DNA surprise

We’ll talk about the movie in a bit, but first I wanted to ask you about you and your NPE experience. How did your discovery come about and what was your initial reaction?

I went about it just purely for fun. I heard that there were these DNA tests that were just on the market. I heard an ad on the radio that you could track your relatives over thousands of years. And I thought that that was so cool. And it was more like an experiment. Like, is this possible? And I’m sure it’s not real and it won’t work, but…. This was very at the beginning. And my husband and I bought the test just for the pure fun of it. And his results came back as he was told and mine did not. And it was so shocking. And the thing is, and I talk about this in the movie, it said that I had a grandfather who was 40, and I had just turned 40. So, okay, well, part of that seems right, because it’s the same age, but part of that seems wrong, because it’s a grandfather. And he was in the area I grew up. So okay, that also seems right. There was enough truth to it that I went on this journey to figure it out. And it was probably about three months later when I found out what the truth was. I’m donor conceived. My mom went to a fertility clinic, and it just was never a topic of conversation in our house. Completely shocking and awful, and it took me a long time to get to the place where I’m totally okay with it now, but it was a journey.

How did you find out the truth?

My mom finally told me. And the thing is, you know, at first there was a lot of anger and resentment, like, “How could you not tell me?” But at that time, my mom was kind of confused and she wasn’t really told the truth. She kind of just trusted what her doctor was doing to make me my father’s child. That’s what the doctor said: “I’m just going to do this little procedure, but this will be your husband’s child.” And it was just a different time where people didn’t really question the medical field and didn’t have the self-empowerment to say, well, let me Google that. This was many, many years ago, and doctors were so revered. None of her family knew. And it makes me sad to think she went through this really by herself. No one knew about it. There was so much shame, and it was so hidden. So in my movie, I try to really weigh both sides of it. I mean, there’s a part where I’m very angry at my mother, but then I’m kind of awful to her back. So I’m trying make it fair and balanced, but it’s pretty intense.

Was the anger about being a secret?

I just felt lied to. I felt betrayed, like, “How could you not tell me something so huge?” Also, and I talk about this in the movie, we had these family friends who adopted their children and decided they were just not going to tell them that they were adopted. And we were told as kids that they were adopted. Apparently my dad sat the parents down and said,” It’s very important that you tell your children they’re adopted. You know that one day they’re going to find out.” But then of all things, I was never told.

Did you find a lack of understanding about why it was so important to find out your truth? I mean, did you have that sort of “what difference does it make?” response?

Yes, 100%. And there are still certain members of my family that don’t understand why this is a big deal. “Who cares?” And my mom, she was like that with me at first. She’s like, “You’re here. You have a father. What’s the big deal?” And it’s something you either feel it or you don’t. My mom was very into this one British show where someone found out they were adopted and they were so hurt, and my mom’s heart went out to that person. And I’m like, “Mom, you know how you feel about that person?” But it’s almost like maybe her pain was so overwhelming for me that she just didn’t want to feel it. It’s easier to just stop it. But if it’s a character on a show, then you can give them all the full sympathy and tears. But through the years, it had really taken a lot for me to just help my mother to empathize with what I was going through. And when we did a Zoom the other day in an NPE Facebook group, they were still going through that, and it’s so awful and painful that the person who raised you, your mother, father, whatever, just cannot understand the pain. At the time, I didn’t know about these groups. I really did feel like I was the only person in the world going through this besides my half brother. And then, of course, I found so much family on these DNA websites, and that kind of bonds us together. It’s like we’re the only people in the world going through this.

There have been books about it now and there are Facebook groups and support groups and now my movie, you know, so hopefully it brings light to this very unique situation. Someone at one of my screenings brought up to me that not only was I born at the time when they were inventing this in vitro fertilization, but at the same time, I’m of the generation where the DNA tests are coming out. So it’s this double whammy of truth. It’s amazing that every person I talk to either this has had this happen to them or to someone very close to them. It’s so prevalent, way more than you could even imagine. And that is just coming to light because of these tests.

How long did it take before you learned that there were so many resources and support groups?

Well, I found out [about misattributed paternity] probably about 11 years ago and so I only learned about these support groups maybe a few months ago when a very famous article came out and circulated. I’m the only person my friends know that had the situation so everyone sent me this article. And I’m like, this is you. But from the article I learned the term NPE. I had never heard that before. So I thought let’s see what that is. And I looked at Facebook and whoa, there’s such a huge community.

In the film, I understand you and your mother go on a journey to learn about your truth. Did you have an actual journey or was that a film device you created?

The funny thing is—my movie’s a comedy—so you have to have a little suspension of disbelief. It’s a lot of fun and I bring a lot of humor to this very painful situation. In reality, the journey took about six years, but in my movie, it’s two weeks. So it’s an actual journey. It’s going from one person to another. But in real life, I hired a private detective. And this took months of him saying he was doing all this work and got nothing. And then wanted to charge me double. I said, “Well, what did you do?” He said, “I interviewed your mother.” But he didn’t have to interview my mother! And then he disappeared. I gave him a huge ton of money. And then he dropped off the face of the earth. So that’s a device in the movie where we’re actually going to the private investigator, but in real life, it was a six-month process. As soon as my mom kind of told me the truth and came clean, and because we love each other so much, she said, “You know what? This means a lot to you, and I’m going to help you as much as possible.” And she tried calling the doctor of the clinic she went to, but he had passed away. She tried to help me as much as she could. So there was a journey, just not as clean cut as in the movie.

At that time, genetic genealogy hadn’t become quite what it is today. So were you still able to rely on that to figure things since the detective didn’t do anything for you?

My half brother had done a different DNA test (Ancestry), just to confirm this insane truth before we had known how we were brought into this world. And on that website, one of our biological father’s actual sons—one from his family—had tested. He joined to see if his father had children, because he knew that his father had been a medical student and had donated. So he actually went searching for us and found us. So that’s how we ultimately found out who the biological father was.

How many have you found?

Half siblings? Well, the bio dad had three marriages of his own, and each one of them had three children, so that’s nine right there. And those were his children from his marriages. And then I have about four or five half siblings that I know about. But it started getting so overwhelming and so confusing. And so many cousins and first cousins, second cousins. And, between my own family, too, it got so confusing that I didn’t care anymore. So I took my data off of one of the major sites and it just didn’t really matter anymore. At first I thought, oh my God, found family. I’m going to connect with these people. But I don’t really feel that way now. 

But you connected with some, right?

Yes.

And did you feel like family?

No. Well, yeah, my half brother, we went on this journey together. This is the one who was as shocked as I was. He’s also an NPE who had just found out because of me testing. His mother had gone through the same procedure my mom did. So that bonded us, you know, just that shared shock and history and how we went on this journey. Me and him together. I’m also close with one of my biological father’s daughters from one of his marriages. And we became close because we’ve played Words with Friends together every single day for almost 10 years. 

I’m Jewish and it’s a very Jewish themed movie. So she recently came to my daughter’s bat mitzvah and my half-brother came too. And, I mean, I love them. I think they’re wonderful people, but I don’t know if I consider them like my sister and brother. That’s just such a special, different relationship that’s saved just for the brother and sister I was raised with.

Did you have any difficulty bringing a Jewish film into existence? Was there resistance to this?

Oh, yes. Our movie was finally completed and all of a sudden October 7th happened right before we went to submit it into the major film festivals. And instantly we were denied. There were so many protests against having any Jewish content. It really hurt the movie. At that time, our foreign salesperson was talking to people in Europe and they said, “We don’t want to touch a Jewish movie.” So that really hurt us because that was our major way of getting in the world. What’s really interesting is I said to a friend of mine, a Jewish friend, “I cannot believe the timing. What are the chances that this would happen? No one wants to see a Jewish movie. There’s so much anti Semitism right now.” And he’s said well maybe then your movie is actually at the perfect time because it’s such a celebration of identity for every religion. You’ll see it’s very multicultural, it’s coming together, it’s unity, saying that we have more in common than we are different. At the end of the day it’s just DNA, and we probably share more DNA than we even realize. And so with that in mind I thought I’d try to send it to a Jewish Film festival. I sent it to the Miami Jewish Film Festival, which is the biggest in the world. And they accepted it overnight. They called me the next morning to say they wanted the movie to premiere at the festival. And since then, I’ve been in tons of Jewish film festivals. But at the same time, it’s really not just a Jewish movie because it’s multicultural. And so that opened the door to the festival world and then this theatrical release. It’s a movie for everyone. There’s a lot of Jewish themes just because I am Jewish. I use a lot of Yiddish and my mom uses a lot of Yiddish—she’s so silly that way, and that’s part of the comedy.

At one point in the film, the character you play says, “If my father’s not my father, then who am I?” Tell me about how this affected your sense of identity.

My father was the kindest, most intelligent man. He was a strong, strong man, but gentle, and I feel like so much of who I am is because of him. He’s someone I always looked up to and emulate, and if I had a problem, I’d go to him. So level headed. I always kind of connected more with his family than my mom’s family and always leaned more toward him. I thought we looked more alike physically. My body shape was more his. And then to find out that none of me is from him was just earth shattering. I tried to put this in the movie, but it was hard. I think what I’ll say will make more impact than what you’ll see in the movie. My little one was a baby at the time. And every night I would hold her and rock her to sleep. She had this sweet, round face with this gentle smile that I knew was my dad. That was my dad. And I would look at her every night and just feel so connected to him. And the day I found out, I looked at her and I felt like her face disappeared to me. Oh, my God! Like, what am I looking at? You know, if that’s not him, it was the saddest thing. I just felt disconnected. And through the years—I’ve talked about this so much with friends, with my friends who’ve adopted children—about the whole concept of nature versus nurture and how it’s so true that an adopted child starts looking like the parents, and so much of it is the facial expressions and the temperament that you take on. So it’s possible I do look like my father because I’ve taken on so much of his personality. And through me, she’s taken on so much of that. So it actually was my father I was seeing.

You didn’t find out you weren’t Jewish, but just that you were less Jewish? Did that matter much to you at the time?

It mattered in that my whole life people told me I don’t look Jewish. My whole life, as an actor, I can never play Jewish roles. I was denied. They wouldn’t even see me because my hair’s too light and I have blue eyes. They only want dark hair and dark eyes to play Jewish. It’s that stereotype. It turns I’m half British. And I’m such an Anglophile so that was kind of cool. So yes and no. And in the movie, it’s a a very big deal, and that’s definitely much more dramatized. But I don’t know. I feel like with Judaism, anyone can be Jewish if they want to be; they go through the conversion process. So I really feel like your religion is what’s in your heart more than your genetics.

What role if any did grief play in your reaction?

It was awful at first. I really felt like I had to mourn my father again. It felt like he died again. And it brought his death to the forefront. My father had passed away about 20 years ago. Oh my gosh…it’s probably about 30 at this point. But when this happened, it was fresh. It was like it just happened again. So that was huge. I thought that meeting my biological father would be just really interesting and cool and maybe just like another source of family and connection. He passed away about two weeks after I found out about him. So that was such a bummer to me. But I did see pictures of him and got to get a sense of who he was. He does kind of look like me.

Can you give a little synopsis of the premise of the film?

It’s about a woman who on her 40th birthday gets the results of a DNA test that explode her life. And this is all in the backdrop of her planning her daughter’s bat mitzvah, so it’s the insanity of the family coming, everyone coming together, the Judaism, the fact that she feels so connected to her father who’s going to get her through this, and then all of a sudden, everything shattered. The family shattered, her Judaism shattered, and her mom flies in to be part of the bat mitzvah and ends up going on this DNA journey with her. And will the bat mitzvah happen? Will it not happen?

Stay tuned. 

Exactly.

Your film is based on a true story, but it’s not a true story. And you’ve said, “I was staying close to the real story and then realized that I didn’t want to put that energy into the world.” I think an audience of NPE readers can handle the darker side. Is there any aspect you haven’t yet mentioned that you think was part of that darker side?

Yes. I was at a screening recently and a woman had come to the screening because she just thought that this was a fun Jewish comedy. She didn’t know really what it was about. And it turned out that she had just found out that she’s an NPE. And she was devastated. She said, “I see you’re okay with it. Do you think I’m gonna be okay with it too?” And I said the biggest thing was that I’d had 11 years to process it. And that it takes time. And I did have therapy. I have a therapist anyway, just because…life. So I had support. I talked to my mom about it and, thank goodness, she was okay with it, kind of. You know, with having these very difficult conversations. It takes time. I think that’s something everyone needs to realize. My movie is a fantasy in that it takes two weeks of me being completely devastated to okay with it.  When I first started writing the movie, it was so dark, so dramatic. And yes, I didn’t want to put that energy into the world just because we’re so divided politically and there’s so much happening right now that I decided I wanted to add lightness to the world and not more drama than we already have. But in terms of the NPE thing, that the message that I want to give.

Do you think your journey would have been easier had you known about all the resources early on? Do you think it would have made much of a difference or would you still have had to have gone through the same journey?

I definitely think I would have had to go through the same stuff, but at least I would know that I’m not alone going through it. And that there is so much support out there and mental health support. You know, we did the Zoom the other day and there were things that were brought up and I thought, “Oh my God, yes, I felt that way too.” I just really felt that I was the only person in the world who felt that way.

Turning the dramatic story into a comedy made me think of the ending of Annie Hall. Do you remember that?

Oh my God! I love that because as soon as you said the words turning this into a comedy, I was going to say it’s a comedy in the way Woody Allen’s movies are comedies. What’s happened with him is a tragedy, and all of that aside, I grew up watching his movies, and that’s the way I think—that in these very serious situations, there’s a comedic spin on everything. So, yes, yes, yes, yes.

And not just a comedic spin, I think. What struck me was…I haven’t seen it in a long time but what I remember is that in the end he rewrites his story as a play and makes it favorable to him—gives it a better outcome, and I saw that as being kind of a way of taking charge of the narrative and transforming one’s experience. Was it like that for you—were you transforming your own story in a way that gave you a different kind of power? 

Absolutely. And also a big thing about it is my relationship with my mom. And as I said before, I didn’t want to do a movie where I’m just bashing my mother. But in making fun of myself, making fun of the situation, it added a level of lightness in that I can remove myself from it and look at it, you know? It is a source of empowerment to say look at this insane thing that happened to me! Let’s all laugh about it. The way my husband likes to look at it, he says people say one day we’re going to look back at this and laugh. He’s like, well, we just didn’t want to wait that long. We just laugh about it now.

I don’t like to use the word cathartic. I don’t think it’s useful. But do you find there’s something about creating that in itself feels healing? 

I hope so. I haven’t felt the benefit of it, so I don’t know. Everyone keeps saying to me it must have been such a cathartic experience. I don’t know about that. For me, I feel like I’m just exposing who I am, which doesn’t really feel that good. But I think all artists do that on some level. Some days it’s painful. Other days, it’s like you know… whatever. But yeah, it doesn’t feel good. It doesn’t feel healing. What feels healing is knowing I’ve touched people. That actually feels good to me, knowing that maybe I’ve made someone laugh about it.

Alesia Weiss (creator of the resource center NPEN-nursing for NPEs and the Facebook groups DNA Identity Surprise and This NPE Life), is probably the only NPE who has seen the movie and she was so touched by it. She’s seen it multiple times, and that means the world to me. That’s who I would get that feel that feeling of knowing that I touched people like me. Me and my half-brother, too. He’s seen the movie and loves it and supports it and is posting about it. So he, too, really feels that it depicts his journey and just the insanity of it and the lightness of it. It definitely feels good to me to know that.

I read a review of the film—it was a good review—but the reviewer got at something we talked about a little bit before. After saying how much she liked it, she wrote, “I thought it was odd that the protagonist kept saying how her life was completely destroyed with the news of her newly revealed ancestry.” First, I was struck by the understatement of “surprising” and also the assumption that there would be loving reception from new family and that it would be a happy thing. I get the sense that even after you demonstrate in this film what these feelings are like and what happens, people will still say, “What’s the big deal?” And I’m wondering if you think there’s a sense that unless they’ve been through this, it’s very hard for people to understand.

I know. 100%. Yeah. Recently, someone at the end of one of the screenings came up to me and said, “I just wanted to say, it doesn’t matter. It’s whoever raised you. It’s whoever loves you, and you should be so happy that you had such a loving mother.”  And it’s like, yes…and. Yes/and.  It’s really, unless you know, you don’t know…..It’s a feeling, it’s a mixture of anger, betrayal, feeling duped, just feeling stupid, feeling empty. Confused. Who am I? Sometimes people will get it in terms of the medical aspect.

What do you most want people to take away from the film?

It really depends on who’s watching it, but my movie is all about love. Love is the main theme of the movie. And it doesn’t matter if you’re related by DNA or if you’re not, my movie is about the love of your family, however that looks. There are many communities that feel represented in that it’s about chosen family, like the family you’ve had to acquire because maybe the family you were born with has rejected you for whatever you are. So it’s about that, it’s about unity, it’s about knowing that we are more connected than we’re different, which I think is so important right now politically. Just everything feels insane, so acceptance of who we are, no matter our gender, our sexual orientation, our religion, our race—that’s what the main goal of my movie is. It’s a little lofty. But if I can tell one person…

A little bit of the uplifting is what we need. How can readers help bring the film to their areas?

Well, the movie, sadly, will only be an AMC theaters till Thursday right now. But I think December 1st, it will be available on demand. If you see One Big Happy Family on your television, please download it, please share it, go to our website where you’ll find all the information about where you’ll be able to see it.

Is it likely it’ll stream before too long?

As of December 1^st  it’ll be on every television, but you have to buy it as a pay-per-view, direct on demand kind of thing. And then after that, probably in the new year, it will stream.