Sonoya Mizuno

Good morning! I’m good, how are you?

I’m just at home in London, what about you?

Oh, I’m actually visiting Glasgow in a few days. That’s so funny!

No, I’m actually visiting a friend. I used to live in Glasgow when I was in the Scottish Ballet.

Thank you!

How’s my work routine changing. Well, I’ve got no work. (Laughs) It’s pretty bleak, like the winter. It’s definitely a weird time in the industry at the moment. One of the hardest things as an actor is to keep yourself busy and motivated when you’re out of work, which does happen quite a lot. So, I’ve actually been writing a lot. That’s my kind of day to day at the moment. It’s my own private creative practice that I spend my time doing when I’m not working.

I think there is something in that definitely. It’s an important time to be kind of quiet and thoughtful, to have an internal creative process — which I do think this time of year is good for. There’s a place I go in Wales and I like to walk a lot; this time of year is really beautiful for that. I find that when I’m walking a lot of my thoughts and ideas actually come into fruition, it might be for working on a character, or whatever it is. So, I do find that there is something about going internal, which quite suits me. But, this summer I was doing a play in Bristol and that was kind of the opposite. It was people, working all the time, and I thrived in that as well. I guess it is like the seasons, isn’t it? All of them are important for the creative process.

Although in LA they do, and that’s pretty miserable. (Laughs). I mean, not miserable, but you know.

Yeah, I think it is hard as a creative person to not have the effects of the seasons. I don’t know. What do you think?

I agree. The cycle allows for the growth and the rebirth — but then it also makes you feel crazy.

Oh my God! What have been the key moments, that’s so hard! I think there are a lot. As you said, I’ve lived a few different lives. I also didn’t do them half-heartedly. I think one of the really big ones is auditioning for “Ex Machina”. I was still a dancer in Scottish Ballet then, and that changed everything. I think if I hadn’t gone to that audition, I may well still be in Glasgow at Scottish Ballet, you know? And I think about that quite a lot. I don’t think about it as in, oh, thank god I did the audition. But, I wonder what that would be like, because there is a whole other version of the trajectory that I was on. I could still be dancing, and that would have also been very valid and interesting — but my life changed its course.

I would say I go back and forth on this, because I think it’s very comforting to think that is true. In hindsight, I often feel like it is true, but I don’t know. It brings about a broader philosophical question about whether things do happen for a reason, and then why do young children in Africa die of AIDS and that kind of thing? Then I have to think, well, no, of course, things don’t happen for a reason. Life can be wonderful and work out, but it can also be pretty fucking terrible sometimes. And so it’s very hard for me to believe that, if I’m honest. I know that’s a bit cynical (Laughs).

Exactly. If you zoom out and have a broader perspective, you think how can that actually be true? But, it gives one faith. So, I think it’s a helpful thing to be able to think. And often with hindsight, I do look back and think like, I’m glad that difficult thing happened at that time. Even though, when you’re in it, it can be very difficult to think that.

Yes.

Actually, I think about that quite a lot. One of the things I watch a lot on YouTube is ballet companies in rehearsals. It’s just very comforting for me, I’ll just be eating my dinner and watching that. I often have this thought, that could so have been me if I had carried on and what would that life be like? I wouldn’t know half the people that I know and I love. I probably wouldn’t be living in London. There’s lots of things that would be very different. But also, it even goes as far as, with the acting jobs that one gets, or doesn’t get. You think, if I wasn’t able to do that job because of some scheduling problem, but if I had done that job, my career might look like this now. So, yeah I have those thoughts quite a lot.

Exactly, it does risk that. Sometimes I think I have to be careful, because it’s actually got to do with the destabilising nature of being an actor. You never know what you’re going to get, or what you’re going to be doing. There’s something that can be really difficult about that if you’re in a particular headspace and you think about the what-ifs. On the other hand, it can also be the thing which is extremely invigorating and kind of thrilling about it, because you literally don’t know what your next year is going to look like. It can often be that you are on a film set with the most extraordinary group of actors, or you are doing a play, playing a character that you believed was completely out of your capabilities. It’s a lot of unknowns.

I think there’s definitely an overlap. In the most kind of simplistic terms, it would be that I have a very cultivated awareness of my physicality. That’s what has been the starting point for me and a lot of my work, because it’s so deeply ingrained in my training. But I actually think it is more complex than that, and it’s about the artistic education that I had, going to the Royal Ballet School from 11 years old, and having that rigorous classical artistic training. It informs your mind in a particular way, and it forms how you look at the world. It informs how you perform characters and make choices. You know, it’s so deeply me and how I evolved as a person, that it’s going to be in my work whether I like it or not. Whether other people like it or not.

I guess it is, but in a way it’s not, because I don’t do it. I don’t even go and watch it much. But, like I said, I’ll watch on YouTube. It’s a part of my makeup, isn’t it? It’s a part of my history. It is a past life. But, I don’t dismiss it.

Yeah? I mean, I wish I could do it, but I absolutely couldn’t. I’m too old and too stiff.

I think if I wasn’t working on projects with those kinds of themes, I probably wouldn’t be thinking about them in such a deep way. But it’s interesting when people draw a line through the things that link your work together. Because, for me, it’s often literally the jobs that I get. I’m always trying to do work that I feel connected to and that I think is meaningful, but really, unless you’re like a very small percentile of the acting community, you’re just doing the jobs that you get. Very, very fortunately, I’ve worked with Alex a few times, so I’ve got to explore some really interesting themes, because he’s extremely smart. So, that has more to do with him than it has to do with me, to be honest.

I feel quite trepidatious about it, to be honest. I’ve never used ChatGPT. I don’t even know what it looks like or how to use it. I think I’m pretty old school in lots of ways, but, yes, I do feel the very impending danger of all of it. I also feel like it’s very easy to get sucked into the narrative of AI just being really dangerous and quite clearly it can be. But I think there’s huge benefits to us having accessible AI in medicine, for example, in reproductive science. So, I try not to go down the rabbit hole too much. What has been a shock is, most artists like five or ten years ago, thought that we were safe in this conversation. I think that they’re realising now that actually they’re the most vulnerable. So, I think it’s a big wake up call. In a way, I just feel like I’m holding on tight, waiting for it all to happen.

I don’t think that humans will be able to stop creating art. It’s how so many people express themselves, their deep pains and great joys. I can’t imagine that being able to hand over a piece of writing to a software, instead of doing it yourself, is going to give any sense of cathartic release. I often feel that if this job as an actor gets taken away from me, I’ll still be finding my own way of being a creative person, whether that’s putting on plays in peoples’ back gardens or writing — whatever it is. I don’t think that we can be stopped.

Yes. Obviously, I was very aware of the “Terminator” franchise, and I really loved the original “Terminator” movie. What I loved about the scripts was it felt like it was harking back to that, because they really focused on the horror. But there was this element of family love. Obviously in the film it’s a love story, but in “Terminator Zero” it was family love. I thought it was just really well written. And Eiko is just a fucking cool character. I was like, of course, I want to do that. It’s also the first time I’d done animation, so it felt like a really cool project to start with. It was difficult, though, to put myself in this woman’s shoes. She’s a trained killer. Even though it’s animation, you’re still putting yourself in someone’s shoes, who’s been trained and brought up from childhood as a soldier. So, there’s a particular hardness that I feel like I don’t instinctively have.

This was one of the rare and unique times where I was offered the job without having to audition. But, what I will say is, I find that voice work is more physical than doing live action, because you’ve just got your voice. Especially because the voice jobs that I’ve done have already been voiced in Japanese, so effectively what I’m doing is dubbing the piece. So, it is like a piece of choreography, you know, I see her move three ways that way and three ways this way and I have to match the movement to that. So, I find it very physical actually.

No, I hadn’t. I think they’re an interesting brand, and they always seem to bring together a really eclectic and interesting group of artists so I was really happy to be asked to do it. It’s an interesting experience shooting with Juergen and I guess he’s renowned for it because he shoots very quickly and mostly on his iPhone. It’s not about looking perfect and gorgeous, so you kind of have to succumb to what it is, which I think is a cool thing that they do.

Yeah, I love Dev actually. I always hope we’re going to be able to do something together one day. He’s an amazing artist, very rare, I think.

I do actually have an idea, but I’m not going to say because I think it could happen.

I’m not sure because I haven’t actually seen any. But I imagine there is a romanticism. There is a crossover there. I mean, I know that a lot of fashion designers have designed costumes for the Royal Ballet for new works there. I know Gareth Pugh worked with Wayne McGregor and I think Erdem has designed with Chris Wheeldon. Ballet has the potential of getting lost in the history because it is essentially old fashioned. So, anything that keeps it up to date and keeps it modern is a good thing, I think.

Yeah, but you dress like shit when you’re in a ballet company. Like you’re not trying to look cool or you weren’t back then. You might have like nice leotards, but you literally wear bin bags over them and like woolly stuff with holes in. It’s about being comfortable and warm. It’s about being able to move. An aesthetic comes out of that, which is actually quite cool because it’s so rough and ready. The pretty or romantic skirts — it’s less that than people think it is.

Wow.

It was so fun and actually we worked with this amazing choreographer, Arthur Pita, who I knew and had just worked with his partner Matthew Bourne, like months before. It was a nice moment. He’s a very brilliant choreographer and it was just super fun I remember. It wasn’t that easy to get it, I had to try and get it looking as perfect as I possibly could. But, I remember it was super fun and Oscar was so good at it — it was just a total joy to do.

I had no idea. It was my first film, so I had no idea like what anything was, do you know what I mean? There’s been a lot of things since, which feel like are nods to that, which is cool as well.

One hundred percent the play. It was just so life affirming to be doing a play. It was a beautiful play, “A Child of Science”, about the 20 year lead up to the first child being born by IVF. All of the actors were multi-rolling so I was playing seven characters. I had to bounce between these different characters from one scene to the next. There’s one scene where I was playing Pope John Paul I and I had to do a monologue in Italian. I don’t speak Italian at all. Having to get on stage and look out into a completely black auditorium and speak a language that I don’t speak, about a really complicated scientific discovery, was hugely challenging. When the director first suggested that it was going to be in Italian, I was like, yeah, yeah, but in my head, I was like, how am I going to do this? There’s no way! So, for me, that was just the biggest achievement. I don’t think there’s anything like being on stage to help an actor really work on craft. I’ve only done two plays, but after both of them I felt like I was just ready for anything.

There’s adrenaline because you can’t just be like, okay, can we go back and do that bit again? And also the laser point focus that you need. There’s something extremely exhilarating but also meditative about being in that state, because you have to be so focused. The audience are also part of the performance as well. So, there’s a real kind of energy exchange that you feel performing on stage. It would be the same as when I was dancing. It’s not dissimilar. But then there’s also things about working on camera and doing a scene again and again, and watching it, and feeling it change.

I was really grateful to be able to go back to another season of it and have another chance to really figure out who the character was. I think it’s actually quite hard on those shows with bigger ensemble casts, because even though you can do a whole season, you might only be working seven days in seven months. You don’t necessarily have a good grasp of the character. So, I was really happy to go back and feel like I had an opportunity to embed it.

Yeah, absolutely. There was a period between the release of the first season and when we started the second one. I was thinking a lot about how I was going to approach the next season. That’s the nice thing about recurring shows, they give an actor the opportunity to revisit and revise some things. It can be hard to do a job and feel that it hasn’t gone well. You just have to close the door on it. It’s nice to have the opportunity to go back to something on a TV show.

I think I’ve got better with that. I can kind of look back now on my body of work and I can see that there are moments and I remember what I was going through at that point in my life, and I think that’s no bad thing really. But, I try to put it behind me as best I can, because otherwise I think it’s pretty damaging if you’re ruminating on performances that you don’t like. The Internet does that enough for you, so you’ve got to be kind to yourself.

No. Sometimes I’m like, wow, I can’t believe I got to do that, but for a lot of them I think, God, I wish I could do that now! I’d be able to do a better job, is what I often think.

You want to keep driving forward, don’t you? God, I don’t think I’ll ever feel satisfied with a performance of mine. For example, I can look back at “Devs” and think, I can’t believe I’m lucky enough to play such an interesting character who goes through so much and has so many brilliant scenes. But am I happy with myself in it? No. But, I am at peace with myself in it. I think about that time in my life and what I was going through. That’s an amazing record to have, you have these time capsules in a way.

I don’t know, probably. I think if you go to that ballet school, you’re basically trained to look at what’s wrong with you on a daily basis. But, it’s just not uncommon, is it?

Right. I think that’s probably true.

I don’t know what I’m able to tell really, except that I had so much fun on that job with Naomi Scott, whose work I always admired. I felt like we had a kind of kinship, both being mixed race and probably had similar experiences in the industry. We just got on so well and I loved acting with her. I’m not a huge part of that movie, but it was such a beautiful, heartfelt script. And our relationship has a very key female friendship in it, where there’s a lot of honesty. It just really spoke to me and I loved working with her. We had such a laugh.

I watched “Anora” the other day. I thought it was brilliant. It has a really kind of nuanced and striking performance at the centre of it by Mikey Madison as a sex worker. It’s important for people to see that kind of portrayal of sex work, but also it’s a really fun time. It’s like a really entertaining movie. The whole cast are brilliant, so I loved it.

Oh my God — that’s so hard! I have no idea.  Definitely Anton Chigurh in “No Country for Old Men”. But also, Danny in “Grease” and Joanna Kramer in “Kramer vs Kramer”. I mean the options are endless! But those are some fun ones.

I think I am most excited about the fact that I’ve started writing, if I’m honest, because it’s given me agency. And it means that I’m not always waiting for a job. You know, I’m like self generating my own work. It has been really exciting and it’s been a huge relief as well.

My pleasure! Thank you for your very thoughtful questions.

Thank you, you too. And maybe I’ll bump into you in Glasgow!

(Laughs) That would be funny, wouldn’t it?