Fighting The Good Fight, One Role At A Time
Arienne Mandi is challenging cultural stereotypes, one role at a time. A Los Angeles native, she began her career like many actors—with guest spots in procedural dramas—before breaking through with roles that defy expectations and expand representation.
In 2018 she stepped into the spotlight with Baja, a coming-of-age sleeper hit where she played Lisa. The following year she landed her breakout role in The L Word: Generation Q, the revival of Showtime’s groundbreaking LGBTQ+ series.
As Dani Núñez, Mandi quickly became a fan favorite, earning praise and acclaim for her role as an ambitious PR exec with a complex relationship with her father. Thanks to her execution of the role, folks began to sit up and take notice of the Chilean-Iranian actress, as well as the gravitas she brought with her to each performance.
“I think for me what [these roles] all have in common—as well as being very bold, very impactful, very important storytelling for important communities of people—is that they tie into my personal heritage, which I think is really fun, for me at least, to tap into. I am of Iranian and Chilean descent. I’m American through and through. I’m an L.A. native, but I definitely pride myself on being a child of immigrants. I’m very grateful to be able to tell a story where I can speak in their native languages and represent our cultures,” explained Mandi.
Mandi’s connection to her cultural heritage has been an important factor in her ability to relate to her characters, particularly when it comes to her work in the film Tatami, codirected by Israeli filmmaker Guy Nattiv and Iranian actress-director Zar Amir Ebrahimi. In the film, she plays Leila, an Iranian judoka set to compete against an Israeli opponent in the Judo World Championships. Under pressure from Iran’s regime, which forbids matches against Israeli competitors, she must choose between her dreams or the risk of retaliation.
“It was very important for my parents, especially my mom—she was very adamant about me visiting the country. So I was very aware of the differences culturally and speaking to my family members, understanding what it is that they go through. I drew a lot from my personal life. And also at the time there was the Women, Life, Freedom uprising happening in Iran when we were shooting the film. So it was a kind of beautiful art imitating life/life imitating art situation, where I was seeing firsthand these incredibly brave women and men who were fighting for their freedom, country, and rights.”
Mandi’s experiences, along with her passion for bold storytelling and courageous characters, are what drove her to pursue the role of Leila.
“I got the audition, and I remember just being so hungry for a story that was impactful and that would kind of set the bar in a place where I was excited to jump to in my career post-L Word, because that already was a very high bar,” explained the actress. “So when I got that audition I was like, Oh, she’s an athlete. She is very driven, very intense, like a female Raging Bull of sorts, and she’s also Iranian.”
When Mandi met with the filmmakers, they all agreed on the significance of the story’s core message but acknowledged the genuine risks involved in making the film due to the sensitive political landscape surrounding the situation.
“They reassured me that we’d be telling this very important story in the safest way possible, because it is very much tied to a real society; obviously the Iranian culture being the way it is and the way they don’t acknowledge Israel in the sports community,” said Mandi. “It was definitely the most, most challenging shoot I’ve had to date in terms of pushing me out of my comfort zone. And I did all my own stunts.”
Never one to play it safe, Mandi continues to push back against cliché portrayals of Middle Eastern women with her next role in The Night Agent’s second season on Netflix. As Noor Taheri, she takes on the role of an Iranian asylum seeker in the U.S. who cooperates with the FBI to protect her family.
“I felt it was a very easy segue into that headspace, of being a refugee, of wanting something better for your family and worrying about the safety of your family. The plight of [both Leila and Noor] is very similar. Granted, they had different sets of tools. They are very different women, but very much motivated by the same thing, which is love, the love of their family,” explained the actress.
“I think the beauty about this art is that it is so subjective, and you can really take whatever it is that you want from it. I think what’s exciting to me is that for many years, the depiction of Middle Easterners in film and TV was very narrow. It was very one-dimensional, and I feel like we are now seeing far more dimensional characters and stories, and seeing Middle Easterners in a different light. So I hope, if anything, that people get to see our culture in a new way, as well as a story of a person.”
All Images By Manfred Baumann
