This Friday, Angela Sarafyan can be seen in The Promise, a love story set during the Armenian Genocide on the Ottoman front during the first World War. Much like her role as Clementine in HBO’s Westworld, Sarafyan isn’t playing one of the leads, which include Oscar Isaac as Armenian medical student Mikhail Pogosian, Christian Bale as an American reporter trying to expose the genocide, and Charlotte Le Bon as his wife. But Sarafyan, whose parents came from Yerevan to LA when she was four, is the most recognizably Armenian of the cast, which is presumably why the producers have her out doing press. It would be hard to separate promotion from politics in The Promise, and its backers aren’t pretending to.
This makes it a little hard for an interviewer. We see a movie and naturally want to engage with the ideas presented. But should we treat an actor as ambassador for those ideas? Sarafyan certainly seems to be being put forth as one. The Promise is reportedly one of the most expensive independently financed movies ever made, with most of the money put up by Kirk Kerkorian, an Armenian businessman who at one point owned MGM. Kerkorian financed The Promise through his Survival Pictures, and the film reportedly cost close to $100 million to make before tax breaks. That the subject matter was close to his heart is clearly a big part of why he went to such lengths to get it made.
Kerkorian died in 2015 before the film was completed, and The Promise initially struggled to find a distributor before landing with Open Road Films. A Variety piece from October pointed at the Armenian Genocide-themed subject matter as one of the main sticking points. The film’s producers have implied that business interests in Turkey and a well-organized denialist lobby have made their work that much more difficult.
“I’ll just say that there are some studios that have business interests in Turkey, and you can form your own opinion,” says [producer Eric] Esrailian.
There were no public protests at the Toronto premiere, but there is already evidence of a propaganda campaign to discredit “The Promise.” The film’s IMDb page has received more than 86,000 user votes, the bulk of them one-star ratings, despite the fact that the movie has had only three public screenings. That’s more user reviews than appear for “Finding Dory,” the highest-grossing film of the year. The filmmakers say reaction on social platforms has been equally intense.
“The day after we screened the movie, 70,000 people went on IMDb and said they didn’t like the movie,” says Mike Medavoy, one of the film’s producers. “There’s no way that many people saw the movie after one screening. There aren’t that many seats in the theater.” [Variety]
Genocide recognition is baked into the promotional tour for The Promise, whose final title card notes that Turkey has never acknowledged it. While Sarafyan doesn’t have an especially big part in the film, she is the cast’s most visible representative of the Armenian diaspora (what with the patronymic name — the “ian/yan” suffix originally meant “son of’), a group to whom The Promise is now being overtly marketed. (Cher — née Cher Sarkisian — attended the LA premiere, as did, ugh, Kim Kardashian, who left early.)
At the risk of stating the obvious, it’s a complicated issue. Armenians in the US have long lobbied the US government to pressure Turkey into recognizing their country’s part in the genocide, in which the Ottomans killed upwards of 1.5 million ethnic Armenian Christians between 1915 and about 1923. Denialist arguments out of Turkey have included that the casualty numbers are inflated, that the killings were spontaneous events and not official government policy, that Armenians sided with Ottoman enemy Russia and were thus enemy combatants, etc. Historians not in Turkey’s employ largely dismiss those counter arguments, but the US government has been reticent to press Turkey about it to avoid alienating a NATO member and Middle East partner who has allowed the US repeated use of its airspace. Barack Obama’s position seems representative of the US’s delicate balancing act, supporting recognition to appease the large Armenian-American population in the US while he was a Senator, and then retreating to avoid alienating Turkey once he was president.
With a film raising the issue once again, the obvious question becomes, is official recognition of an event that happened 100 years ago worth losing a strategic partner over? From the US government’s perspective, the answer has clearly been no. And then there’s the more philosophical question of whether it matters that a perpetrator acknowledge his own guilt if everyone else in the room already agrees that he’s guilty (an oversimplification in this analogy, even aside from the question of whether it’s fair to assign nation states personhood). Many would argue Germany having to come to terms with their Holocaust guilt was key to its growth, and these days they often seem like Europe’s last bulwark against fascism. On the other hand, if you ask my 99-year-old grandfather about recognition of the Armenian Genocide, which his own parents fled when they came to the US, he usually shrugs and says something like “History is history.”
Neither position seems invalid. I’m not a professional historian, but having read a few books on the subject recently (The Vanquished, They Can Live In The Desert But Nowhere Else, The Hundred Year Walk, 1453) I wonder if the problem isn’t entirely denialism but partly of context. The “brutal Turk” has been a Western stereotype since the fall of Christian Constantinople in the 1400s, but it’d be hard to argue that the Ottomans were any more brutal or ruthless than Christians of the time. In fact, part of the reason that the Ottoman Empire was such a polyglot of Muslims, Jews, and Eastern Christians at the time of the genocide in the first place is that it was initially much more tolerant of religious minorities than Christian Europe — who’d had plenty of smaller-scale expulsions and exterminations of their own. So even if Turkey’s claims (now and historically) that the genocide wasn’t an organized campaign of extermination are mostly bogus, it’s also possible to see how a focus on that genocide could buttress an age-old, unfair stereotype of the Turk as bloodthirsty savage.
There’s a truth in the Armenian Genocide that Turkey is trying to ignore, but also perhaps a larger truth that all of us are trying to ignore: that maybe genocide isn’t so anomalous. That maybe trying to wipe out some feared “other” is much closer to the norm throughout human history than we give it credit for. There were a whole lot of ethnic massacres in the first half of the 20th century and, while perhaps less organized, there isn’t really a shortage of them now.
As a sweeping, Gone With The Wind-esque tale of love and loss set against the backdrop of the Armenian Genocide, The Promise doesn’t do a great job contextualizing that genocide (or cover any of the Armenians’ retributive massacres against Muslim civilians) . Of course, it’s also fair to ask whether it needs to. There have been a million movies about the Jewish Holocaust during WWII and we never ask if they’re being fair enough to the Nazis.
All of which is to say, it was a lot to have on my mind when I was about to interview an actress about a movie she didn’t write. But if Sarafyan was at all uncomfortable with her role as visibly Armenian-American representative of an Armenian-themed movie that she only had a small part in, it didn’t show. She was as prepared to discuss politics as she was to discuss herself, and didn’t seem like she was out of her element doing so. Career-wise she seems to be having a moment, or at least is on the verge of one, and if our interview is any indication, she’ll be prepared.
Tell me about your background, where did you grow up? How did you get into acting?
I grew up in LA. I kind of grew up in the arts, sort of. I played classical piano and I danced ballet and I was singing in a choir and I did theater. So I had all these other art forms but I knew fairly early on that I loved to act and so it was the natural kind of thing for me to do. I loved telling stories so it was the right choice. Even though it’s not the most stable career it was just the thing that I loved the most.
What was your first big role?
It’s really funny: I had one audition, I’d gone in for a music video for Céline Dion and they were shooting it like a short film. Which never came out because of reasons that she was unhappy with how she looked, I was told. But I’d gone in and they simply told [me it was about] a mother and daughter having some kind of argument about something, and I had never fought with my mom but we definitely had moments of disagreements, so it was an opportunity to express myself. And I got this job and got to shoot on the Universal lot for four or five days and it was a really beautiful short film, it was directed by Paul Hunter. That was the first job and then it kind of continued on from there.
At what point did it start feeling realistic as a career?
Well, after I graduated high school I just knew that I really had to do it. The complications were finding an agent and I’d gone through so many different agencies because I’d get with one company, they’d turn into a management company and then somehow the management company would disappear and then I’d find another agent and I’d just constantly move, even went all the way up to William Morris at the time. So, I had found the right agency eventually but in the meantime I’d get an audition once a month, or once every, I don’t know, several months, and the fortunate part was I’d actually book the jobs. So then I just knew. This year I did two jobs and I was lucky enough to find an agent that I love working with, who I’m still with now and I recently got a manager so it kind of became real… I don’t know. It’s so unpredictable, you never know when it’s real.
So your parents are from Armenia. Have you been there at all since they emigrated? [The Promise was shot in different parts of Europe, mostly in Spain.]
Yeah, I went back for the first time about five years ago and I realized that I’m really very much a girl from Los Angeles because there was such a difference.
What did you like the most about it?
I loved the countryside, I loved kind of nature and the flowers and the cows and the people that lived in the villages because there was so much honesty there and less pretense and I think… See, I was born in Armenia, so most of my dreams were those fields of flowers and they were endless. And actually here in Sonoma there are some parts that kind of remind me of that, and so to see that again was kind of amazing.
When you say that you discovered that you’re an LA girl, what felt disconnected? What made you think that when you were there?
It’s kind of like this idea of “This is what a man does and this is what a woman does.” This is how you’re supposed to behave because you’re a woman. There were a lot of women wearing tight pants and tight shirts and high heels kind of displaying their beauty to be seen by a wealthy man. Those elements kind of upset me because I like to wear… If you see me on a regular day I wear glasses and just boots and whatever pants I have, I don’t function in a way where I’m a prize to be had. I like to create my own and have my own identity, Maybe I’m wrong, I’m not saying it’s that way everywhere, but that’s what I witnessed and so I didn’t really fit in.
Your parents came to the US when you were four. What made them come over at the time?
My mother’s mother was here and before my mom met my dad, she was supposed to come out to LA and the whole family had immigrated but my dad loved the American culture, he loved the American cars like the Chevrolet, Mustangs and all that. It just seemed like the most natural, real place to go and LA was it, so they moved here.
Okay, so political question: If the rest of the word recognizes the Armenian genocide as a genocide, is it still important for the Turkish government to recognize it?
Well the rest of the world doesn’t recognize it. A lot of countries do but not everyone, I think if Turkey does recognize the Armenian Genocide, I think there’s a lot of different elements that fall into that because even when the film was made and I don’t know what that land is like now but it’s not Turkey, that is Armenian land. The village is Armenian, it’s not Turkey, so Turks and Armenians and Kurds and Greeks, all kinds of people lived there. But that is Armenian land and I think that’s a very controversial thing. There’s so many reasons for that and I don’t think that all Turks deny the Armenian Genocide, there are many people that do accept it but the country itself and even America doesn’t recognize the Armenian Genocide because it is so controversial.
Do you think this movie pushes that cause forward?
I think so. I think some of the people I met today, that interviewed me, some of the journalists weren’t aware of what the Armenian Genocide was and so I think that’s what the film does. It brings awareness to what happened 100 years ago.
Do you think that recognizing the genocide… Do you think that’s more important for Armenians abroad or do you think it’s more important for Armenians in Armenia or is there a difference at all?
I think it’s all the same. I think if you’re an Armenian here, there, or anywhere you would want this. So I think not only is that important but the denial of genocide, even today with what’s happening across the country, across other lands we get to have this conversation with people who are in war and so if denial happens at any point that means you’re giving that much more power. And that’s the whole point that you don’t want that to exist because it had its effects. The Armenian Genocide affected my family directly, so yeah: I’m thinking about it. You know Germany, Hitler couldn’t say that he wasn’t killing all the Jews, he was. It was killing off a people. And so to deny that would be absolutely ridiculous and so I guess that… You want justice when it comes to this matter.
Did you have a lot of Armenian friends growing up, was that an identity that was important to you growing up?
I grew up more in the arts. I had some Armenian friends but the connection was mostly through art.
Do you have a favorite Armenian food?
I do it’s called dolma–
Oh yeah.
You know it?
I do, yeah, my grandfather’s Armenian.
Yeah, so then you know it well. So I love dolma and I love kofta which is … You know what that is as well. [It’s meatballs.]
Do you have a favorite Armenian restaurant in LA?
I don’t actually. I don’t think anybody makes great food the way my grandma did so I’m very biased when it comes to that, although there’s some stores now that make some of those old dishes, they literally sell them — like borscht for example, they’ll sell a whole thing of borscht and you could just go buy it for five dollars.
Do you think you’re now the most famous Armenian actress behind Cher?
I don’t know, I have no idea.
I was Googling it and your picture came up second so I’m pretty sure.
I guess Armenians don’t really become actors. You know what I mean? They don’t … That’s not an active thing.
Why is that? Do you think there’s a reason behind that?
Yeah, we were talking about it earlier. I think … I don’t know what you would think about this, but mostly the parents want their kids to become doctors and lawyers and business men and they want some kind of stability and respect and a little bit of power so those are the things that are encouraged. What do you think?
It sounds like a fairly common second-generation immigrant thing in general, right?
Yeah, yeah I guess you’re right. I don’t know.
What do you think about Oscar Isaac playing an Armenian in this movie?
Have you seen the movie?
I was trying to finish it before this call, I got like half, two thirds of the way through.
What do you think about it?
I mean, I’m never gonna complain about Oscar Isaac in a movie.
Yeah, I would agree. I think he does the best job playing an Armenian in this movie, from everyone that’s playing an Armenian besides me obviously. I’m being totally biased but I really think he does it justice and you should see the end because he’s older at the end and he does this incredible impression… yeah, he sells me.
So you’re probably best known for Westworld at this point. You guys seemed so believable playing artificial intelligence that I’d sometimes kind of forget that you were actors. How did you approach that? How was that explained to you when you guys were preparing for that?
I watched Blade Runner. I watched the old Westworld first and foremost, looked at the book, I saw the second movie called Futureworld, did you know there was a second one?
Yeah. [I did not but I did not want to sound stupid].
And I looked at actual androids on YouTube to kind of see what the movements were like. And then besides that, there’s something very poetic and Shakespearian [about the scripts], like you actually see lines from Shakespeare or Gertrude Stein and it’s so well written that you just have to kind of commit to the story and it’ll take you for a ride, like if you were doing Shakespeare. And so I felt very lucky because when you’re an actor that gets to work on great material, it’s gonna protect you. It’s usually the bad scripts that you have to be cautious of because those require a lot of work in order to make them really believable.
I mean, speaking of that, on Westworld you got to work with Anthony Hopkins and Jeffrey Wright and in this one you got Christian Bale and Oscar Isaac. Is that all luck getting to work with that many Oscar nominees and stuff or are you doing a really good job of picking projects?
I think it’s a combination, I think I follow my instincts when it comes to picking projects. I like to… The story has to have a very big effect on me, I have to connect to it. If I believe I can’t offer anything then I don’t want to work on it, now granted if it’s Oscar Isaac or Anthony Hopkins of Jeffrey Wright, I want to work with them.
Are you at the level where you can be a little choosy or are you still sort of trying to get yourself out there?
I’ve always been very choosy regardless of where I was in my career. I think I didn’t ever work on anything where I felt that I couldn’t offer something. I was always, always particular, but I’m not at the place where my favorite films are being given to me, I have to go out and audition and fight for them. So I’m in this kind of different place but at the same time they’re not giving it to me on a silver plate. I wish they would…