Turkish star Serkan Çayoğlu is at the Red Sea International Film Festival in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and came into the Deadline studio to talk about his life and career, which spans roles in dramas, historical epics and rom-coms.
Çayoglu was in the Netflix culture-clash rom-com She Said Maybe. The pic follows a woman born in Germany and who finds she is part of a super-rich Turkish dynasty based in Istanbul. “It was light, of course, it’s a romantic comedy, it was about the differences between German and Turkish people,” said Çayoglu, who was born in Germany. “There were the cultural aspects about Turkish people who lived in Germany…there was a clash of two cultures, and we wanted to show the German people what it was like to live in the real Turkey.”
At the other end of the scale is period drama Mehmed: Sultan of Conquests that cast Çayoglu as Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II, and also known as Mehmed the Conqueror. There are the requisite battles, horse-riding, and swordplay, but the actor told us he wanted to get under the skin of the famed leader.
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“Everyone in Turkey or in this region has a picture of Sultan Mehmed, but nobody knows him,” Çayoglu said. “I wanted to show his human side. He has so much power, but what about Mehmed the father, or Mehmed when he’s on his own, his motivations, his angers, his feelings.”
Turkish series are increasingly popular globally with notable hotspots. “They’re watched all over the world, especially in the Middle East and South America, of course, and some countries in Asia,” Çayoglu said, noting a cultural affinity that connects all of those places. “I think with those people, and of course, those in Italy and Spain, the Mediterranean people, we have something in common; the way we live, our emotions, bring us together.”