Awakening with Tuba Büyüküstün

When do you realize that summer has arrived?

Is it when the music gets louder? Or when you hop in a car with your friends and hit the road for a long-distance drive? When you start collecting moments where troubles mix with laughter around rakı tables? Or maybe during the hours chasing one another under the sun that dries your salty hair? Being one or being together… Which one feels closer to you? 

Another Self is a work filled with equations that turn all the improbabilities into possibilities throughout the journey of three different women who hit the road to search for a way out of their disrupted lives. And here we have Tuba Büyüküstün, bringing Ada into reality with all her purity, a character who is responsible for rediscovering herself and uncovering her unexplored facets in the midst of all this chaos! Tuba’s first encounter with Ada is very familiar, though equally new and exciting. “In some ways the character Ada was very similar to me, and in other ways, she’s nothing like me at all. She touched a part of a past version of Tuba instead of the Tuba at the moment I met the Ada character,” she says. The story of Tuba and Ada reflects all the flaws in their seemingly perfect lives through our shared human emotions, and brings the feeling of being seen to the surface. “What is the common concern of all beings in this life? To be seen… We all want to be seen. We want our emotions to be seen, our bodies to be seen, and even our willingness to be invisible to be seen. We want to be heard and understood.” On the other hand, there are some roles that are programmed into us. The emotions that guide us to become an ideal and righteous individual from the moment we’re born, the idealized actions that promise a good life. But how do we overcome the memories embedded in our DNA and the emptiness we cannot escape from? Another Self helps you find new answers to these questions every time you watch, and it touches somewhere deep within with the most familiar emotions. It portrays a real world where, through friendship, family, building your own family, or the friends who become family, you can experience summer in every season.

Duygu: How would you describe Another Self to those who have never seen the series, have never heard of it, and have no information about it?

Tûba: Another Self tells the story of three close friends with distinct personalities who embark on a journey caused by one of them’s terminal illness diagnosis. This journey becomes both a physical and a spiritual one. All three characters have their own rigid sides and life tests them on these aspects. What they deem impossible happens upon them, and they find themselves doing things they’ve never imagined they would. In this journey they find out about the method of family constellation therapy.

Duygu: Were you introduced to family constellation therapy through the series? How do you see yourself in terms of personal experience?

Tûba: I got acquainted with family constellation therapy a few years before I received the script for the series. What led me to it were the questions it posed that were very similar to those asked by epigenetics. As a child, I used to dream of becoming a genetic engineer. The magnificence of the human body and its functions, the genetic traits that differentiate us from one another have always interested me. I am still intrigued by the question, “Are these effects passed on to future generations?”

Duygu: I believe understanding the reasons behind things come into play right there. There are actions that we like or dislike reflectively. There are situations in which we don’t know why we behave a certain way or why specific traits are ingrained in us. This involves both the concept of collective consciousness and genetic memory…

Tûba: Life continuously changes, we constantly gain new information. Someday we may learn that none of this is real. I don’t know, we can’t know. 

Duygu: We all have a desire to search for meaning. 

Tûba: What is the common concern of all beings in this life? To be seen… We all want to be seen. We want our emotions to be seen, our bodies to be seen, and even our willingness to be invisible to be seen. We want to be heard and understood.

Duygu: Life brings with it a transformation, we are constantly in a state of change. Another Self has a polyphonic structure which touches a different part of you each time you watch it. It resonates with many common points based both on seasons and episodes. These are the emotions we have definitely experienced at one point in life around family, relationships, or friendship. Inspecting it as an actor, is it more challenging to portray emotions you can internalize? On the other hand, you are trying to build a completely new character, striving to differentiate it from Tuba. How did it affect you?

Tûba: After all, I portray all the characters by differentiating from Tuba. I believe all the emotions exist in all people. It’s only that we have different control mechanisms and limits to our reactions.

Duygu: It’s about how you interpret the story and the things you can add to it throughout the journey.

Tûba: We know that a completely different character will come up if you cast a different actor for the same role, even if the script remains the same. But the result would also be completely different if I played this character 10 years ago. Furthermore, if I interpreted the Ada character in season 2 today, probably I would have acted very differently. Because we keep changing constantly and our life experiences continue to grow.

Duygu: Sometimes it’s a matter of choice to go with the flow and be less aware. While Ada doesn’t seem very interested in this and has a seemingly easy and comfortable life, we are faced with many situations where we understand things are not what they seem.

Tûba: On the outside Ada is a successful surgeon; someone who has a good job, a happy marriage, a very beautiful house and a car. So she appears to be living an ideal life from the outside. “But how long can we continue to inspect our own lives from the outside? What are the chances of getting to know yourself when you choose to live a life through the eyes of others?” and “How much more can you camouflage yourself to avoid seeing yourself?”

Duygu: Can we define it as seeing only the big picture from the outside? Even though we might feel close to them, the people around us are very superficial when it comes to looking inside.

Tûba: We all seem to desire building real relationships. Those that go deep… But we also want it to be easy, with no challenges. Yet, true depth cannot be achieved solely with convenience. This is about your point of view. When you start to see the beauty inside the darkness of that depth, easiness follows. The darkness begins to unfold and you start looking at things from a different perspective. You dive into a reality different from what you knew on the surface.

Sometimes you create your own luck, and sometimes it comes to you. It is important to realize and understand that.”

Tuba Büyüküstün

Duygu: But what happens when you try to follow through with this perspective in your life? You’re not alone; different people, different factors come into play in your life. At this point, I’m curious about your individuality.

Tûba: Even though I sway with external factors and occasionally crash against the shore, I know that there is no other solution to finding balance than to turn inward and look at myself.

Duygu: I think that was the most unrealistic side of the series. Three people together, facing challenges hand in hand is sadly something that happens only on the screen nowadays.

Tûba: We come across this criticism a lot. All women express their longing for such a friendship. Of course we don’t know about the story up until that point. But I think these three friends, while being somewhat separated from each other in the turmoil of their own lives, become committed to each other due to Sevgi’s illness.

Duygu: The moments we want to penetrate deep, the moments we are wounded about; but always led by our own needs, from our own perspective. Does being lucky outweigh creating your own luck?

Tûba: I think it’s both. Sometimes you create your own luck, and sometimes it comes to you. It is important to realize and understand that.

Duygu: Ada says, “It’s better to be alone than be disappointed.” Do you agree with that?

Tûba: I believe it’s better to be alone than experiencing something shallow. At least I continue to do it in my own reality, throughout the relationship within myself. In fact, it certainly involves some fear. The fear of disappointment…

Duygu: Your rationality parallels Ada’s character perfectly. This results in Tuba creating a remarkable Ada.

Tûba: I started building Ada’s character with the notion that this woman is a surgeon. She doesn’t panic, so probably she doesn’t experience very elevated emotions. Throughout these years I observed that the profession of one’s choosing affects their character. Or you do that job good or poorly because of your character traits.

Duygu: The mission of savior is assigned to those who are too cognizant, too aware, and a little rational… Do you experience and feel this in your life?

Tûba: I think that those who take on the role of savior are often the ones who truly need to be saved. Those who assume or accept this role seem to be silently crying out, “Save me!” 

Duygu: Season 2 of Another Self starts with the question “Is it possible to feel sufficient today if we felt lonely and helpless in our first breath on Earth?” And I see the whole journey as an awakening, entering our lives as a story of awakening from the life we ​​live today and what we will discover later. We realize that the seemingly perfect lives of the characters weren’t so perfect in fact, or they live by the lies they believe, and that their lives can spin in a completely different direction. All in all, it actually is a story of awakening. What do you think?

Tûba: There’s this definition of an ideal life that was defined for us at the moment we were born. We are striving to achieve those very ideals throughout our lives: A good marriage, dutiful child, a good job… These are the things we absorb unconsciously through the repetitions of this world’s system. 

If at some point you dare to ask yourself who you were, you start to face a reality beyond the one you’ve known until that day. Then, the things you’ve pursued throughout your life start to lose their meaning. Needless to say, this is a risk…

If at some point you dare to ask yourself who you were, you start to face a reality beyond the one you’ve known until that day. Then, the things you’ve pursued throughout your life start to lose their meaning. Needless to say, this is a risk…”

Tuba Büyüküstün

Duygu: Life is actually a part of a multivariable equation. Among all these variables, how possible is it for you to remain Tuba?

Tûba: From the moment we are born, we grow up being exposed to outside voices. Our inner voice doesn’t even belong to us… The voice in our head is our mother’s, father’s, friends’, the system’s. In order to remain Tuba, I need to find the real Tuba, free from those voices. 

Duygu: Do you think you’ve found her now?

Tûba: No, but I’m still on a journey to find out.

Duygu: What was the scene that moved you most in the second season of Another Self?

Tûba: Ada embarks on a new journey of love, a journey to get to know someone, and at that first moment she poses a self-protecting stance. It’s a state that was conveyed through a few scenes. That withdrawal, that protection; because she’s been hurt so deeply and can’t be remotely sure it won’t happen again. Something many of us have experienced, in fact. While keeping a very soft place inside, she snaps and throws her harsh words around. And then later she says, “I’m scared, I can’t do it, if I do this, I’ll fall apart.”

Duygu: What does it feel like viewing your own work; furthermore, awaiting the airing process, and accepting the comments during that period as an actor?

Tûba: It is a very exciting process, particularly if you are doing something you believe in and love. It’s like waiting for the birth of a baby…

Talent Tûba Büyüküstün

Creative Direction by Duygu Bengi

Directed by Abdullah Yazıc

DOP Adem Ustaoğlu

Fashiıon Editor Murat Şentürk

Hair by İbrahim Zengin

Make Up by Hakan Kültür

Set Design Yeşim Yeşilçimen

Creative Production by BI Creative

Creative Team Belgin Demirhan, Seher Tosun, Şevval Küçüktır, Tunga Yankı Tan

Gaffer Okan Ataş

Director Assistant The Post Brothers

Fashion Team Birce Naz Köş, Efe Batur, Zehra Gülce Çetin

Camera Assitants Fatih Duman, Ahmet Toğrul

Make Up Assistant Duygu Baske

Hair Assistant Merve Rüzgar

Gaffer Assistants Arda Seyrek, Anıl Sever, Ali Şimşek