Dakota Johnson and Cooper Raiff’s Cha Cha Real Smooth, which toured the Sundance Film Festival before its OTT release became the talking point for a lot of reasons, the most important one being debutant actress Vanessa Burghardt. A person with autism, the actress played a character with the condition in the film and landed praises for the authenticity she brought with her. However, she says that while growing up, she did not find any character on-screen to look up to which made her feel that she is the problem.
During a round table of the show, which was also attended by News18.com, the young actress answered a question about whether she could look up to anyone, and said, “No, I didn’t. I didn’t see anyone at all remotely. So I thought that I was the problem. But I wasn’t the problem. There just wasn’t anyone like me."
The actress also opened up about her working experience and said, “This was my first movie so I didn’t really have any expectations. But it ended up being a really positive experience and really comfortable environment. I think I’m a lot like Lola in some ways. Not my autistic tendencies or traits but I do take up a while to warm up to people and I do really care about people. I just express it differently. But I think I’m, I’m probably a little bit more socially mature than Lola is."
The film stars Dakota (Domino) as Vanessa’s (Lola) mother and Cooper Raiff (Andrew) as a 22-year-old college graduate who works as a party starter. It revolves around Andrew’s relationship with the mother-daughter duo and how the latter navigates through life with autism. Raiff and Johnson also doubled up as the producers of the film. Talking about the same, The Fifty Shades actress shared that she wanted to make this movie because she cared about it, unlike the producers she worked with who did not care for their writers or their people.
“I’ve made a lot of movies where producers don’t really care at all, and they don’t really protect the work. They want to make the most money or they want to try and cater to the masses. They don’t protect their directors, they don’t protect their artists, and I really wanted to do that. So with Cha Cha that felt like the perfect opportunity and I really care about it. Otherwise, if I’m not on a project, I think it just the script has to be excellent. And the people involved have to be kind and good."
Talking about the message she would like the audience to take from the film, Vanessa shared that she wasn’t trying to teach people anything, but rather demonstrating that autistic people have feelings. “I wasn’t trying to teach people anything. I think it was just demonstrating that autistic people have feelings and they can form relationships and they have empathy and sort of the same base level emotions as everyone else."
Cha Cha Real Smooth directed by Cooper Raiff and also starring Evan Assante, Leslie Mann, Brad Garrett, and Raúl Castillo is currently streaming on Apple TV+.
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