Niousha Noor (‘The Persian Version’) discusses the ‘honor to show the strength of a mother’ and an Iranian immigrant [Exclusive Video Interview]

“As an Iranian-American actor, we don’t get a lot of scripts centering on the Iranian-American experience,” explains Niousha Noor about what immediately appealed to her about the screenplay of “The Persian Version.” The performer says the film – written and directed by Maryam Keshavarz — shines “a good light on Iranians, just as we know our families, our mothers, and all the sacrifices they made… I just loved the fact that it was a family drama, or dramedy, and didn’t have to do with the the typical things we’re used to when we hear ‘Iran’.” Watch our exclusive video interview above.

Noor plays Shireen in the film, the mother of the protagonist Leila (Layla Mohammadi), whose life story of challenges and triumphs plays out as Leila learns about a “scandal” from her mother’s past. The actress spoke with Keshavarz’s “inspiring” mother, on whom Shireen is based, and says she admires her “drive and her resilience and strength.” She shares that it was because of her own mother’s “resilience that we stayed here and survived the hardship,” adding, “That was such a beautiful and important thing for me to highlight, and it was such an honor to show the strength of a mother, and being an immigrant, and an Iranian.”

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When we first meet Shireen on screen, she and Leila are in a particularly challenging moment in their relationship. Noor reveals that the schedule of the film shoot helped facilitate that dynamic because, “In the beginning, we didn’t have a lot of scenes together… without saying it to each other, we used that distance and that space” to create their two characters’ feeling of disconnection. She describes Mohammadi as “such a brilliant, gifted actress.”

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“I didn’t mind her not being likable, but I just wanted to have her motor running,” shares Noor about how she wanted the scenes in which Shireen is harsh with her daughter to come across to audiences, especially in an early one in which she kicks Leila out of a Thanksgiving dinner for bringing her girlfriend. While Shireen “has her own flaws and limitations,” the actress played the scene with an understanding of the “sacrifices” she made that her daughter does not understand.

Leila and the audience both come to understand those sacrifices gradually over the course of the film. Throughout the present-tense, in which Shireen’s husband undergoes and recovers from a heart transplant, the audience learns more about her life through flashbacks to 80s and 90s, while Leila hears the story about her mother’s adolescence and why she and her husband immigrated to the United States. To keep Shireen’s character arc and emotional state clear throughout production, Noor “had to extract the present timeline, the 80s, the 90s, and put it in order” on a piece of paper that she often referred to during the shoot. She especially applauds the performance of actress Kamand Shafieisabet, who played young Shireen, sharing, “I was blown away. I cried so much at the hospital scene.”

“The Persian Version” premiered at Sundance in January 2023, which marked the first time Noor saw the completed film. After viewing the movie with an audience, she admits she “was not expecting the kind of response that it got; we got a standing ovation.” The performer explains that she was “crying hysterically” because “it was just such a beautiful moment to see so many people from all walks of life… being able to relate to this mother-daughter experience.” The final sequence of the film — which features Noor performing a cover of Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want To Have Fun” — came together “so fast before Sundance.” She describes recording the song as “definitely one of the highlights” of her experience.

“The Persian Version” is available on demand beginning December 5.

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