In Conversation With Hollywood Rising Star Mari Yamamoto
In Hikari's heartwarming film Rental Family—which is about an American actor who lands an unusual gig with a Japanese agency to play stand-in roles for strangers—Mari Yamamoto plays a woman whose connection to her work is far beyond transactional. She deeply cares about and for the people she is helping. Over a Zoom call in late November, the Japanese actress makes note of that word "care" as a common through line in the characters she plays, saying she's often cast as the person who cares the most. She's a self-described sensitive and deeply feeling person herself, so it's only fitting she's drawn to such roles.
Yamamoto's road to acting has been filled with many creative detours. There was her early aspiration to be a violinist. (She played solo as well as in an orchestra.) Then she had a short stint in a high school rock band. After college, she worked as an editor for one of her favorite Japanese culture magazines until the demanding schedule led to burnout followed by a brief period in creative advertising. It was during this stressful time that Yamamoto found comfort in watching movies and television late at night. She became somewhat of a cinephile, although acting wasn't even on her radar as a career pursuit until she saw Sandra Oh in Grey's Anatomy. Inspired by the Asian representation in American entertainment and tired of the corporate grind, she picked up and moved to New York City to study acting at the esteemed Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute. She spent her time in the city performing in a series of off-Broadway productions before having to return to Japan. While back home, she met American journalist Jake Adelstein and returned to writing, covering politics and social issues for The Daily Beast for six years. When Adelstein's book, Tokyo Vice, was optioned to be a series on HBO, he brought her back to New York to be in the writer's room. Shortly after that, her screen career started to take off with roles in back-to-back Apple TV+ shows, Pachinko and Monarch: Legacy of Monsters.
Today, as she stacks up notable credits and makes headway on personal projects, Yamamoto's career sits firmly at the intersection of writing and acting. She is, after all, a storyteller at heart. Putting care into the performances she gives on-screen and the words she puts to the page, Yamamoto is proving herself a name to watch.
Rental Family is cowritten and directed by the Japanese filmmaker Hikari, who you credit as a personal icon. Can you tell me about the opportunity to work with her?
I've been a fan of hers for a long time. I'd seen all of her stuff, and when I saw her first feature, 37 Seconds, I just thought, "Oh, this is the future of Japanese cinema." She works in the U.S., but we need somebody like that who knows Japan from the inside and outside to be able to depict it in a way that resonates and travels. So I was really excited.
I received this script a month after my father had passed, so it was finally exciting to receive a script of hers and have a chance to be seen by her, but it was really the script that had so many themes of fatherhood that really moved me. It really felt like a sign from my dad saying, "You're gonna find love. Don't worry. You're gonna find people who care about you." I was instantly in love with the script and the character, and I thought, "I have to do this." It was right before the strikes, so it was like a seven-month process of auditioning, stops and goes, and I finally got it. It was incredible.
I love that it came to you at such an impactful time. Prior to working on this, how familiar were you with the concept of rental families in Japan, and what was your first impression?
