Tatyana Ali spent seven years of her life playing Ashley on “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.”
What drew you to this story?
I really like the idea.
I was really drawn to that.
I thought that was really amazing.
And then also the chance to play twins, at first, was totally exciting to me.
I rarely get that opportunity.
And I was like, “Whoa!
They thought of me for this?
I want to try.”
How’d you go about preparing to play these two very different characters?
Did you look into the real story?
It was all, kind of, written reports, so I looked into that.
I did the work that I usually do for a character, but it’s just double the work.
They come in with what they’re guessing, and we work together to create that relationship.
It was a really interesting experience to just be creating that relationship with myself.
And then also just to find I loved finding the nuance, like how do I differentiate them?
How do they hold themselves?
How do they love?
Because both sisters have their own relationships in the story.
And they’re both mothers.
How do they mother?
How is that different?
Yeah, that’s how I thought about it.
That was confusing to everyone on set, [Laughs] when those days were happening.
When I was Jada playing Kayla, versus Kayla being Kayla, versus Jada being Jada.
Yeah, and I think that those were probably the hardest days.
Things that she maybe kind of knew, but never really saw for her own eyes.
In some scenes, the two sisters are even interacting.
What was it like to play both characters in an interaction?
What were those days like on set?
It was Those days were actually kind of tedious, because the split-screen work is very exact.
You want to just, like, live the way you think you should be living.
And I relied very heavily on, like, the stand-ins that I was working with, you know?
And they’re not easy scenes, too.
They’re all about co-dependence and kind of trickery.
So that’s my first experience doing that.
I think it’s my first experience working with split screen, too.
Looking back, what was the most challenging part of filming “Vanished: Searching for My Sister”?
Because this is a dark movie.
I think the most challenging part for me was actually the violence.
The being gripped up, and, you know, [grabs at her throat].
It was hard, like, on those days.
And I’m working with amazing actors who, like, are actually scaring the crap out of me.
[Laughs] Like me, Tatyana.
And that’s the kind of stuff that I had to wash off, you know, every day.
That was the hardest part.
Do you have a favorite memory of playing Ashley?
What is my favorite memory?
Oh, my gosh.
There’s so many.
I don’t mean to be corny, but there really are.
It was just like a dream job.
Like every job kind of pales in comparison.
It’s where I learned to do comedy.
I had only done drama.
I’d done theater before that and dramas.
And so I learned how to be funny there.
And, you know, I was raised on that set, like they raised me.
So there’s so many good memories.
You know, it’s, like, I wanted to be grown.
They were making me I wanted to be like Hilary.
But I really think fondly about those things now.
[Laughs] Like my flower dresses and cowboy boots.
What did you first think when you heard about it?
I think it’s really ingenious.
But when that trailer first came out, I tweeted it.
I was like, “Oh, my gosh.
They totally got the essence of the story.”
And the essence is so good that it could be a comedy or it could be a drama.
I think that’s cool.
We’ve all been, like, texting each other and talking about it.
He’s an incredible person to work with, to be around.
Like, he makes everybody feel special.
You know what I’m saying?
And I mean that in a true way.
He’s just, like, naturally curious about life.
He’s just, like, curious and brilliant and lovely.
And you two still text each other?
[Laughs]
What do you think your character, Ashley, would be doing today?
Oh, I don’t know.
And I don’t know.
At the end, she was going off to performance school to, like, a performing arts college.
I don’t know.
Maybe she’s a playwright.
Maybe she’s I could see her as a playwright.
I could see her being like I don’t know.
Thinking of all those moments, I could see that.
Like a musical playwright or heading up some Like a Carmen de Lavallade or somebody fabulous like that.
I’ll take it from two angles.
Still very valuable to me.
It was so much of a challenge, and I really enjoyed it.
I would love to do sci-fi.
Like, if you have somebody’s attention, like, what are you going to say?
How are you going to enrich their lives and entertain them?
And it’s certainly from my education at “Fresh Prince.”
“Vanished: Searching for My Sister” premieres on Lifetime on Saturday, January 22 at 8 p.m./7c.
