, so we were like, okay – it’s just one step further to direct. What does the craft look like?
When I had to step into directing and starring in “Seahorse,” I actually was really on the fence. Because, unlike Nola, I love myself. I don’t actually want to choose violence. And putting yourself in your own movie, in some ways, is choosing violence …. I had done it a few times. I had done it for a short called “Alex,” and that was like a testing ground for me to see if I actually wanted to do it for “Seahorse.” So, I had a necessity to put myself in there to be like, is this something I need to do? Let me find out. It was always a tool. It was never like, I’m gonna put myself in this movie to make myself a star, because it’s just as hard making a movie and getting your movie off as it is being an actor – there’s no shortcut.
It’s just about prep. The same way that you’re prepping your shot list and you’re prepping where the camera is going to go, I was also just making sure that I just knew the story inside and out, and understood the character beats, and knew my lines.
As far as casting goes, I was reading an interview at SXSW where Joseph Marcell described how you reached out to him. He was very poetic about it. I’d love to hear about that experience from your point of view.
Evelyna: I just wrote him a nice letter. I made sure we had our stuff together, we had a really strong deck. The early iterations of our pitch deck were very referential. Like, Denzel Washington was in there, arbitrarily – it was very referential, and not what the language of “Seahorse” was. My DP, Ian, and I went and took pictures of the language. I was in Mexico, I think, and I took pictures in the water, and I was like, what does this feel like? We rejigged the deck, and then I sent [Joseph] a really polished version of the script as well as a letter. I just said “This is who I am. This is why I want you. This is why I think it could be important.” I think the genuine intention behind it was maybe what got him.
There have been a couple of people who really didn’t like this movie. Which is totally fine. It’s totally fine! Because then there are people – like, one woman gave me a gift at the screening. All to say, I think that one of the things that our production, our movie, and the people behind it, have in spades is just this genuine desire to connect and to leave a person lifted, and to just engage a person in an experience that we hope will be warm for them. I think that’s why Joseph responded to it.
How long was the shoot? Was there anything that was particularly challenging about it?
Evelyna: We had a really lovely team that were really gung ho about what we were doing. We just prepped to the nines. There was one scene we had to shoot on a rooftop, which we didn’t get a chance to scout. Every time I see that scene in the movie, I’m like, “Ugh!” We didn’t get a chance to scout it. It was hard, because establishing the geography of the space was bad. We had a location, we lost it the morning of, we still had to shoot, because we had called the actors. That was a tough shoot day. I remember leaving being like, “Man, I hope this shakes out in the edit.”
But, one of the bigger things is, going into the second week of the shoot, my close friend [actor] Mike Heslin was put on life support. It was Canada Day weekend … Everyone is coming back from this long weekend, and it’s the first day with Joseph, because he was only on set for four or five days. First day with Joseph, second week of shooting, and I felt like I had it figured out, in a way. My husband dropped me off to get my toes done because my feet were looking gnarly. Then, I got this text message about my friend from my friend’s husband, that he’s on life support. That was tough. I remember being there on the Tuesday, and I only told the producer. I was just like, “I have a job to do, so I’m just gonna do it.”
I wasn’t like, “I’m gonna do this for Mike!” But it was one of those things where it was hard, but I had to keep it pushing. So that was the thing – losing a friend that was very dear to me, without being able to talk to people. I didn’t have the time to talk to my friend, my support network, about it. That was hard. But, the movie is about life and death. So you just double down on being present with the people who are here.
You mentioned different responses to the movie. How has the film festival journey been as a whole, as far as reactions and experience?
Evelyna: The girls that get it, get it! [Laughs] Which is okay. We’ve only just started. Atlanta is the first one after SXSW, and then we’re at the American Black Film Festival and a couple of others. We’re still waiting to hear back about a couple in Europe, which are really exciting.
The response has been very warm, and then also there are people where I will read their critique, and I’m like, “Maybe it wasn’t for you!” But it’s not mean, per se. I’d like to say this movie opened to rave reviews, but it kind of didn’t. And that’s kind of okay, because I always knew, like with a lot of my work, that once I find my audience, I find them, and it sticks. And then a woman who I’ve never met brings me a painting at the screening! You know what I mean? It really stuck and resonated with her. I’ve got like, I want to say 10 messages from audience members via Instagram that were like, “I needed to see this today. This was so refreshing, I had to have the same conversation with one of my friends once upon a time.”
It doesn’t feel nice when people don’t automatically love your movie. But I don’t know, you just be an adult about it. Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I’m like, “Oh man. I made a bad movie.” And then sometimes I’m like, “Well, this one person really got it, so maybe I should keep going.” I’m just a human being, after all.
