Turkish star Tuba Büyüküstün said that female-led stories are prevalent in her culture and that has enabled her to play “strong” female characters throughout her prolific career.
“In Anatolian culture, we have really strong women stories and women are really important to our culture,” she said at Deadline’s Red Sea Studio in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. “I think Anatolia is women – it’s female energy – so it gives women a different kind of power and we have really strong stories, so I’ve always been able to play really strong women characters.”
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The actress, who is this year on the Red Sea Film Festival’s competition jury, added that she was particularly impressed with the films playing in that section at the festival this year, noting that half the films are directed by women. “It’s incredible to have these women’s stories here,” she said.
Büyüküstün, whose rose to fame in Turkey after her role in hit series The Rose and the Thorn, also talked about shooting romantic-comedy series Another Self, which is currently streaming on Netflix.
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“It’s about family constellations, about our ancestors and their experiences that are given to us from our DNA,” she said. “It’s about three women – very close friends – and their healing journey. They are very different characters from each other.”
The second season of that series, which dropped on the streamer earlier this year, sees Büyüküstün play Ada, an analytical sergeant. When probed about whether she expected a third season to go ahead, the actress said she was “not sure”.
Büyüküstün also talked about her work on TV series Like There’s No Tomorrow, a thriller that sees a journalist’s interview with a famous actress go wrong.
For more on that, check out the full interview above.