On Tuesday, June 6th, writer/director Natasha Kermani’s science fiction-fueled exploration of identity, Imitation Girl, will celebrate its Los Angeles premiere at the 2017 Dances With Film festival being held at the Chinese Theaters in Los Angeles. To mark the occasion, Daily Dead had the chance to speak with Kermani about collaborating with Imitation Girl star Lauren Ashley Carter (Darling, The Mind’s Eye, Pod), using genre elements to explore the themes of identity and humanity, and creating a film with grandeur while working within the constraints of a tight budget.

Great job on the film, Natasha. Because I saw that Lauren was starring in this, I had a feeling that I was going to enjoy it. And I was so glad that it lived up to that expectation for me, because I just fell in love with the story. And Lauren’s great, too, so congratulations again.

Natasha Kermani: Thank you so much, that really means a lot to me. And those parts were actually written for her, so she fit right in. She just was totally up for the challenge. The whole story, the whole film really, was built around Lauren, and what I knew she could do, because I had been working with her for a while, so I knew where she could push and where she could stretch, and fill in these holes in the characters in these really beautiful ways.

What's interesting to me about this story are the ideas behind it all, with some of these things that you explore through both Julianna and the imitation version of her. We're in a weird place in our society right now in terms of how women are perceived. It's interesting because there are these two different worlds that you present, and two different characters which are reflective of that dichotomy. As a woman, there's the part of you that's supposed to be strong and assertive and independent, and then there’s the part that yearns for affection and understanding. I loved how you presented these two different worlds and used them to delve into things like identity and love and finding a sense of wholeness.

Natasha Kermani: Yeah, absolutely. I'm a genre filmmaker, so my home is science fiction and the world of magical realism and fantasy and coloring outside of the lines. So, I always knew that I wanted to tell this story using magical realism, and the issue of identity has just always been—I don't want to say a trigger point—a jumping-off point for a lot of artists, for a long time. And maybe this is going to sound really weird, but there’s this fact that you don't recognize your own face in the mirror, you know?

So, there’s this idea of how I'm presenting to the world, and then that is totally in conflict with how you see yourself, so there's always this split between us. Inside of each of us, we're grappling with all these personalities. I wanted to bring in that idea and actuate in that way where Lauren represents two halves of one identity.

She's meant to be this kind of Gemini figure that is two halves of one whole, and how are these parts in opposition of one another? How are they working together? How do they compliment each other? And then the whole thing took off from there.

Also, I just love Lauren as an actor. I was sitting one day and I was kind of playing with these two storylines of these two characters, and I was just like, “Man, they should just be in the same movie.” And I knew Lauren could do it, I knew she could play against herself, so that's kind of where that came from.

But identity is definitely something that we really have to worry about as women. Growing up, my mom is a performance artist, so she always used to say, "Makeup is our armor," which is so crazy. That’s something that has always been really interesting to me.

For an independent movie, this is really ambitious in terms of the scope, and I love that you really went for it, because a lot of filmmakers would have shied away from trying to do some of the things you did. Was it conscientious to you that you were breaking some rules, in terms of the constraints of your budget and things like that?

Natasha Kermani: We didn't set out specifically to break any rules, but it was more about, "How can we make ourselves feel bigger than we are?" I had an incredible team, and everything we did just always felt like quadruple what the actual budget was. I think for us, it was simple as saying, "This is the sense of grandeur that we need. This is the intimacy that we need. Now, how do we go out and actually do it?”

And because we are an independent film, that comes with a lot of creative freedom. So, with my producers, and our talent and our cinematographer, we're basically able to go and say, "What do we need to do to tell this story the right way?" We found a home in New Mexico for the parts of the film we needed to shoot there, and we're based in New York, so the New York City stuff was pretty easy for us to just fall into. Sometimes you have to really take advantage of those relationships that you have as a local.

I also think it’s important not to limit yourself and your vision—that is really, very important, and that’s how we approached it from the beginning, which is why we were able to get such incredible moments and vision on a tight budget.

Now, speaking of Lauren, you mentioned that you'd written this specifically for her. What was it that you had seen in her previously that you just knew she was going to be perfect for the project?

Natasha Kermani: Well, Lauren and I had actually been working together for about a year before this project came to fruition, so I had an idea of how she works. We had actually worked on a comedy series, of all things, together. But, yeah, I think Lauren has this silent movie star quality to her face that is so expressive and so filmic, and when you see her face in front of the camera, it's just so inspiring.

And then, the challenge here is, "How do you have this one character who is entirely defined by a desire to learn, versus a character who is shut off at every second?" So, you have these two completely different approaches, and I just thought that would be really fun for her to dig her teeth into, and she did great. She's actually also involved in my next film, too, so there's more to come.

[Photo credit: Above photo by Gabriel De Urioste.]

  • Heather Wixson
    About the Author - Heather Wixson

    Heather A. Wixson was born and raised in the Chicago suburbs, until she followed her dreams and moved to Los Angeles in 2009. A 14-year veteran in the world of horror entertainment journalism, Wixson fell in love with genre films at a very early age, and has spent more than a decade as a writer and supporter of preserving the history of horror and science fiction cinema. Throughout her career, Wixson has contributed to several notable websites, including Fangoria, Dread Central, Terror Tube, and FEARnet, and she currently serves as the Managing Editor for Daily Dead, which has been her home since 2013. She's also written for both Fangoria Magazine & ReMind Magazine, and her latest book project, Monsters, Makeup & Effects: Volume One will be released on October 20, 2021.