John Cho and Mia Isaac are playing father and daughter in Prime Video’s latest film, Don’t Make Me Go. Just like how the two realistically portray father and daughter going through a tremendous life change, Cho and Isaac seem to have a loving, supportive relationship as the two spoke to Shadow and Act recently.
Isaac said how excited she was to have this be her feature debut. She said that Cho helped her feel comfortable on set.
“I think I was just really nervous and I didn’t know what it was gonna be like to be on a real, like a big movie set and also to be in New Zealand and also to be the lead and also to be playing the daughter to John Cho,” said Isaac. “So it was a lot of new things at once. But I’m just glad that John was so open with me from the very beginning and that I was able to say that I at least had a friend, so I didn’t feel as nervous.”
Cho called the film and Isaac’s performance “special.”
“This was a special film and with a very special actress who was playing who’s in her first feature and it was [a] real privilege to watch,” he said, adding how great it was “to see her take control of her part and put all her effort into it.”
“She really made my performance possible as well. So it was just…a cherished experience for me,” he continued.
The film is another win for diversity, especially when it comes to showing people of color as fully fleshed-out human beings and not lessons in representation. Cho said that the film does a tremendous job of giving viewers a three-dimensional view of characters who might be expected to present stereotypes.
“What was nice about is that when people think what does an Asian-American film [with a biracial character], what do you want to say [in the film]? People that we’re gonna make an essay and talk about what it’s like,” he said. “And to me, people expect you to explicate this experience based upon what they see, which is [that] most of society, for the most part, tends to see your skin color and want to think that that’s all of you because that’s what they see. And it’s all that they see in a lot of instances.”
But, he continued, “the reality is the film reflects how we feel, which is that we don’t walk around feeling like our skin color all day. It is a part of our lives as people of color, but our lived experience [is] to say that we’re mothers and fathers and we’re workers and we’re sons and daughters…That’s what we feel all day. And I think the movie is nice in that it is from an internal point of view and it reflects how it feels [to be a person of color] rather than the way it looks.”
Watch the full interview below. Don’t Make Me Go is now streaming on Prime Video.