Crossbones - Exclusive Interview with Yasmine Al Massri

           I had the very great pleasure of chatting with Yasmine Al Massri who plays Selima on Crossbones. She was very generous with both her time and her answers, and we laughed often during the interview. Yasmine related the story of how she got the part and what drew her to it. I’m happy to say she loves the character as much as we the viewers do! The one thing that you won’t get from this account is the enthusiasm and passion that infuse Yasmine’s voice as she talks about Selima, the show, and her craft. What follows is most of our conversation – including some hints about what’s to come on the show! Q = me, Y = Yasmine.

Q: What drew you to the part of Selima?

Y: Everything. Everything. She is written in such a charming way. I like everything about her. First that she belongs to the seventeenth century. It’s fascinating for me to go back in history. I love history, especially at that time. I did some research to try to understand how an Arab Princess end up on an island at that time. So I discovered that she would have come from Al-Andalus, Arabs in Spain, and it was just fascinating all the things that I started to read about and connecting this to pirates and how she met Blackbeard and how she ended up running away with him to Santa Campana. From the first lines it was just a fairy tale, you know?

And everything else, when I started discovering her personality, I discovered a very modern way of writing that also made Neil stand out as a really great writer. He writes in a very modern way. There are no bad and good people in the show, and what I think for Selima, I think applies to the rest of the characters. There are no good or bad; there are human beings. They are deceiving, they are unpredictable, they are vulnerable at the same time. And sometimes they will surprise you, and they will be like your hero. 

It is human nature, and this is what I like. It is written in a very modern way, and this is what I like. She’s strong, serious, educated, not intimidated by men. She’s connected to her sensuality, but this is not everything about her. She has the dream. I really like her. There are many differences between me and her – I’m not her. I am not Selima, but Selima is definitely a woman that is fascinating. She’s a fascinating character to play. 

Q: What was the audition process like? I read that you sent in an audition tape – how did that work?

Y: The story is very long. We were in Jordan because we’d just had a baby, and I really needed help, so we moved to be with my husband’s mother. And I was just, really, changing diapers and feeding, that was my life. And my manager sent me Selima at two in the morning because of the time difference between the US and the Arab world. And I said, I am doing this! This is mine! I’m Selima! And I woke up the next day and I put on a dress, literally, and a crown, and I put on makeup, and I sat in my bed, and I finished reading the first episode, the Pilot, and my manager wanted me to put myself on tape, so I asked some friends to come over and put me on tape. And I made a mini-movie of my own vision of who Selima is and the story. And I sent it to my manager, and actually, the first answer was negative. I didn’t get it. And I was so sad. I was very, very sad. 

And a week later my manager called, and she said send me your audition again! And I thought Wow! Maybe the sky heard me? Praying and saying it was unfair for me not to get it, so I sent the tape again, and it was Avy Kaufman who was auditioning, who is a great casting director, and she says I love her, she’s Selima. And I had to pitch her from the road. I had to put myself on tape twice more after that one tape. I made three tapes in total, and I kept taking notes from the Network, from Avy, from my managers. And the hardest thing to put on tape for Selima, was to really get out of my shell, you know, as a mother, and show the sexual, sensual fearless side of her. I had to wake up, shake myself, and put all these things on tape and really cross fingers every night for one month. It took one month until Margaret called and told me we’d got it. And in one week, I shipped my whole life, my baby and my husband, to Puerto Rico, and it was really a dream coming true. 

Q: What was it like working in Puerto Rico?

Y: I was working in Puerto Rico on an NBC show. It was more challenging to be on the set of such a big project. It was very intimidating. Puerto Rico itself is a very beautiful country. People are very kind, very cool. They’re not complicated. They’re not stressed. The weather is great. You know, it’s an island, and they’re really very hard workers. Most of the people on set, on the production team, were from Puerto Rico, and they work very, very hard. But the challenging thing was to be on a big set like Crossbones. It’s huge, and I had never been on such a set. It’s beautiful, just to be on set every day. It took me some time to get used to it, but it’s definitely overwhelming. Really impressive.

Q: The sets are gorgeous. That must help get you in that space.

Y: Yes. 

Q: I know that you are from Lebanon and you went to school in Paris and you are a dancer and an artist. How do you balance all of those artistic outlets? Are you able to continue with dancing and your other artistic passions too?

Y: It’s very hard. Because becoming a mother was one of the things that really took me away from what I used to do. When I lived in Paris, my whole life was about my discipline. Dancing, making my own small, experimental videos, meeting with artists all the time because Paris is like a hub. Everyone is trying to live there and create. When you get married, you have to share yourself with someone else, so I already had less time for my needs for me, and with my baby it became less and less time, and Crossbones was really my first project, my first job since I became a mother. I don’t know really. I’m figuring things out day by day, but dancing is definitely my passion. It will always be, and I’m trying to figure out. I think it will come back in a way. It will come back, but I don’t know how or when. I’m still figuring it out.

Q: I was hoping we might get to see Selima doing some dancing within the show.

Y: There is a very short moment – I don’t want to give you any spoilers! – where she is doing something... physical! 

Q: How would you compare working on a tv series, though Crossbones isn’t a traditional tv series, with the movies, like Caramel and Pomegranates and Myrrh that you have done? 

Y: Well, these movies are very small. They are shot with very small budgets, and the drive behind making these movies is believing that you are being ambassadors for a very noble human cause. Believing in this makes you go through all the challenges, working for hours, not sleeping, not having any comfortable place. If you came to these sets, you would be shocked. Most of them are not really sets. You shoot with what is available around you, and you’re just trying to get out a story that urgently needs to be told to the world. It’s more about the people who believe in these stories, and the Arab world now is socially going through a lot of changes, but the new generation really believes in art and cinema because it allows us to have a place where we can express ourselves with no censorship. Most of the young people now are fascinated with writing their own scripts and making movies about the Arab world. You will see a lot of movies coming out of the region now like Caramel, like Pomegranates and Myrrh, that are shot with really nothing in terms of budget and have a few technicians who come from Europe because Europe does co-produce a lot of international world cinema. So you have a sound engineer or a camera guy coming from there, but the rest of the people are really young students or passionate people who are there because they want to make movies, they want to create cinema. But we’re not there yet. It will take us some time before we can call it real cinema, but it’s definitely an exciting time for the Arab world in terms of creativity now. 

Q: Are you able to have any input into Selima, or are you asked to stick strictly to the script?

Y: You are asked to stick to what is written and what gets to be written in the last moment. And I think all actors do that. There are things that they decide for you, and one day you are pregnant and one day you are not pregnant, and one day you have sex with this character and another day you are not. There are things that you have to take in, in a very ... you have to have a very tolerant, flexible muscle, acting muscle, you have to be able to learn lines the day before the shoot and adapt to changes in scenes, and this does not exist in cinema. That was maybe one of the biggest challenges for me doing tv. I’m not used to that, and I’m not used to not knowing everything about my character in advance, and in tv, they don’t tell you what’s going to happen to you. There are many things that the actors do not own or decide. But I definitely give my soul to my character, to Selima. They really empowered the actors – Ciaran Donnelly was the producer on set, and he really met with every actor, and he was great. I think he told every one of us these lines. He told us you own your character, you protect your character. 

Q: John Malkovich (Blackbeard) is in the same position because this would have been his first television role as well. 

Y: Yes. John was in the same position. And John and Richard (Coyle – Tom Lowe) had very big responsibilities on the show. They really carry the show, and they had a lot of lines to learn. And they had to adapt with a lot of changes. They were really great, and they were great partners to work with and to learn from. It was a great, great honor to work with them and be a part of this experience. 

Q: You have great chemistry with both of them. What was it like working with them?

Y: Yes. We really had great energy. They are all great people. David (Hoflin – Charlie), his wife Natalie (Hoflin – Rose), my husband and baby were with me, and my husband got to do a small role as a guest on the show. It was like a family show! Everybody had their wife or husband or kids working, and we would meet outside the set because it was a very small compound where we lived in Puerto Rico. We would all meet in the supermarket or the restaurant at night and it was really a very beautiful community to belong to for six months. It was really beautiful. I miss that – it’s one of the things I miss after we were done shooting the season.

Q: Well, hopefully, you’ll be back there soon shooting season two! Can you tease anything that might be coming up in the near future this season?

Y: Selima will keep going after Lowe and she will do everything to show Blackbeard that he is not to be trusted. Selima is really unpredictable. In each episode, she has a surprise for you. And this is one of the amazing things about her. She is really fun, and in each episode there is something that is being revealed about her personality. 

Q: I love how smart she is and how well she holds her own with the men.

Y: Instinctive. She has instincts, and it’s really nice to promote that about women. Women have instincts about things, and I think it’s a very important thing to describe women and how they listen to their emotions and they can be a mess sometimes, but she can also be a sorcerer when she listens and observes the world around her. So Selima is a leading woman.

Q: All three of all the lead women, Rose and Kate (Claire Foy) and Selima, are all strong women.

Y: Yes. Natalie and Claire are great actresses, and great women also. 

Q: Are we going to see more interaction between the women?

Y: Yes. But I think you will always be hungry for more with this show. One season is really like an appetizer. Crossbones is a really juicy, exciting story. There are thousands of things that can be expected in this show, and there is action between all of the characters. There are a lot of characters in the show. You’re really going to enjoy this Friday!

It is also respectful. What I like about Crossbones, is the fact that it respects smart viewers. I believe that people are naturally intelligent, and if we respect this intelligence, they will understand what we give them and I appreciate this. And make them not only feel like not cheat their emotions but make them think and feel better after watching something. I believe in smart tv and Crossbones is smart tv. 

Q: You said you really enjoyed that it was a period piece. Did you find there were specific challenges to doing a period piece?

Y: I think the challenges are on the director, the art department people who make decisions. Actors really enjoy the fittings and my character does not have to go through a lot of changes. I think it’s challenging for people, for actors who have to change skin or have extra hair. When preparation time is long in order to get into the character, this is when period is challenging. But for me, it was absolutely delightful. I’m looking forward to trying the new dresses every time and picking accessories. It wasn’t a challenge at all, it was a pleasure!

Don’t forget to tune in to Crossbones, Friday nights on NBC at 10pm ET!