LOS ANGELES, May 2 (UPI) -- Maria Bakalova says acting allows her to express feelings she's too shy to share as her real self. In her latest movie, Electra, in theaters and video-on-demand Friday, Bakalova plays Francesca, a performance artist living with musician Milo (Jack Farthing) in Italy.
In a recent Zoom interview with UPI, Bakalova said from the time she was a 12-year-old actor in theater, playing characters "always gave me the freedom to be bolder, to be more outspoken, to be more daring to do stuff, to say stuff."
Bakalova came to fame in the United States after starring in the 2020 mockumentary comedy Borat: Subsequent Moviefilm. Since playing Borat's (Sacha Baron Cohen) daughter, Tutar, Bakalova has starred in Bodies Bodies Bodies, The Apprentice and Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3.
Characters like Tutar and Francesca let Bakalova dabble in saying what's on her mind. In real life, Bakalova said, she avoids confrontation.
"I actually live a happier life, a healthier life, a better day if I'm shooting something or if I'm rehearsing something," she said.
Electra also helped director Hala Matar live more authentically. During a break from making short films, commercials and music videos, Matar was an art dealer at a New York gallery.
"In that period I wasn't shooting anything. I think that was when I was the most depressed," Matar said.
Matar met famous artists whom she did not wish to name, which made her feel like she should be making art herself. She said she was inspired to write Electra with Daryl Wein and Paul Sado based on her art gallery experience.
"I was like sitting behind a mask of someone else," Matar said. "The insecurity that I felt is also some part of the insecurity that Milo experienced in the movie."
Milo struggles to live up to expectations for his next album. In the film, Dylan (Wein) and Lucy (Abigail Cowan) visit Milo in Italy for Dylan to interview him, but their ulterior motives are gradually revealed.
Francesca engages her guests in performance art exercises like mirror work, in which she and Lucy mimic each other's movements, and embodying a goddess while posing in costumes with plant roots.
All the while, Francesca and company are dressed to the nines, courtesy of wardrobe by Matar's sister, Hind.
"The movie explores people that play characters themselves," Bakalova said. "So it's not really what Francesca, being honest, would be wearing. It's Francesca as the public image of Francesca."
Electra filmed for 15 days in Italy. Matar began by developing a feature utilizing a friend's palazzo near Rome.
When that location fell through, Matar, Sado and Wein found a new location to complete the film.
"I wasn't planning on making this film," Matar said. "It came to me more than me planning for it, if that makes sense."
The cast was free to bring their own ideas to the film's performance art scenes. Bakalova clarified, however, that improvising with co-stars in Electra was still quite different from Borat, in which she interacted with non actors.
"Borat itself was a different animal," Bakalova said. "We were just somehow in a social experiment of how people will treat you without thinking that there is a camera."
Still, the experience of Borat proved reassuring to Bakalova. Although Cohen provoked racists and Bakalova ended up in a hotel room with Rudy Giuliani in that movie, many of her experiences were positive.
While Cohen pretended to mistreat Bakalova, she found that many people instinctively leapt to her defense. For example, the filmmakers hired Jeanise Jones to babysit Tutar, and Jones stepped in to prevent what would be abuse were it not a comic setup.
"It's optimistic at the end," Bakalova said. "It's good that people still have their moral center."
Bakalova also drew inspiration from her role as Ivana Trump in the 2024 film The Apprentice. While married to Donald Trump (Sebastian Stan), Ivana was a manager and CEO of multiple Trump buildings, and launched more businesses after their divorce.
Bakalova said Ivana's independence is "the root to feminism. We just want to be treated equally, not more, not less, but equally, not underestimated by society, by men. And she wanted that back in the '70s."
Matar plans to direct more films too, including one she expected to make before Electra.
"There was a script I wrote that will hopefully be my next that is also set in Italy," Matar said. "So I already had in mind that I was going to make a movie there."
