Bonus Episode | Inside Rhythm Is a Dancer with Lauren Caster

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Host Introduces Lauren Caster and ‘Rhythm Is a Dancer’

Me and Tate Donovan took photos in this little photo booth and we got a little strip of photos and I the rest of the filming I had them on my night stand.

Speaker 2

There was one night where I just was like, I really just wanted to cry.

Speaker 1

I was like, I feel like like, I don’t know, the act of like doing all of those things made me like feel really close to Tate and it made me also realize like, oh, I feel like I did.

I write this so I could get those experiences I never had with my bio dad as a kid.

And I’m, I know there’s still plenty of time and I can still now make those things, but I’m pretty shy and reserved when it comes to my relationship with my bio dad.

So it was it for me.

It’s, it’s like I felt like I wrote it of all the things I wish I was brave enough to do to like go and do all these father daughter things.

But like, as like what, You’re 6 years old, you know?

Speaker 3

Hey everyone and welcome to DNA Surprises.

I’m your host Alexis Soursalt.

We are still on a summer break, but I am so.

Speaker 4

Excited to share a.

Bonus episode with you in the meantime.

In this episode, I am joined by Lauren Caster.

The writer, director, producer and star.

Of the new feature film Rhythm is a Dancer.

The film follows Roe, a young woman conceived through sperm donation, as she navigates questions of identity, family and what it means to search for the person who helped create.

Her I talk with.

Lauren about the film, the themes it explores, and the experiences that inspired it.

It’s a story that will resonate with many in our community and I am excited to share our conversation with you the film.

Which also stars Tate.

Donovan and Amy Aquino is available on demand or ever you stream films.

Let’s get into it, Lauren.

Welcome to DNA Surprises.

So happy you’re here.

Thank you so much for having me.

It’s an honor to meet you and talk with you today.

Lauren Caster’s Journey: From Sperm Donor to Filmmaker

Can you tell us a little bit about the film and what inspired you to tell this story?

Yeah, I would love to.

It’s loosely based on my life.

I was raised by a lesbian single mom who had me through a sperm donor who was anonymous at the time.

I don’t think there was even an option to not be anonymous.

It was legit a piece of paper with a bunch of lines and in my 20s I try to find him.

I had hired A genealogist and it kind of went nowhere and there was a lot of dead ends, a lot of, you know, disappointments.

And I kind of gave up.

And then probably 5 or seven years after I had started looking out of nowhere, my, the sperm donor my mom used had done adna test.

He did ancestry.com and we were half a match.

And so I found him and I got to meet him and I was kind of grappling with what that means and what that means for like my identity and who I am.

It was, I never grew up with a father.

So I was kind of confused by this new stranger in my life and was genetically half of me.

I’m still, I’m still working with that, to be honest.

Anyways, I so I made a movie about it and a late coming of age at the same time because, you know, yeah.

Navigating Identity: Roe’s Quest Beyond Her Biological Father

Absolutely.

One of the things that really stood out to me right away was kind of at the beginning of the film and really throughout.

Roe seems to be searching like it in multiple ways, multiple parts of her life, career, relationships and overall identity.

Was it important to you to show that the decision to look for her father kind of didn’t happened in isolation and was sort of part of a broader search for herself?

Yeah, I think that I think that was important to me.

I loved that you noticed that she was searching in so many areas of her life.

And when you’re trying to put the puzzle pieces of your life and your identity and yourself together, you’re you’re looking for all these aspects.

And for me, I, I ultimately, which I don’t want to give away the film, but I but for me it was important.

It was important that that wasn’t for this character that like, that wasn’t going to be the thing that just like, completes her.

Yeah.

We’re like, you know, we’re always, you know, we’re always evolving and searching in our whole life.

But when you do have this massive question mark in your life or you’re finding out about this, there’s, there’s a lot to unpack.

And I feel like you can definitely get lost in the thinking that if I just could make sense of this, I could make sense of myself.

Yeah, again, we don’t, we don’t want to spoil too much, but there was kind of this sense of, I think it’s even in the trailer, a little bit of ambivalence, almost of like, I’m, I’m not sure I’m, you know, kind of maybe curious.

Do you think that Roe was more curious than she was willing to admit?

Or do you think that that ambivalence was truly how she felt?

Exploring Roe’s Curiosity and Her Mother’s Hidden Truth

I think she was definitely more curious.

I think that is all just a, a guard to protect yourself from disappointment and rejection.

And because there’s a lot of different paths from whether you’re adopted or you’re donor conceived or you’re, you’re trying to find out this DNA, there’s so many different ways it can go and it’s biologically who you are.

And so to have that kind of possibility of being rejected as, as something that you want to protect yourself.

And so I that was also why I made her ambivalence.

But she’s really just covering for herself.

Yeah, I think kind of on the protective note, it seemed like there was this protective element with Rose Mother as well.

And a lot of the guests on the podcast have had a secret kept from them and then they uncover a truth through taking Adna test.

In your film, the secret is actually more kept from Fro’s mom.

What did you want to explore with that choice?

Because I thought it was really interesting, this idea of like maybe hiding something from our our parents as we make our discoveries.

Yeah, I, I, I wanted to explore in that narrative because, yeah, like you said, it’s usually it.

A lot of the times it is, it is the opposite.

But kind of flipping it around.

I think it would be interesting for parents who did keep that secret from their kids to see it flipped like that because here’s a mom who did this thing many years ago.

She conceived a child the sperm donation.

She did always tell her daughter, but then she there’s always the possibility of knowing that she would find the sperm donor.

But then having that kept from her is I I wanted to explore because I wanted it to be personal for a Roe and I wanted to be her journey and her to have finally have some like power there, some agency there, because it was regardless of when you find out the way we’re conceived, like we don’t have a we don’t have a say in it.

We don’t have any like power agency there.

We’re just born that way and you find out.

So it was it was important for me for her to have something in her life she could just have on her own.

Navigating Relationships and the Impact of ‘Donor’ Terminology

Was that something that you drew from personally?

Like, did you feel like you wanted to have that kind of relationship to yourself for any period of time?

Yeah, I mean, I, I, I unlike the movie, like from my personal story, like I, my mom didn’t know.

But for me, I’m still, I’m still like navigating this relationship like my, the sperm donor, my bio dad is in my life and I’m still navigating what that looks like and what that means.

I’ve also noticed too, that you hear, you hear sperm donor.

So for so long the fertility industry has used the word donor and it’s for, for me, I, I’ve, I’ve knew the word donor my whole life.

So by hearing donor instead of a biological father, someone who shares your DNA, you automatically are putting up a wall and you’re making it this like abstract thing of someone who is just, you know, doing a donation and, you know, helping with some.

But it’s but like, you know, nature, like we, we share half our DNA.

It’s a lot deeper than that.

I still have a really hard time.

I can’t call him, I can’t call him dad or father.

I call him by his first name.

But I think that’s because of the language that we have used for so long.

And it’s interesting because it gives donors a freedom to not have as a bigger part of it, if that makes sense to to it gives them the freedom to cut ties with that, with the truth, which is like the they’re, it’s half of their DNA.

It is it is technic.

It’s their kid.

Yeah, absolutely.

Tricky.

It’s tricky because I mean, I’m so happy I’m born.

I’m sure some people are so happy that they’re here, but I’m really curious about the the way the language is is used around it.

Yeah, yeah, we’re always talking about how language is powerful.

Similarly I so I found my bio dad when I was 35 through taking a test and finding out that my dad wasn’t my dad and I also found out that I’m half black and I did not know didn’t.

Know any of that?

Didn’t know any of it but but I also like I call him bio dad or I I will say like my father if people don’t know the situation and I usually refer to him by his first name and it is interesting like how uncomfortable it can be to just say dad right because it doesn’t feel right.

It doesn’t feel right.

Yeah, it is your dad A.

100%.

So I mean, there’s a line in the movie that where she’s like, he’s my bio dad.

He didn’t raise me.

So he’s not my we just shared DNA.

He’s it’s like there’s I really wanted to to come across as like what, how important that that language is, because I mean, that’s how we feel.

It’s uncomfortable to say.

I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to say I’m not sure.

And that makes me kind of sad, to be honest.

Like I’ve, it makes me sad because I’m I’m not sure I’m never going to ever have a father daughter relationship.

That’s more conventional, I guess.

Well, it would never be conventional, but I mean, just the feeling of it, just because I myself have put up these walls to protect myself, including the just the way I have heard it for 35 years, is a donor.

Yeah, removed from myself.

Yeah, I think there’s also the challenge of just time, right?

Like you were raised, you’re a fully formed adult when you meet this person.

And so how do they enter your life and parent you when you you’ve been parented you’ve?

Been parented, yeah.

Something I noticed throughout the film was these just little nuances or things that Roe would say where I was like, wow, only somebody who was in this kind of DNA surprise community would really get.

Weaving Personal Stories and Genetic Similarities into Film

And, and one of the first moments that I think people would understand, but it, it just resonates in a different way, was when she’s looking at the photo of her biological father on her phone and trying to mirror his smile.

How much of the experiences that you woven were just from your own life?

Did you talk to other donor conceived people or adoptees who maybe have gone through similar things and was that infused throughout?

Yeah, it’s definitely a mix of my own life and also hearing other stories of people being donor conceived and adoptees.

And I mean, I’ve even heard a lot from my my genealogist who had I had worked with because there was 2 adoptees who had just found each other through this genealogist.

But there’s so much of me in this also, and so much it like the I always say like it’s yes, it’s you know, semi autobiographical, like it is loosely based on my life, like there, but it is fiction.

But the meat of it, like the heart of it is 100% me.

I mean, when I did get the phone call that he did Adna test and we found him, I there was one picture and it was his like a LinkedIn picture and I looked it up and I was for a while was just trying to figure out our similarities.

I was trying to see myself in him.

It was really confusing.

Yeah, Yeah, they, they call it genetic mirroring.

So it’s just trying to see yourself and and feeling that.

The Complexities of Meeting a Biological Parent: Not Always a ‘Click’

My next question is around the way that you told kind of this fuller story.

So a lot of, I think, adoption stories, donor conception stories, they end with reunion and then that’s it.

And everyone kind of sails off into the sunset and we don’t really get to see what happens after that, which is often more complicated.

Even if it’s positive.

How did you decide without maybe saying how it ends?

You know where you wanted your story to end?

Well, for me, when I when I did finally meet my bio dad, I think would also what I mentioned it earlier, but it was I was really I don’t know.

I honestly thought I would meet him because I’ve heard other stories of people finally meeting, whether they’re adopted or the owner conceived, meeting a biological parent.

And then like they’re like, everything just clicked and it was beautiful and like I understood who I was in my life and wow, like and I met him and I didn’t feel any of that.

And I was really confused.

I was like, I thought, I thought I was going to experience this thing and then I was still stuck with just myself like this, the same person I’ve been this whole time.

And I, I didn’t understand what that meant.

And I’ve, I found it really interesting because I also, I like, for me, I’m, I mean, also I’m a filmmaker.

I love movies.

I love seeing ways that I relate to people and stories that aren’t even mine.

And I realized like, I’ve never ever seen a story like mine.

And I know that there’s a lot like this where you’re trying to navigate what this looks like and it’s not what you thought it would be.

And me and my bio dad, we both kind of went about it the same way.

That was probably the biggest similarity.

We both were like, well, kind of, you know, step back and kind of see how it would play out this relationship.

So that was important for me in this in the story to show in real time what what that looks like.

Somebody’s struggling to have a relationship with someone that they just met, that they’re half related and it’s not, it’s not clicking in sunshine.

Understanding the Bio Dad’s View and Connecting with Siblings

Did your bio dad feel similarly?

Like it was it like a mutual like oh, this isn’t what I thought it would be like.

No, I don’t think so, actually, because he has three kids of his own, so he has a daughter and he has two boys.

He’s able to call me his daughter, which is very sweet.

It’s different from me, ’cause I, I, I just, I don’t know that relationship of a, of a father.

Like I know the relationship with my mom and my, my aunts and my uncles, but I don’t know what, what that relationship is.

But he has been very, like I will say, understanding and aware of how we’re like slowly navigating this.

It’s been, it’s been really interesting.

Yeah, it really helps when a parent is like empathetic to the situation, even if they don’t fully understand it.

You mentioned that you now have three half siblings or or siblings and Roe also discovers siblings.

Have you found any other siblings through donor conception?

I haven’t every every now and then I go on to the DNA sites to see if anyone pops up.

I am registered in the donor sibling registry.

I’ve always been registered on there.

I I I haven’t found any other offspring.

I’m so curious just because I feel like it would be, I don’t know.

I, my, my siblings that I’ve met from him are, are great.

We’re, I’m just, I’m just even now we’re, we’ve, we’ve been in each other’s lives for almost like for eight years.

We’re just now getting close because they were in high school.

They were young when I met them.

I’m older than them by a lot.

So now that they’re all like they’re now 18 to 22.

So now that they’re all a little older, we’re now starting to like, actually have sibling bonds, which is really special and unique for me.

I’m an only child.

I would be so curious if there is another offspring because we’d be in a similar boat, like similar boat of figuring that out.

I have no idea.

I don’t know if they’re out there, but maybe, maybe one day, yeah.

Sharing Truth and Fostering Empathy in Donor Conception Stories

One of the things that really struck me about the film is that it really is telling a story.

It’s not about whether donor conception is good or bad, which a lot of media around donor conception kind of has that lens.

Why was it important to you to to tell a story that maybe invites empathy for donor conceived people but really everybody involved?

I just wanted to share my truth of, of how I feel about it and my journey.

And I know there’s a million different ways donor conception can can go.

I fully, fully understand that and with adoption as well.

But for me, it was important to not put to not make like a statement on it, but just to share my experience and for people to be able to find their truth in that or to whether they see their truth in that or see some similarities, but not to have any, not to like make a statement on it.

I went to one donor conceived meet up actually, when I when I think, when I first found him and a lot, most of the group had just found out and that like broke my heart.

I, I understood like how lucky I am that I have known my whole life and and now it’s important to me too with this film.

And now it’s coming out into the world and I’m sharing it with people.

So many people are coming up to me and being like, I’m an egg donor, like I’m, I just found out I’m donor conceived all all these people that in my life that I would probably never know and I tell them.

Look, it’s not right or wrong.

Like it’s, it’s amazing how you’re able to bring a kid and yeah, you’ll have to navigate stuff when they’re older, I’m sure.

But love them and, and, and be honest and tell them that’s the best thing you you could do for them.

And they’ll still have, you know, identity things like later in life.

But I’m, I’m so thankful that I got that experience.

So it’s all I guess that’s kind of my main message.

Yeah, yeah.

Unexpected Connections and Emotional Moments While Filming

And what surprised you about making this film?

Was there anything that you learned about yourself or the donor conception space that you didn’t expect?

You know, a few things surprised me was 1A crew member in the middle of shooting shared after we filmed the first scene with the bio dad.

He he shared with me afterwards, he was like, wow, that was really interesting for me because I just found out donor conceived and he has 14 half siblings and their donor doesn’t want anything to do with them.

But he has a mom and dad.

And I saw him last night at the screening and it’s so lovely to be able to talk and have these conversations and that someone else came up to me too.

That was part of the crew that is adopted and was like, I find so much similarity in this.

Like it is very universal in the world of being adopted or conceived, whether you find out or not, because the core is really all those things.

Whether you find out like me, I’ve always known or later in life, you’re still going to have the same things come up of like, what does this mean?

How does this.

I don’t know what this looks like.

Another thing that really surprised me was when we did there’s a scene, if you remember the Santa Monica Pier scenes where she’s she’s doing all these things with her bio dad that she wished she could have done as a kid.

Yeah, me and Tate Donovan took photos in this little photo booth and we got a little strip of photos and I and the rest of the filming, I had them on my night stand.

I was like, I feel like, like I don’t know, the act of like doing all of those things made me like feel really close to Tate and it made me also realize like, oh, I, I feel like I did.

Yeah, that was.

A really big surprise for me.

I was like, whoa, that’s crazy.

That’s really special.

That’s resonating so much.

We we like so I have kids and we when my bio dad came out to visit because he lives in Alabama, I’m in Arizona.

We went to like, Dave and Buster’s or something like that.

And like he and I were standing next to each other like shooting basketball.

And I kind of have like that same moment of, oh, I never got to do this with him.

And I’m doing it now.

And yeah, it’s and it is very emotional.

Like surprisingly emotional.

Yeah, I, I was really surprised on how emotional that was.

I have kids also.

And what’s also very surprising too, is my kids are like, will know him as their grandfather.

They’ll not really know anything else.

They’ll which is yeah, absolutely.

‘Cause I met him before I had kids.

I have two kids now.

Oh wow, that’s really.

Cool.

So yeah, really, really interesting.

Bio Dad as Executive Producer and Mom’s Support for the Story

What has his reception kind of been to the film and and your mom as well?

What has been the reaction?

So this is also a crazy part is me and him make this film together.

Oh wow.

So he’s a, he’s the executive producer on it.

So, yeah, maybe we haven’t gone and played skee ball together or had like an ice cream date.

But like, we’ve gotten into business together and it’s been really, it’s been really cool to make this with him.

And he’s a big part of why it got made.

Like, he totally believed in me.

I was a filmmaker making a bunch of short films and someone had told me I had just won like an award for one of my films.

And they were, it was someone at like Sundance who was like, I, I can’t wait to see the feature you direct.

And I was like, I didn’t even think of me like this whole thing, like, no, that’s crazy.

And I happened to to tell him.

And he was like, oh, well, yeah, we let’s, we should do it.

I was like, he’s like, yeah, he never made a movie before, never made a feature before, but he helped raise the money.

We went around it.

It took, I mean, the whole process took probably over five years.

It took a while.

I have made a short film, I will will say, which is kind of ended up working like a proof of concept, even though it was never planned to be a proof of concept.

My first short film is called Donor Baby.

That that one’s on Amazon.

It’s that one’s like, it’s not as evolved as the feature because you can’t do as much in a short, but it’s basically just about the moment of getting that phone call that you have a bio dad out there.

And what does that and how would that what that brings up?

So it’s a yeah, a much shorter version.

That’s really cool.

Wow, that’s so awesome that he is so supportive of this.

And my mom is super supportive too.

I will say that I, I did, it is fictional.

There has to be some stakes.

So, you know, I try and tell people that because they don’t want to hurt her feelings because she’s the best.

Right.

Yeah, I love her so much.

I’m so thankful she did.

She did this 35 years ago.

Understanding the Journey of Donor-Conceived Individuals and Families

If someone who is donor conceived or someone who’s just experienced A unexpected DNA discovery watches this film, what do you hope that they take away from it?

I hope they take away that that they’re not alone and that they belong.

I’m like, I don’t want to cry here, but I think that’s the the one of my one of the biggest messages.

I hope people who are doing or conceived or adopted can can get from this.

I think coming into the world more unconventionally it for me, I always felt a little bit of like a black sheep.

And then there’s a lot of spaces maybe I didn’t belong in just because I was, I was different.

There’s a lot of things I didn’t know and that I even now I’m honestly just still trying to figure out about myself.

And that’s another big part of why I wanted to make this because I know, I mean, there’s over 1,000,000 donor conceived people in the US and they don’t even have really the numbers because it’s not really regulated.

So that it could be more for sure.

And we do belong and we are special and we’re amazing and the way we were brought into this world doesn’t doesn’t change any of that.

I love that, thank you.

What do you hope that parents, donors, families who maybe haven’t even lived this experience come away with?

Yeah, that’s a great question.

Yeah, when we brought, when Tate, we brought Tate on, when we offered him, wanted him to play the part and he read the script.

That was one of the first things he told me.

He said, wow, I, I had never even knew about someone like what that experience was like of being donor conceived.

And he feels like he does now, which is beautiful.

And I, I think that is what I would want someone’s take away to be just the the nuances of it.

So often I think in the fertility industry, adoption, even just maybe parenthood broadly, people think about the baby like that’s the end.

But really?

You become a fully formed person with questions about who you are, and this film just does such a great job of exploring that in a very human and real way.

Of course there’s some of the Hollywood magic with some of the plot points.

Like you said, it’s inspired by your life, but not fully.

But it it really does just a wonderful job of, of showing this experience.

Finding ‘Rhythm Is a Dancer’ and Episode Wrap-Up

So if listeners want to find the film and watch it, where can they find it?

Well, we, yeah, we just opened in theaters in LA July 8th.

So it’ll be playing in LA for until I think the 16th and we open in New York July 16th and July 17th at the Roxy and Tribeca.

And then August 4th, we will be on all platforms digitally, Apple, Amazon, I think Fandango, anywhere you can get it, it will be on there.

So you’ll be able to watch it from your home.

And I’m so excited for the world to be able to know more about what it’s the journey of being donor conceived and what that means.

Awesome.

Be sure to link it when it goes live for everybody to watch.

Link your website as well in the show notes.

Lauren, thank you so much for joining me to talk about Rhythm as a Dancer.

It really is such a beautiful film.

Congratulations.

Thank you so much.

I so honored to be on here, so I appreciate it.

Thanks again to Lauren for joining me.

Be sure to check.

Out Rhythm is a dancer wherever you stream films or on Rhythm is a dancer dot movie.

Until next time.

DNA Surprises is hosted, produced and edited by me, Alexis Oursalt.

It is mixed and mastered by Josh Oursalt of Siren Recording Studios.