Mia Isaac has known for a while that she wanted to get into acting, but even she didn’t expect her first major film role to be a lead. In the new drama Don’t Make Me Go, the 18-year-old stands front and center with veteran co-star John Cho.
After premiering at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, Don’t Make Me Go streams on Amazon Prime beginning Friday. Cho headlines as single father Max who, after learning he has a terminal disease, decides he needs to get closer to his daughter Wally (Isaac). The two take a road trip to New Orleans for his 20th college reunion, but Max has an ulterior motive: He aims to reunite Wally with her mother, who left them.
The actress views Wally as different from your average teenager. “She is at this halfway point between being a kid and an adult,” Isaac says. “She is mature for her age and intellectual and picks up on a lot of things other teenagers don’t, but because she is a teenager sometimes she makes mistakes.”
While the material can seem a little familiar, Isaac and Cho breathe life into their characters and make the father-daughter dynamic real, including their dance in the direction of understanding each other. “Towards the beginning they have a lot that they need to share with each other,” Isaac says. “Regardless of her being an annoying teenager and he an embarrassing dad, there is still a lot of love. They are beginning to learn to be emotionally open with each other. Wally discovers that her dad is a human being and he has made mistakes too.”
Isaac credits Cho (Searching, Star Trek Into Darkness) for making her feel more at ease. The two quickly bonded. “When you spend that much time with anybody in a car, you learn about them. John and I were stuck in the car a long time and that made us closer. He has been in the industry such a long time. He was very open with me and showed me so much love during the shoot, the kind of love a parent shows their child. I am so grateful for that.”
Director Hannah Marks (After Everything, Mark, Mary & Some Other People) also took the young actress under wing. “At the time, I did not realize how lucky I was to get to work with her. But now, looking back, she showed me so much support and she sometimes sheltered me from the hardships of making a movie. I was so inexperienced and she, more than anyone, was the first person to believe I could play Wally.”
Isaac has lived in Atlanta virtually her whole life and has always wanted to tell stories, whether it was writing or news reporting, but eventually opted for acting. “I think I put on my Christmas list [one year] that I wanted to have an agent,” she says and laughs.
Some of her early roles were in the TV movie Lovestruck and the short films The Cancel Club and The Quaranteens. This is her first feature film.
“I could not believe it was real when I booked it, because at that point, I felt I would be lucky to get any role,” Isaac says. “To get the role of Wally, it felt straight out of a dream.”
The audition process was a nerve-racking one, however. It began the day after Christmas 2020, when Isaac was 16, and extended a number of rounds before she nailed the chemistry read with Cho. For a young actress with limited credits, it was a remarkable, long-shot achievement.
Don’t Make Me Go has something of a twist ending, which has both fans and detractors. “I knew how it would end before I read the script and I thought it had prepared me, but somehow it still took me by surprise and I got real emotional,” the actress says. “Some people will have mixed opinions but I loved it, because I think it is very representative of life and its unexpected turns. The biggest takeaway is to go and hug the people you love.”
July is proving to be a fruitful month for Isaac. She also stars in the Hulu film Not Okay, about a woman (Zoey Deutch) who fakes a trip to Paris in hopes of gaining social media followers and, when a bombing takes place, she incorporates that into her lie, as well. Isaac plays a school shooting survivor who has turned her trauma into activism in the July 29 release. She also is appearing in the Hulu series Black Cake, being filmed in California, London and Scotland.
Yet, like many other local performers now, she will continue to keep Atlanta as her home. “I grew up auditioning in Atlanta and at first it was hard, because I was one of the only people sending in tapes,” Isaac says. “Everyone was in Los Angeles, going in person, and it felt weird, not knowing if people were even watching my tapes, if they had time. But now everyone is sending in tapes because of Covid, and that has been normalized.”
She also likes that Atlanta and Georgia have become so active for film production. “Atlanta doesn’t feel clique-y and you can really make your dreams come true by doing something, whether it’s a small film or writing something. You can do what you love from anywhere.”
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Jim Farmer covers theater and film for ArtsATL. A graduate of the University of Georgia, he has written about the arts for 30-plus years. Jim is the festival director of Out on Film, Atlanta’s LGBTQ film festival. He lives in Avondale Estates with his husband, Craig, and dog Douglas.
