In the June issue of Episode Magazine, Burcu Asena Şahin Gençoğlu spoke with Onur Seyit Yaran, one of the lead actors of Prime Video’s new production Summer House, which takes us back to the 90s.
Your appearance in Summer House was a wonderful surprise for the audience. What kind of insight did you act upon regarding your career journey when accepting this project?
What affected me the most was the emotion of the story. Although Summer House seems like a time travel story at first glance, at its core, it tells about family, love, our bond with the past, and a person’s effort to understand themselves. I believe such stories stay with the audience for a long time. In my career, I try to chase after different worlds and different characters. Sinan’s story offered a character journey that includes romance but is also a story of growth and transformation. That’s why I approached the project very warmly.
You fit so well as one of the characteristic young leading men specific to the period of 1996, as if you belong to those years. What kind of preparation process did you go through, especially to grasp the spirit of 1996, the posture, and the aura of that period?
This is a very beautiful comment for me. To understand the period, I looked not only at films but also at interviews, television programs, and the daily life of the period. Because you cannot capture a period solely through costumes or hairstyles; the way people talk to each other, their outlook on life, and their relationships are also very important. I felt there was a calmer, more natural, and somewhat unfiltered energy carried by people who were young in the late 1990s. While creating Sinan, I tried to capture that ease and sincerity. The set design, costumes, and music also helped us a lot in this regard.
That love-at-first-sight moment where your character enters the story has that naive love aesthetic of the 90s woven with glances, which is very far from today’s consumption speed. As an actor, how did you detach from today’s world and capture the romance and purity of that period in the onset environment?
I think the biggest difference of that period is that accessibility was not as easy as it is today. People observed each other more, wondered about each other more, and attached more meaning to the moments they spent together. As an actor, I tried to think about this. You live in a world where you can’t send a message and get an instant reply, where you can’t learn everything immediately. This is something that amplifies emotions. In the feelings Sinan has for Zeynep, there is also a bit of that curiosity, excitement, and desire to discover. I think the romance of that period comes a bit from here.
Even though you didn’t play opposite each other, how did knowing the story carrying the traces of your character’s mature period guide your acting?
Knowing the character’s future was an important advantage for me. Because I wasn’t just playing a youth living in that moment, but the starting point of the person he would transform into years later. While seeing how brave Sinan is and how he follows his emotions in some scenes, on the other hand, I knew how life would change him. This knowledge helped me add more layers to the character. Sometimes I acted by considering the traces of this journey, even in details that the audience wouldn’t see.
If your character made a journey to today’s fast, digital world and his own future with that stone, what kind of shock do you think he would experience? If he saw his mature, fatherly self years later and his adult daughter whom he never knew right in front of him, what would he want to check or ask first? Would there be anything he would change upon returning to the past?
I think he would experience the first shock in the face of technology. Because when you look from 1996 to today, not only devices but also people’s way of living has changed. But thinking from the character’s perspective, what would really affect him would be his own future. When he saw his self years later, his first question would probably be, “Am I happy?” Because young Sinan’s most prominent feature is acting with his emotions and maintaining his excitement for life.
When he sees his daughter, I think he would experience a very strong sense of belonging along with great surprise. I don’t know if he would change anything in the past. Because sometimes even the mistakes we make bring us to our current state. Maybe he would reconsider some of his decisions, but I’m not sure if he would want to change them completely.
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 absolutely would. Actually, this is one of my favorite aspects of the film. We mostly know our parents solely by their parental identities, but they also have dreams, fears, friendships, and youth stories. If I had such an opportunity, I would want to see them in their twenties. I would wonder what they dreamed about life, how they saw themselves. Maybe I would just watch from afar without saying anything. Because sometimes the most beautiful way to understand a person is to be able to see them in a state where they haven’t assumed a role for anyone yet.
