As part of the 25 Days of Sine Fine Films extravaganza leading up the 25th Anniversary I have decided to write a series of posts celebrating the 25 actors who have been the most dedicated by participating in the most productions.
Actor of the Day: Nina Samii
Nina joined the company in the summer of 1996 when we filmed Destiny III. She has participated in 9 productions as cast and/or crew.
I met Nina Samii through theater - first at the Urbana Park District's Youth Summer Theater where we were both in Finian's Rainbow, Music Man, and other shows. I also know her older sister Monica Samii who was one year ahead of my in high school. When Nina got to high school we were in several productions together, or maybe it was just three. I think she was two years behind me so we would only have been at school together for two years at most. We obviously didn't have any classes together, but we did theater and she was also on speech team in my last year there.
When I decided to write and film Destiny III I was looking for an actress to play the silly and flirty sidekick/First Mate to the pirate Captain El Banyo. The character was Paco the Taconian, aka Paco the Taco. I asked Elizabeth A. if she would be willing to play the part - there would only be one day of filming so it wouldn't take too much time. She agreed, but while I was asking her Nina Samii was right next to us and asked if she could be in it too. She could play Nina the Fajita and be crew mates with Paco the Taco.
How could I say no to that? I immediately said yes, well I laughed a lot first, and I have been grateful for her joining the cast, as well as that terrible/wonderful name, ever since. Nina is amazingly talent, super nice, kind, smart, funny, and just a joy to film with. She's also one of the very few people in SFF history who actually asked to film with me first. Usually I have to kidnap convince people to film with me.
Her character in Destiny III somehow turned into Ali-Jinjil's lost daughter Zenobia that he mentioned in Destiny, and in the epilogue she takes over for El Banyo and becomes a pirate captain. Although she only had to film for one day she also agreed to be an extra when I needed people to be ballroom dancers and the royal court of Traldon. Although I didn't need to film anything extra with her for the Destiny mini-series I think she still showed up to help record some voiceovers.
In the fall of 1997 I wrote and filmed the The Dragon & The Unicorn. I mostly made it so I could see Annamarie play a villain, but I also wanted to see Nina in a staring role. The two of them play twin sisters who were cursed at birth to fight an eternal war between good and evil. Asarai, the evil older sister, can never die and Leona, the good younger sister, is reborn every hundred years to continue the fight.
In the movie Lily is a teenager who has no idea that she is the reincarnation of the legendary Leona. The movie is about her finding out, training to fight, and defeating the evil Asarai. Nina did a fantastic job playing the naive and skeptical Lily as well as the strong and proud Leona in the flashbacks. Even before I had completely finished filming The Dragon & The Unicorn I began to film two other productions, although most of them were filmed over the summer of 1998 after I finished editing The Dragon & The Unicorn. The first of these two was The King of Elflin's Daughter, a musical fairytale about a young fairy who falls in love with a mortal man and the group of minstrels who help them be together.
Nina played Cat, one of the minstrels, and suffered through cold and raining shoots but got to act with other awesome people so hopefully it was worth it for her. I think it was. All the minstrels were great. There was one shoot where the actor who played Fiddle wasn't able to make it and since he played the instrument he was named after we needed someone else to play it for that scene.
Unfortunately Nina was the only one without a proper instrument (she played the tambourine) so she got stuck playing the violin and had no idea how to play. I'm so sorry Nina! I should have given you a quick lesson - or had Annamarie give you a quick lesson! But that would have required both insight and compassion and I was lacking both at the time.
As I said, we were filming two productions at the same time and the other one was The Perfect Combination. I had never seen Nina play a bad guy so I cast her as the villain's sidekick, Houstan. Unfortunately I (and others) laughed at her being evil because it was just so funny to see the kind and lovable Nina trying to be bad. She did a great job acting as an evil subordinate but there was just such a mismatch of actor and character that it was hard to take her seriously. I'm sorry Nina, I shouldn't have laughed!
Despite being busy all summer with filming productions I somehow convinced myself to film one more. I clearly wasn't busy enough. Also, I really want to see Ryan Segovich play a lead part. I didn't have enough time (or any ideas) to write a script, but there was a radio play a friend of the family wrote and recorded years before called the Vigil that I loved, so I asked him if I could film it and he said yes.
The Vigil has two lead characters - Julie and Abner. The basic plot is that Julie dies suddenly in a tragic car accident and her ghost haunts the place where she died. There's another ghost, Abner, who died there a hundred years before who helps her cope with her own death and the afterlife. I had already decided to cast Ryan as Abner but I needed someone to play Julie. I immediately thought of Nina because I knew she could play the lively and kind, yet bitter Julie really well. And she did a wonderful job, just as I knew she would.
In the spring of 1999 I wrote a script that would star Ryan as the lead and apparently he was bragging about it at school or something I guess because Nina's mother told me that Nina was feeling upset about it. I had never written a script for her and her mother wanted to know if could make one just for Nina. I love Nina and was sad that she was sad, so I was very happy to take on the project.
That was the night that I had gone to CHS to watch Nina, Ryan, and some other friends in their high school production of Twelfth Night, and right after my conversation with Nina's mother I immediately went to find Nina, congratulate her on her wonderful performance as Olivia (she was great, but then again Nina is always great) and asked her if she could play any character in the world what kind of character would she want to play.
Her answer? She wanted to play a villain. The only time Nina had ever played a bad guy was in The Perfect Combination and we had laughed at her (sorry Nina). Usually she was type-cast, even by me (especially by me?), as the innocent and kind ingenue. She wanted to try something completely different. Nina probably still doesn't know (until now obviously) that her mother was the one who asked me to do a show for her. I never told her and honestly I'm not sure I ever told anyone but my parents about that conversation until now. Nina's mother asked me not to tell anyone so I kept it a secret. Until now.
I already had some ideas percolating in the back of my mind and having Nina play the villain in the script I was thinking about writing would be perfect. So I wrote Pandora's Box and filmed my first real TV show, staring Nina Samii as well as other actors. Unfortunately, Nina did not like the character. Who would? Zarina is a spoiled, selfish brat and a horrible monster with no compassion or conscience. She's a villain through and through and Nina wasn't sure she could do it.
I remember on the second day of filming, her first day on set, she wanted to quit because she didn't think she could do it. Honestly I was angry because I had written the part for her at her mother's request, but Nina didn't know that and I wasn't going to tell her. I just reassured her that she could definitely do it and this was the chance for her to show everyone that she really could play a villain.
She agreed to continue and try her best and we went to film the first scene of Episode 1 where some peasants try to hang Zarina. The way Nina screamed bloody murder sounded like she was actually about to murdered and I was 1) blown away by her performance and 2) seriously afraid someone would call the police since we were filming a public park. I remember shouting "we're just filming a movie!" after that shot was over.
Throughout the rest of the filming for Pandora's Box Nina continued to shock and amaze me with her performance. Zarina is literally the complete opposite of Nina and honestly I have never seen anyone do a better job of acting then Nina did in that production. She was AMAZING. However the part was really hard for her. Having to constantly be mean and nasty, screaming at everyone and throwing tantrums not only takes a lot of energy it also puts you into a very negative head space that Nina was not used and did not like.
Each actor got to make one request for their character that I would write into the script. Jacob wanted Turlo to have a big kung-fu fight, Virginia wanted her thief character, Zarc, to actually steal something on screen, and Nina wanted Zarina to be nice for a while. When Zarina got kicked out of power and needed to change so she could get back into power I took that opportunity to give Zarina some downtime and learn to how to be kind from her motherly mentor Thebe, played by Rachel Zoralee.
Zarina's transformation from spoiled selfish princess to a normalish woman then into a murderous general thirsting for revenge is a remarkable character arc. If you want to know more about Zarina you can read about her in the Top 5 Villains post. She was voted as the #1 villain in all of SFF. Like I said Nina had a hard time playing her and there were many film shoots where she seemed to be miserable playing the part, including one shoot were she actually walked off the set after having a terrible day and when she just could not play the character any more that day. I didn't fully understand at the time but I've realized looking back (and now that I'm medicated) just how emotionally draining it was for her on every single film shoot. I still consider Zarina to be her best performance, and the best performance of anyone honestly, but I don't know if that's enough to offset the hard times she had on set.
There were some fun times too though. She had shoots where, despite how draining it was, she couldn't stop laughing and joked around with the rest of the cast. I know she and Diana who had a lot of scenes together got along really well. I think the wonderful people she was filming with were the only reason she kept her sanity and was willing to come back. Thanks for filming it Nina!
I didn't get to film with Nina again until winter/spring of 2005. I got back in touch with her at some point - possibly when she was a waitress at one of my favorite restaurants or maybe some other way, I don't really remember. When I needed an actress to play the character of Labarta in Eidolon I asked if she would be willing to do it. Labarta was a nightmare demon and a returning character from The Curse. The actress who originally played her was at or had left SIUC and I had no way to track her down. That was fine, recasting wasn't a big deal I just needed a woman with dark hair.
Nina only needed to film for one afternoon, so it wasn't a big time commitment. Unfortunately that afternoon it was cold and raining. It wasn't too bad at first when we filmed a couple scenes by the lake but by the time we had to shoot the fight scene it was practically pouring. We made it a very short fight, but she still had to end up on the cold, wet ground in the rain. She didn't film with me again for a long time after that. It probably didn't have anything to do with shoot and was more about being very busy, but I'm sure a quick reminder of how terrible conditions on set can be didn't help.
I did get to see her a few times at the annual SFF Holiday parties for a year or two but then I moved away. When I returned to CU for several months in 2012 I was able to see her again from time to time. In November we had a film shoot for Goddess Anonymous and I was one actor short. I frantically tried to get someone to play the part of Angerona at the last minute - and I do mean last minute. Nina was my only real hope and thankfully agreed to come over after she was done with some work related event in the evening.
It was so wonderful to film with her again! I didn't realize how much I had missed filming with her until she was on set once again and having fun with everyone else. There was an unfortunate accident with a cupcake that left her feeling...sticky for half the shoot, but she wiped off the frosting and continued to film like a pro. After that life became super busy for her with her job (she's a teacher, I could NEVER do a job that hard) and her growing family, so I have never been able to film with her again.
I have had to chance to hang out with her however, and honestly that's just as good as filming with her if not better - the only real difference is that I have more time to chat and no one is wearing costumes. Unless it's a pirate or Halloween party (and even if it's not costumes are always welcome in my house).
Nina is one of the kindest, sweetest, nicest, funniest, most beautiful, most talented, and most wonderful people I've ever met. I am very very lucky to not only know her but to also have filmed with her. Even if I can never film with her again for various reasons, I can't wait for the day when I get to see her again and hang out together. I love you Nina! Thanks for everything! If you want to learn more about Nina check out her interview.
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