Why did you conduct interview with Ertugrul Osman in Turkish when the rest of the film uses English?
Learning that HIH Prince Ertugrul Osman could speak Turkish broke one of my own stereotypes about how he would be. Because he had left Turkey before the new Turkish alphabet was launched in 1924, I had assumed that he would not speak Turkish. I was wrong. I decided also to let the audience know this man who had to live outside of his country for fifty years still taught himself Turkish and spoke the language well. But I later learned that he was much more relaxed and less “on guard” in English. It might therefore have been better to have interviewed him in English, as the language that he is most comfortable with. But this was not something I could have known at the outset. I decided to correct this imbalanced account of him by using English in my subsequent interview in Central Park. This relaxed scene contrasts with the formal interview in Turkish and helps communicate the warmth that was beginning to emerge between us.
