A meeting with Alexandra Nikiforova, the leading actress in the popular Russian-Turkish TV series ‘Sultan of My Heart’, was held at the Moscow House of Nationalities on Valentine's Day. A large-scale television project was broadcasted on the First Channel in January. The magical oriental tale of love of the Ottoman Sultan Mahmud II and the French teacher from the Russian Empire, Anna, won the hearts of Russian television viewers.
The action of the film takes place at the beginning of the XIX century in Istanbul. The series was filmed in Turkish and dubbed into Russian for broadcasting in Russia. On St. Valentine's Day, Alexandra Nikiforova began the meeting by reading a poem about love.
Your love craves for so much,
Sobbing, asking, blaming ...
Love him silently and strictly,
Love him, slowly melting.
Be a white flame for him
Smokeless, innocent and limp.
Love him with your body,
And love with your heart painfully.
The actress told the guests of the evening about how the Turkish project was filmed, the language barrier and some incidents at the film set: “When the offer came to go to Turkey for auditions, I was not very serious about them. Turkish cinema was like science fiction for me. After the first stage of auditions in Moscow, we and two other actresses went to Istanbul for the pair auditions with the potential partners. One of them was Ali Ersan Duru who played the role of Mahmud II eventually. Only when the request came to go to Istanbul I started to believe that it was a reality and something interesting was happening in my life.”
In proof of the fact that the cinema has no limits, the actress told about the first days on the set: “July, Izmit is a small town near Istanbul. The film studio is a pavilion with an iron roof. The heat is incredible, we are wearing heavy historical costumes. I am dressed, with my make-up on, we are already on the set and ... I don’t understand anything. The language of cinema is an international creative process, you can always guess who the costume designer is, who the operator is, but I did not understand what those people were saying. Long, long auditions, a long process with some short breaks. Suddenly, they took some evening snack, they all come out of the hot pavilion with a red-hot roof into the street. There was a long, long table, benches, they all sat down, the Turkish snack chi köfte was brought. Everyone set together and the tension went away immediately. The sun was setting and it was an amazing moment of the brotherhood - everyone was eating bread, everyone was happy, no matter who believed in what God, spoke what language, everyone did one thing, we all had a common international cause. And there was friendship - one sun sets for everyone. It was wonderful.”
“Soon, I was more or less able to speak in Turkish. I had very strong support. All my friends, all my Turkish partners had a great understanding of my situation. Probably, it was written on my forehead that I was afraid not to be able to play 24 episodes in Turkish. Even before the shooting, I understood, that if I didn’t learn this language at least a little bit, then nothing would happen. I felt pressure due to this responsibility. But everything comes with experience,” Nikiforova said.
