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  • Los Angeles Times

    How 'Definition Please' creator Sujata Day wrote the roles she wanted to play, onscreen and off

    by Jen Yamato, Los Angeles Times Jan 27, 2022 7 minutes

    Three years ago, Sujata Day decided to take the biggest leap of her career: she would direct and star in her own feature film, "Definition Please," about a 20-something former spelling bee champion still living at home in the Pittsburgh suburbs.

    Unlike the characters in scripts she was getting sent, her own protagonist, a first-generation South Asian American slacker, found comfort, not conflict, in her culture — freeing her to explore other serio-comic ups and downs of her arrested development. Day had actor friends in mind to round out the cast, and her parents were not only willing to let her film in their house, they were elated she was betting on herself.

    "They were like, 'Finally! You're making a feature film,'" said Day, beaming over Zoom ahead of the film's debut on Netflix, where it is now available after being acquired last fall by Ava DuVernay's Array Releasing.

    Bit by bit over the years, Day remembers, inspiration from her creative community had nudged her forward in her own short projects while she acted steadily in TV and film. Co-starring in Issa Rae's 2011 "Awkward Black Girl"

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