On the Sunny Side of ‘The Deal’
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Sumalee Montano on the set of The Deal (Photo courtesy of Aleksandar Letic)
The ultimate experiment puts a dystopian world in the hands of an optimist. Let her fill the spartan space with originality and humanity. Sumalee Montano delivers the goods in The Deal, the new movie on The Roku Channel, which she created, co-produced and features her in a main role. The movie comes from the collaboration of Fil-Am Dean Devlin’s Electric Entertainment, actor-producer Lisa Brenner, and LinLay Productions.
A Sci-Fi Thriller Inspired by Mom
The Deal imagines a future ravaged by a global pandemic and climate change. The government called The Bureau takes advantage of the shortage of resources to offer citizens employment, food and shelter under one condition: After exactly 20 years, they will be put to death. While the rules of this sci-fi thriller are stringent, the central characters take precedence over everything, including the CGI buildings. An audience in any era can relate to the basic ethos: a mother’s love for her child.
The protagonists of The Deal are Analyn, played by Emma Fischer, and her mother, Tala Bayani. While writing and performing the role of Tala, Sumalee made the maternal character universal yet as distinctly Filipina as her mother, Linda Montano, the niece of the late playwright Severino Montano, a National Artist of the Philippines. Her mother and Thai father divorced when she was a child. “I based Tala on my mother and the sacrifices she made to raise me as a single mother.”
Sumalee Montano (Tala Bayani)(right) and Emma Fischer (Analyn) in The Deal (Photo courtesy of Aleksandar Letic)
Her numerous television acting credits since 2000 include “Veep,” “Star Trek Picard, and “This Is Us” and her voice-over animated roles number close to 200. Sumalee’s academic credits are equally impressive with an undergraduate honors degree in Social Studies from Harvard (’93) and a Fulbright scholarship that brought her to the Philippines to research her thesis on Filipino overseas contract workers, and what becomes of their wives when their husbands abandon them to start new families in new lands.
Sumalee’s success was inspired by her late mother’s stoic presence and undivided support. "Mom was super strict on my studies. She set me up for success in ways I couldn’t fully appreciate until I became a mom.”
Sumalee and Linda Montano (Photo by Marisa Allegra Williams)
From Money to Movies
Unlike her mother, her ten-year-old son can rely on a stay-at-home father. Sumalee is also an attentive parent; just one who has never had a lull in her life. Shortly after college, she endured the long hours of investment banking at Morgan Stanley in New York and Hong Kong. The relentless schedule helped prepare her for a nonstop career in entertainment.
Partner Grace Lay and Sumalee founded LinLay Productions with the purpose of “telling intergenerational stories that center multicultural talent in front of and behind the camera.” Sumalee discusses LinLay like a proud mother. LinLay produced the horror feature, Nanny, winner of the U.S. Grand Jury Prize at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival in theaters this November, and official Sundance 2022 documentary selections, Riotsville, USA now in theaters, and Aftershock on Hulu.
I never know what to expect when I ask the question: How has your Filipino heritage influenced your work? The answers range from a dogged work ethic and other predictable ways to offended at the suggestion that anything but self-reliance and ingenuity accounted for a rising star’s success. Sumalee gave me one of the more thoughtful answers.
“Being Filipina influenced me in two ways. One way is internal. I’m very proud as an actor to bring different facets of my Filipino culture to my characters. The other way is external. As a producer at LinLay Productions, I have more of a say in what stories get told. My Filipina heritage manifests itself in The Deal, LinLay’s first movie.”
The traditional dystopian movie ends on a morbid note. That's not to say The Deal doesn’t stick to a disturbing path from start to finish. But think of the creator’s DNA for a moment. Filipinos have survived every kind of hardship from racial discrimination to bullets and volcanoes, but they can always be counted on for a smile whether a nurse in a Covid ward or a CPA working as a movie theater usher. The Deal takes a peculiar twist only a true Filipina like Sumalee Montano could pull off.
The Deal is front and center, but Sumalee is also active on several prominent projects either in the can or in the works. Peacock subscribers can watch Sumalee in a regular role on “Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol,” the series prequel to DaVinci Code from Imagine Entertainment. She recently finished a recurring role in a television show she is not at liberty to announce yet. She is also doing voiceover for three animated series and a bevy of triple-A video games in the pipeline.
Anthony Maddela is doing more of his own kind of writing these days. He and his wife Susan have a daughter and son in college. They’re more thankful than ever about the approaching holidays.
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