City of Secrets: The new drama from the duo that created Turkey’s most sold series of 2016
This fall season FOX launched new action drama City of Secrets, starring superstars Erkan Petekkaya, Songül Öden and Dolunay Soysert and directed by acclaimed director Cevdet Mercan. The new hit series focuses on the story of Ali Kemal Ateş, a man with many secrets who has infiltrated the mafia to help expose its biggest boss, but falls in love with his daughter. Tangled up in secrets and lies, he has to find a way to save Istanbul and his family.
Georgi R. Chakarov met with Erkan and Cevdet in Cannes during the international premiere of City of Secrets. The two were reunited for this project following the success of Broken Pieces, which became the most sold Turkish drama in 2016. The star actor and director shared their excitement about making such a complicated project, taking Turkish drama to a new international level with lots of action drama and tough life choices for the main character – a man with three faces.
Erkan Petekkaya, Dolunay Soy, Songül Öden and director Cevdet Mercan.
Erkan, Cevdet, you are back together working on the thrilling new drama City of Secrets. What has been the reaction of people to this new hit that you’re bringing to the international market?
Cevdet: I’m actually really happy with the reaction we’ve had and the reception we’ve had. We’re still in production, so we don’t really have time with that much going on. Last night we stopped shooting at 2 am. I went to edit and straight from editing I got on a plane and I’m here now.
Erkan: It seems all this work we do to reach other people is what gives us energy and motivation to go around 24 hours non-stop and go out there. Because it’s not about the money or the fame. It’s about getting to as many people as possible, getting the show out. Otherwise we can just shoot ourselves on our phones and watch it for ourselves. We’re not making it for us, we’re making it for the people to see, so it’s good to see that it’s getting out there.
Erkan, how does it feel for you to be living with your character 24/7?
Erkan: I’m able to separate the two, because otherwise I can’t live my life. I can turn it off until we say “action”. I really try to separate my personal life and work, it’s a funny thing, because I’ve done hundreds of TV shows and my wife has only come to see me once. I did theater for years but I never wanted to have my parents come, because I needed to just keep working and my personal life separate. It makes me uncomfortable for them to see me as not me, so I need to focus.
You have definitely turned into one of the most recognizable faces of Turkish drama and all the emotions such productions bring to the audience. What is the new emotion that this new series will bring to you and to the audience?
Erkan: Of course, the other series I’ve done in Turkey, I’ve sold everywhere in the world, but they are still very Turkish at the core. But this one from the very beginning has always been considered as a big international project, with more international appeal and has more potential to go even further internationally. For me, this one stands out differently in that way. Because of that, the attention and energy I spent on trying to bring this character alive is a little bit different, and because of that the result is different too. This project is an action drama, so it is a unique new type of show for Turkey. I basically play a character that has three big chunks of his life in the show, so I have to play three different ‘feels’ and essentially I’m playing three different characters – that alone is another challenge and a new approach for me as an actor, too.
If we think about action drama that has been aired in Turkey, in order to orient the viewers, how would you place the show?
Cevdet: It’s somewhat closer to Ezel – still much more drama, with some action, and Backstreets has a lot of action, but the drama is kind of secondary. Ours, they’re both feeding each other, they’re both in together, so the drama, the story and then the action are all feeding each other. There’s a lot of family in this, there’s the mafia connection, there’s world, global themes that play into this, and there really hasn’t been anything that tackles such a big chunk and so many different elements with one show. In Turkey, with the setup, there’s not really a setup to pull of an international scale action drama. It takes up a lot of time and resources and energy, effort, so there’s never really a lot of attention given to it[action], but we were able to do it under those very difficult conditions, we were able to pull off an international scale production. To me, an action-oriented show, if it doesn’t have good drama behind it, is like food without salt. In Hollywood, they can have three Ferrari’s crash and then a fourth falling on top of them and then an airplane and a boat explode – we can’t beat that, of course, but we have a lot of drama to really support what we’re doing as well.
You mentioned Hollywood and as I understood, the producers are based in the US. How close are you cooperating with them on developing the scripts, the whole production and process?
Cevdet: Of course, especially in the developing stages of a project, there’s a lot of back and forth discussion, especially since the project was meant to be international, but there is a reality and it shows so we have to shoot 120 minutes in six days and this is rather crazy. We have as much input as we can in the realistic schedule that we can do, but of course it’s a lot of back-and-forth communication. We also have somebody in the Istanbul industry to help speed that up.
Let’s go back to the story. Erkan, you have a relationship with a girl, who is connected to a criminal guy who you are actually trying to put behind bars, and at the same time you have your own family. Could you explain in detail?
Erkan: My character, because of his job, is trying to get close to his enemy’s sister, trying to get in that organization, so as his duty to his job and the country and everything, he’s doing this, but of course what starts as a job can flower into something real and that’s where a lot of the drama comes from. The themes are love or work, or love or family. In work, love or family – it’s like a Bermuda triangle that puts us in a unique position.
It’s been a really fun project. This project has been developed, from the very beginning, everyone has been working so hard on it and we are trying to make into something people can buy and you can watch in Argentina, in Bulgaria, the Balkans. It’s hard but very fulfilling to design a project that can fit such a wide spectrum, to make this project it requires 5-6 years as we’re doing this, but we’re competing with giants like Hollywood that have been doing this forever, and we’re succeeding.
Erkan, you are one character but with three different roles. Do you have a favorite among these three and which do you think the audience will like best or hate the most?
Erkan: They’re three, but they’re the same. It’s like having coffee with milk and sugar – if you take one out, it’s not the same, so you can’t separate them, that’s what makes the character so fun to play. And the thing that makes it harder is that there’s not very sharp lines that separate them, they’re a little blurred, so it’s very subtle. The transitions are subtle, otherwise the audience will get lost.
You can’t do this by yourself, you need somebody you can trust who says “oh, there’s too much milk” or “there’s too much sugar”, and you can’t do that with just anybody it needs to be someone you can trust.
So, is that a nightmare job for you, Cevdet?
Erkan: He’s a graduate of Political Science, so that’s taught him to be really patient and because of that I don’t think it’s a nightmare, that’s why I’m able to trust him that much. I can just close my eyes and trust him. We’re doing 120 minutes every six days, imagine if we could do one episode in a month, imagine what we could do with that kind of resources.
Cevdet: To design this project from the beginning, because also it’s a very big cast, we found people that we knew or have worked with before, and we really designed these things for their abilities. A lot of projects are more like checkers, where this has been a lot likes chess, where this person is a good tassel, and this person is a good queen, and you put things in place, that’s why the interconnection of these characters is so organic. The thing that makes me happy is that the whole cast has been amazing. That’s the art part of this – you can do this and make all of these people all over the world feel something. It’s amazing to think that someone in Chile, or Indonesia or wherever can watch something we did in Turkey and feel an emotion, and maybe get teary-eyed or get excited, that’s why we’re doing this.
What has been the reaction so far in Turkey and do people in Turkey realize that the series that they’re watching now will be watched by the whole world?
Cevdet: The very first time it was so different than everything else that at first people weren’t sure what to do, but once they realized that “oh, they’re doing something different”, every week it has been climbing like crazy, really steadily. We’re trying to build something, and we’re really trying to do it properly. The cool thing is that we found our core audience and it isn’t leaving the show no matter what and now we’re adding more and more people every week. ▪
Cevdet: I’m actually really happy with the reaction we’ve had and the reception we’ve had. We’re still in production, so we don’t really have time with that much going on. Last night we stopped shooting at 2 am. I went to edit and straight from editing I got on a plane and I’m here now.
Erkan: It seems all this work we do to reach other people is what gives us energy and motivation to go around 24 hours non-stop and go out there. Because it’s not about the money or the fame. It’s about getting to as many people as possible, getting the show out. Otherwise we can just shoot ourselves on our phones and watch it for ourselves. We’re not making it for us, we’re making it for the people to see, so it’s good to see that it’s getting out there.
Erkan, how does it feel for you to be living with your character 24/7?
Erkan: I’m able to separate the two, because otherwise I can’t live my life. I can turn it off until we say “action”. I really try to separate my personal life and work, it’s a funny thing, because I’ve done hundreds of TV shows and my wife has only come to see me once. I did theater for years but I never wanted to have my parents come, because I needed to just keep working and my personal life separate. It makes me uncomfortable for them to see me as not me, so I need to focus.
You have definitely turned into one of the most recognizable faces of Turkish drama and all the emotions such productions bring to the audience. What is the new emotion that this new series will bring to you and to the audience?
Erkan: Of course, the other series I’ve done in Turkey, I’ve sold everywhere in the world, but they are still very Turkish at the core. But this one from the very beginning has always been considered as a big international project, with more international appeal and has more potential to go even further internationally. For me, this one stands out differently in that way. Because of that, the attention and energy I spent on trying to bring this character alive is a little bit different, and because of that the result is different too. This project is an action drama, so it is a unique new type of show for Turkey. I basically play a character that has three big chunks of his life in the show, so I have to play three different ‘feels’ and essentially I’m playing three different characters – that alone is another challenge and a new approach for me as an actor, too.
If we think about action drama that has been aired in Turkey, in order to orient the viewers, how would you place the show?
Cevdet: It’s somewhat closer to Ezel – still much more drama, with some action, and Backstreets has a lot of action, but the drama is kind of secondary. Ours, they’re both feeding each other, they’re both in together, so the drama, the story and then the action are all feeding each other. There’s a lot of family in this, there’s the mafia connection, there’s world, global themes that play into this, and there really hasn’t been anything that tackles such a big chunk and so many different elements with one show. In Turkey, with the setup, there’s not really a setup to pull of an international scale action drama. It takes up a lot of time and resources and energy, effort, so there’s never really a lot of attention given to it[action], but we were able to do it under those very difficult conditions, we were able to pull off an international scale production. To me, an action-oriented show, if it doesn’t have good drama behind it, is like food without salt. In Hollywood, they can have three Ferrari’s crash and then a fourth falling on top of them and then an airplane and a boat explode – we can’t beat that, of course, but we have a lot of drama to really support what we’re doing as well.
You mentioned Hollywood and as I understood, the producers are based in the US. How close are you cooperating with them on developing the scripts, the whole production and process?
Cevdet: Of course, especially in the developing stages of a project, there’s a lot of back and forth discussion, especially since the project was meant to be international, but there is a reality and it shows so we have to shoot 120 minutes in six days and this is rather crazy. We have as much input as we can in the realistic schedule that we can do, but of course it’s a lot of back-and-forth communication. We also have somebody in the Istanbul industry to help speed that up.
Let’s go back to the story. Erkan, you have a relationship with a girl, who is connected to a criminal guy who you are actually trying to put behind bars, and at the same time you have your own family. Could you explain in detail?
Erkan: My character, because of his job, is trying to get close to his enemy’s sister, trying to get in that organization, so as his duty to his job and the country and everything, he’s doing this, but of course what starts as a job can flower into something real and that’s where a lot of the drama comes from. The themes are love or work, or love or family. In work, love or family – it’s like a Bermuda triangle that puts us in a unique position.
It’s been a really fun project. This project has been developed, from the very beginning, everyone has been working so hard on it and we are trying to make into something people can buy and you can watch in Argentina, in Bulgaria, the Balkans. It’s hard but very fulfilling to design a project that can fit such a wide spectrum, to make this project it requires 5-6 years as we’re doing this, but we’re competing with giants like Hollywood that have been doing this forever, and we’re succeeding.
Erkan, you are one character but with three different roles. Do you have a favorite among these three and which do you think the audience will like best or hate the most?
Erkan: They’re three, but they’re the same. It’s like having coffee with milk and sugar – if you take one out, it’s not the same, so you can’t separate them, that’s what makes the character so fun to play. And the thing that makes it harder is that there’s not very sharp lines that separate them, they’re a little blurred, so it’s very subtle. The transitions are subtle, otherwise the audience will get lost.
You can’t do this by yourself, you need somebody you can trust who says “oh, there’s too much milk” or “there’s too much sugar”, and you can’t do that with just anybody it needs to be someone you can trust.
So, is that a nightmare job for you, Cevdet?
Erkan: He’s a graduate of Political Science, so that’s taught him to be really patient and because of that I don’t think it’s a nightmare, that’s why I’m able to trust him that much. I can just close my eyes and trust him. We’re doing 120 minutes every six days, imagine if we could do one episode in a month, imagine what we could do with that kind of resources.
Cevdet: To design this project from the beginning, because also it’s a very big cast, we found people that we knew or have worked with before, and we really designed these things for their abilities. A lot of projects are more like checkers, where this has been a lot likes chess, where this person is a good tassel, and this person is a good queen, and you put things in place, that’s why the interconnection of these characters is so organic. The thing that makes me happy is that the whole cast has been amazing. That’s the art part of this – you can do this and make all of these people all over the world feel something. It’s amazing to think that someone in Chile, or Indonesia or wherever can watch something we did in Turkey and feel an emotion, and maybe get teary-eyed or get excited, that’s why we’re doing this.
What has been the reaction so far in Turkey and do people in Turkey realize that the series that they’re watching now will be watched by the whole world?
Cevdet: The very first time it was so different than everything else that at first people weren’t sure what to do, but once they realized that “oh, they’re doing something different”, every week it has been climbing like crazy, really steadily. We’re trying to build something, and we’re really trying to do it properly. The cool thing is that we found our core audience and it isn’t leaving the show no matter what and now we’re adding more and more people every week. ▪
