Smushed together on the white couches of the Character Media office, director Yoko Okumura and actors Jolene Purdy and Midori Francis are chatting excitedly, recalling their time filming the recently released thriller, “Unseen,” in Covington, Louisiana. The mood is warm, almost as if regaling a vacation trip between a group of best friends. Each woman makes a point to uplift and center the conversation on one another; it’s hard to imagine the trio wasn’t always this close.
In reality, Okumura and Francis had met once before the production of “Unseen,” but otherwise, the three women were pretty much strangers.
When Okumura first got her hands on the script for a psychological thriller that follows Emily, a near-sighted woman on the run from her killer ex-boyfriend whose only chance of salvation is Sam, a cashier who accidentally dialed the wrong number, she didn’t have a concrete aspiration of only seeking out other Japanese American creatives. What Okumura cared about most was ensuring the chemistry between the two leads and that they were able to convey the importance of friendship within the film. But fate had a funny way of showing itself when Francis and Purdy (who are both of Japanese descent) were cast as Emily and Sam respectively.
Initially, after Purdy made it to callbacks, she was nervous booking the role of Sam, as she heard Francis was in the running for Emily. Seeing as they were both mixed-race actresses, she worried about her chances. “I cried because [Midori] was going to get it. They can’t have two mixed Asian ladies in leading roles,” Purdy said. “Then I found out we both got in and I cried [again] because we’re two Asian ladies leading in a movie. [It was] a lot of…
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