Joseph Marcell is helping to bring a very emotional film to life with Seahorse, though the team behind it wants to assure it’s not exclusively a sad journey.
Hailing from Aisha Evelyna in her feature directorial debut, the SXSW release centers on Nola — also played by Evelyna — a sous chef whose life is in a spiral as she finds herself in the midst of a mental health crisis and her life destabilizing. Everything begins to change when, after a particularly difficult shift, she crashes her bike and is found by her estranged father, Cyrus, now unhoused. Reluctantly taking him in, they find themselves forced to confront the demons of their past if they hope to grow.
Alongside Evelyna and Marcell — who is on the heels of making his Fresh Prince return with Peacock’s Bel-Air reboot and the success of Netflix’s Thursday Murder Club adaptation, the Seahorse cast also includes Private Eyes alums Ruth Goodwin and Brett Donahue, as well as The Expanse‘s Alden Adair. The Canadian drama made its world premiere at SXSW on March 13 as part of the Narrative Feature Competition and was acquired by Mongrel Media for Canadian release ahead of its showing.
In honor of its festival debut, ScreenRant‘s Ash Crossan interviewed Aisha Evelyna, Ruth Goodwin, Brett Donahue, and Joseph Marcell in our SXSW media suite to discuss Seahorse. When asked about the movie’s backstory, Evelyna began by pointing to her life in Toronto as helping give her the inspiration for the drama, as the Ontario capital is “embroiled in a housing crisis,” and the writer/director/star often sees people who “are all deserving of food and housing,” but are having “a really difficult time having access to that.
Evelyna further acknowledged that she has “a weird relationship with my dad” in real life, further helping inspire the estranged relationship between her and Marcell’s characters, explaining that while “none of it happened [for real], it’s all kind of true.” However, even with the film’s heavier subject material, the filmmaker wants to assure potential viewers that Seahorse is just as rewarding an experience as an emotional one:
Aisha Evelyna: To be honest, anytime I’d see an older, unhoused man — because I hadn’t seen my father in a long time, and I knew he was living with some housing party — that kind of fit the bill, my stomach would drop, and be like, “Is that you?” So it kind of comes from this place of inquiry of like, “Where is this person who is my kin?” And I do believe that life is precious, and we were talking in a previous interview about how precious children are, and they’re just perfect and whole, and then life happens. So yeah, I kind of just came from trying to hold space for a person who I ba—–ized, let’s say, and it’s just like, “Well, we’re just people trying to do our best, and life gets in the way, and if we’re not supported sometimes you fall through the cracks.” And so that was kind of where the story came from. But go see Seahorse, please and thank you. It’s not dark. It’s actually really healing. So go feel your feelings, and then hit me up on the internet because I will respond to you.
Evelyna Had A Unique Way To Recruit Marcell For Seahorse
ScreenRant: Did you premiere yesterday? What was it like watching with an audience?
Aisha Evelyna: I’m going to throw it to the rest of our lovely cast because to be honest, I have seen it too many times to know what it feels like if that makes sense. But they saw it for the first time. So Ruth and Brett, if you want to weigh in feel free.
Ruth Goodwin: It was awesome. We had not seen it and shot it a while ago and you kind of just know your own track really well. So yeah, just watching the slow burn of this film and the inner workings of Aisha’s beautiful mind was so special and I had big-time tears and laughs.
Brett Donahue: It’s such a weird thing having the experience of doing it and then watching but to see it on the big screen with professional projectors and sound and then being able to appreciate everybody’s work that you’re so not focused on doing and have everyone there — there’s a big group of us that came down to the festival to celebrate it. So it’s just a wonderful moment.
Aisha Evelyna: And Joseph has yet to see it.
Joseph Marcell: Yeah, I haven’t seen it. And it’s not because of arrogance or anything like that. It’s because I was on an airplane coming and there was an event and we had to turn back. But I’m here now.
ScreenRant: There are a lot of people you know them as like certain beloved characters and I would say you definitely have one of those. But when they play a character that’s the complete opposite of what you’re expecting it’s very interesting to me. So I’m just curious what your casting process was especially with a legend like [points to Joseph Marcell] over here.
Aisha Evelyna: I would say for independent filmmakers this is my first feature and I’m not trying to posture and be like well “I had my people call his people.” That’s not the way it went. I think for a lot of people it feels far away but it was a kindly worded email. I do believe Joseph used the term “poem,” which is like Homer’s Odyssey.
Joseph Marcell: But I qualified that and said it was a two-pager.
Aisha Evelyna: So just a kindly worded email as to why I thought that Joseph was the right person for the role and also just being very transparent. I was like “We’re a small indie production in Toronto but you’re going to have a great time with a bunch of Canadians who love you.” And then for Ruth she’s a long-time pal I made one of my first shorts after she cast me in her play. And then with Brett I thought we did [something] together 10 or 15 years ago. But again just community knowing each other just being in the space. And they said yes to me. Thank you.
Ruth Goodwin: You’re very hard to say no to.
ScreenRant: What stuck out to you about the email?
Joseph Marcell: Ahh the email. Firstly it was wonderfully flattering. Usually you have to go into a room put something on tape send it and you don’t know who you’re sending it to or how they will react to it. But this was an open and very honest letter and I was touched and very flattered. And so we Zoomed and we discovered that we actually quite liked each other.
Aisha Evelyna: I’m obsessed with you.
Joseph Marcell: I just wanted her to say it. And yeah it worked and we worked from there. I had some concerns about accents and things like that but we ironed that out. And I have to say it really was an absolute pleasure. Those 10 or 12 days that I spent in Toronto working on it were purely magical. They really were. And she Aisha is a force to be reckoned with. I mean she really is.
ScreenRant: And what did you both connect with about the story? What do you hope the conversation is that people have when they walk out of the theater?
Ruth Goodwin: Aisha’s mind is so beautifully represented in this piece and I play her best friend and I really felt that the way this movie goes takes you on a journey on the sea of flashbacks present fears and dreams. I just related to walking through the world in that way myself looking for these anchors to try to pull me out of my own head in friendship community parents. All those things how they kind of help and hinder at the same time. I think Aisha has painted a really beautiful picture: a human experience I’m very familiar with.
Brett Donahue: For me I’m not a parent myself but the difficulties of parenthood when I was a child looking at my parents navigate our lives it just seemed like they were coming from a place of knowing understanding having a concrete kind of idea of how life works. But as I age myself see my parents my friends who are parents everything they are just figuring it out like anybody else. They have no idea. And to see how that can then come to a situation of one being estranged from a parent to an extreme being so separate from a parent or having such trouble doing it that it would result in a relationship just being severed in such a way. It just makes me have such empathy for people that are just trying to raise kids then also kids that are trying to take care of their parents care generally.
Seahorse made its world premiere at SXSW on March 13 and is currently awaiting a Canadian release date!
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Be sure to dive into some of ScreenRant‘s other SXSW coverage with:
- The Sun Never Sets Review
- The Fox Review
- I Love Boosters Review
- Dead Eyes Review
- One Another Review
- Kill Me Review
- Ready or Not 2: Here I Come Review
- The Saviors Review
- Family Movie Review
- Power Ballad Review
- Seekers of Infinite Love Review
- Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice Review
- Over Your Dead Body Review
- Sender Review
- Normal Review
- Brian Review
- Dakota Fanning reacting to All Her Fault‘s record-breaking success
