Marjan Neshat is a member of The Actors Center Workshop Company. She graduated from SUNY Purchase about ten years ago and she has been working steadily ever since. It would be incorrect to say that she has been making a comfortable living but she has been able to do exemplary work in some wonderful productions while making inroads into mainstream film and TV. From Masha in CSC’s “The Seagull” to “Sexual Perversity in Chicago” at ACT to “Sex and the City 2” to an ABC pilot to the requisite “Law and Order”(s) she most definitely has a career.
Marjan is a beautiful young woman who radiates preternatural calm and seemed to welcome a chance to talk about her life in art as she settled back into Michael Miller’s comfortable couch.
MICHAEL: You left school ten years ago?
MARJAN: Sadly true.
MICHAEL: What do you mean by that?
MARJAN: I just think that if I knew then what I know now, there are a lot of things I would have done differently.
MICHAEL: You think I don’t feel the same thing?
MARJAN: I know it’s human nature.
MICHAEL: Are you talking about the casting director who asked you why you hadn’t changed your name?
MARJAN: No, that wasn’t a casting director. Let’s work up to that.
MICHAEL: OK Talk about yourself a little bit. Let our readers get to know you.
MARJAN: You know, I think that I went to school thinking that I would come out and… I guess I hadn’t done any research about the business of acting. And I somehow was living in a long ago time when the Lunts existed and I thought I’d join this crazy troupe that wasn’t there anymore. And I wonder, if it had been, if I would have been let in. I left Seattle to come to school here because I thought Seattle was extremely segregated in their way of casting. Every time they brought people in to audition, I was not of interest to them. They either went very, very white or they were very specifically, say, black. There was not a lot of mixture.
MICHAEL: Are you taking about The Rep?
MARJAN: I’m talking about most Seattle theatres, in my experience. And when I came to New York, not just as an artist but as a person just walking down the street, it was the first time I felt comfortable. It’s like I was home. So when I graduated from school I never had this idea of changing my name. I mean, it has come up a lot since. There’s definitely a lot of things that would have been more open to me had I done that.
And I think that had I known what I know now, I would have found a small theatre company to grow in, maybe gone to Oregon Shakespeare Festival for a year. Because it quickly became clear to me that if you’re young and you’re pretty in the New York or LA market, everyone will take you and instantly try to put you in every TV show. You kind of lose your bearings. For me, I found some downtown theatre companies and I did some work and that’s what saved me. I think I survived by not going to LA. I think if I’d done that, I probably wouldn’t be an actor anymore.
It’s not my skill to make bad writing good. And I think if I’d gone to LA I would have found my way in to playing “brunette girl”. I don’t think I would have had the wherewithal to stand up and say this is not good. Working with friends, I found the things that I cared about and found a way to survive. I found a sense of myself.
Working with the Russian director Slava Dolgachev in “The Seagull”, that was the first time since I’ve gotten out of school I felt like, oh, this is what I’ve always wanted.
MICHAEL: So what were those steps you took that helped you find yourself?
MARJAN: Before I got my Equity card, I met some people who just wanted to make theatre. I did anything from “No Exit” to a lot of new plays we were developing, and I felt I was able to just work. It wasn’t instantly about money. I stayed there because I thought I was learning. After that, I did my first off-Broadway play and that changed a lot. I met this director and film-maker who was also inspired to make things. He got a bunch of us together and we rehearsed for months. I’ve now made three films with him. But I had to reach out and find these people, I had to seek them out and volunteer my soul. If I hadn’t found people like that, I think I might have fallen apart.
When the other stuff came, I think I was ready. I know everyone has their own path. I feel like there are people who are so much more even keeled and they treat every job as that, a job. But for me, I’ve always been so much better at the things that I loved. I need it to be mine. There are certain things that you absolutely love and they are absolutely yours. You know when something is yours.
MICHAEL: Did you feel like that in “Seagull”?
MARJAN: I really wanted to play Nina in that production, but was asked to play Masha. I then fell in love with Masha when I realized my Masha secretly wished she was Nina.
MICHAEL: That’s a perfect characterization of that role. It seems to me, in your first ten years out of school, you’ve accomplished an enormous amount.
MARJAN: I’m glad you feel that way.
MICHAEL: You don’t?
MARJAN: I don’t know if anyone ever does. I think about years that have gone by where I haven’t done a play. I feel like there’s only a handful of people who get to go from job to job. There are people who get to do a lot of theatre for, like, a dollar and they don’t have any money and there are people who have done three commercials and they have money but they are so depressed because they haven’t worked. It’s very tricky. It doesn’t feel like it should be like this. You can’t pick up and move to Russia. Or Poland, or France. But it’s not set up here so that people can do their best work.
MICHAEL: So why, when a casting director suggested to you that you change your name, did it hurt you so much?
MARJAN: No, it wasn’t a casting director. I think it’s an honest issue. I went to LA in 2010 to do a pilot. Barry Sonnenfeld directed it. So there was some momentum. People gave me scripts to read and asked me to tell them what I really responded to. And 90% of what I responded to, I was told “they’re not going diverse with that role.” And I thought, what does that mean? They would say to me, “well, you look like you could be so and so’s daughter but your name puts you in a certain category.” I feel like that is the reality and it closes a lot of doors. It’s not that it’s a personal affront. It just hurts my opportunities to say, this is what I’m good at. Yes, I can play the terrorist’s wife. I could do it in my sleep and I’ve done that to pay my rent. But it is not anything that I’m interested in as an artist to explore.
MICHAEL: I could have sworn you said to me that a casting director said you should have changed your name.
MARJAN: Oh! That was a commercial casting director who did say that to me when I was like two years out of a school. It was a commercial for the Olive Garden. He said, if you’d changed your name, I could have sold you to the client because you’re perfect in every other way. You think about that and it’s sad but it is a reality. I have had friends who have changed their names and it does broaden what they get to play. If you’re not allowed to do the roles that will showcase what you think you’re really best at because they aren’t going diverse, then how do you get to present what you’re best at?
MICHAEL: Why would anyone really need to change their name to do commercial? There are no credits; they don’t list actors’ names.
MARJAN: I think it speaks to the very nature of the business. They are selling an image or a dream so they are trying to make it as dreamy as possible. I think with different ethnicities, it’s like trying not to be a second class citizen. You just try to be seen for things you think you’re right for. But they save you for the terrorist because they could get a million people to play the lawyer. I don’t begrudge them that. They are trying to put the pieces of a puzzle together. I know if I say I don’t want to play this role, they can get a million other people to play it. And at the same time, there is something deeply offensive in that. Like to your ancestors. But do you play those parts or do you refuse and not have any medical insurance?
I have a friend (who is ethnic) who was just nominated for a Tony and now he is being seen for his merit. He was on Charlie Rose and he said, “I have to stop playing those roles because I have two daughters and I would be really unhappy if that’s all they ever saw their dad do was terrorists.”
MICHAEL: What are we going to do about it?
MARJAN: I think a large part of it would be to learn the business that you are going into. You have a better chance of finding your place in this business if you know the ramifications of the business side. I never did when I was in school. I don’t think I’m an idiot but I was an actor. I didn’t see this as a business, an industry.
I think it comes down to having to do it yourself. If you’re going to stay in the theatre, you have to make your own work and make your own companies.
MICHAEL: So I now I have to ask, what is your ethnicity? Knowing you all these years, it never once occurred to me to ask.
MARJAN: I’m Iranian. And a little bit Russian.
MICHAEL: And is there anything in your cultural upbringing that makes you different?
MARJAN: I think that when you’re from a very particular culture that is contained in one country, I feel like there is a temperature to that culture because so much of that place is built on unrequited feeling. And even though I haven’t lived there since I was eight, I know the temperature of those people.
MICHAEL: And with that, I thank you for speaking so openly and frankly about a very real issue in our “business.”