In the June issue of Episode Magazine, Burcu Asena Şahin Gençoğlu spoke with Mina Demirtaş, one of the lead actors of Prime Video’s new production Summer House, which takes us back to the 90s.
Throughout Summer House, you find Derya Pınar Ak playing your mother’s youth at almost the same age as you, rather than your mature mother. As two young actors, what kind of harmony did you capture behind the scenes to reflect that “both a stranger and a piece of your own life” feeling so strongly on screen?
Derya and I got along well behind the scenes too, and we had a lot of fun together; I think that must have had an effect.
Of course, one of the most touching aspects of the Summer House is your character reuniting in the past with her grandmother, whom she loves very much and recently lost, but seeing her in a harsh and oppressive state she never knew. How did you blend the feeling of being able to hug someone you lost beyond time with the surprise brought by that great longing?
The Sevinç that Selin knows is actually someone who is not oppressive or rule-abiding, but someone who supports her, completely unlike her mother. But when she encounters her in the past, she sees that her grandmother was like her mother, and her mother was like herself, and she is quite surprised by this. What I think Selin is very lucky about is being able to hug someone she loved and missed but lost, one last time, thanks to a chance.
You are right at the center of a drama with fantastic elements, which is very different from your roles so far. What areas of your acting muscles did playing a “time traveler” work that you haven’t used before?
Playing a surreal situation was very fun and exciting. Normally, when playing a scene, I try to capture the reality of the situation. But in such a “fantastic” situation, reality becomes a situation you imagine and create.
At the end of the Summer House, we don’t see a definitive “history has changed” message, but there is a tremendous softening hanging in the air. What did your character actually change by going to the past? Did she just make her mother soften in temperament, or did she melt those harsh intergenerational ice blocks?
I think she melted the harsh intergenerational ice blocks. Because we know that actually even Sevinç always had things left inside her regarding this issue. Since she supported her daughter to chase her dreams and be happy, and Zeynep knows the importance and difference of this, she provides the same support, maybe more, to Selin.
If you had that mysterious stone that opens a door to the past as in the Summer House, would you want to go to your own mother’s/father’s youth, a period when they were not parents yet and were building dreams? At what age and doing what would you like to watch them?
I would want to go to my father’s youth. Because as far as he tells, the memories and excitements he accumulated together with his friends are very beautiful, and I would really like to see what it’s like to be young in the 90s.
