Tribeca Film Festival 2024: Co-Creator Sean Quinn and Star Rowen Kahn Talk ‘Yanqui’

The independent episodic showcase at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival is in full swing, featuring a standout pilot titled Yanqui, co-crafted by Sean Quinn and Kyle Hausmann-Stokes, and starring Rowen Kahn.

Yanqui, based on Sean Quinn’s personal experiences, masterfully blends sharp writing and nuanced performances by the ensemble, while serving as a heartfelt love letter to Argentina. It follows the journey of a failed entrepreneur from New York City who, after a one-night stand abroad results in pregnancy, decides to travel to Argentina to disprove the notion that he is like his absent father.

Pop Culturalist was lucky enough to speak with Sean and Rowen about their collaborating working on Yanqui, how they struck the perfect balance between drama and comedy, their love for Argentina and the impact its had on them as filmmakers, and what the future could potentially hold for the series.

PC: Sean, it was during the pandemic when your co-writer and director Kyle Hausmann-Stokes approached you about creating Yanqui, based on your own experiences and how you ended up in Argentina. What was your initial reaction when he approached you about this idea? As you stepped into your first co-writing project, what was that experience like?
Sean: It was my first co-writing project, so I had some minor doubts about how we were going to work together. I’ve known Kyle since college. We met in Madrid, and we’ve always had a love for the Spanish language and Argentina. We had been to Argentina prior, so I was like, this could work.

But the thing that worried me most was the mother of my beautiful daughter, Cala, and doing justice to her part of the story. We went to her with the idea first. We were like, “Are you okay if we did this?” She read drafts of the script and saw the final spec pilot and loved it. She was a fan. She actually met Delfina [Chaves], who plays Sofia. She came to the reading and met her, so it was good to get her approval early on.

PC: Rowen, in addition to acting, you’ve also directed and written in the past. How have those experiences behind the camera influenced the ways in which you approach your work on screen and interpret scripts and characters like this? What was it about this project that resonated with you?
Rowen: Right from the get-go, this whole thing resonated with me. I’m a writer-director, and I love the script. I’m a big fan of comedy, but what I love most about a good comedy is that it has heart to it. It has a real human behind it.

I didn’t know Sean or met him before going down to Buenos Aires, but you can tell by reading the script that it had such real humanity to it. It was such a beautiful story, as well as being really funny.

My approach has changed. Sean and Kyle probably felt the same way, but it did feel like a real collaboration. We were down there together. It was a team. I needed them. I was a foreigner in this country. [laughs] Everything was completely new to me. We were able to create something that I think is really special. It’s a beautiful thing that we made. As a filmmaker, it was cool to see them work and be a part of this.

PC: Sean, I love the ways in which you and Kyle were able to incorporate humor, which feels very slice of life. Was that something you were mindful of during the writing process? Why was that so important to you as a filmmaker as you explored this sensitive time in your life?
Sean: It was. Thankfully, it turned out funnier than maybe it was in real life. Everything is funnier looking back. That was really important to me, also, to give it some distance from what really happened. I wanted it to be its own story. Now it’s Rowen’s story, right? It’s the character’s story. It’s Josh, not me.

But it’s funny when co-writing with Kyle, I always wanted to push it more towards comedy and he wanted to keep the dramatic element. I think we struck a nice mix. It was great at the premiere on Sunday to finally see it with a crowd of people who weren’t our friends and family for the first time, and see that it landed. People were laughing every thirty seconds.

PC: The dialogue is so sharp. The characters often say what they’re thinking in the heat of the moment, which may be inappropriate but it’s so grounded. Rowen, you get to show the depth of your talents in this project as it plays in all these different genres from drama to comedy to romance. You brought such an empathetic quality to Josh where audiences immediately feel for him. As an actor, what was your way into this character and finding that space to explore these different layers? How did the environment that Sean and Kyle foster allow you to do that exploration?
Rowen: Absolutely. Sean had a personal connection to it. Kyle had a storytelling brain that he was trying to bring to the directing of it. It was funny playing Josh. Obviously, he’s not exactly Sean. He’s an approximation and this pseudo-real character. It felt like I had this responsibility to bring a realness to this.

Yes, I get to tell this really funny story. I get to play this straight man to these wild characters like Sofia’s dad, who is so good. Her siblings are hilarious, played by Pablo Lapa and Carolina Alamino. They brought in such a great cast. It made it really easy on me. I just got to react to this new world, a language that I didn’t understand, and tell this really great story that kept unfolding even while I was there.

I also met Sean’s beautiful daughter, Cala, which made it all that much more real for me. It really made me realize, as any actor should, that I’m here to tell this story and be of service to it.

PC: Sean, you touched upon this already, but what’s so compelling and refreshing to watch about this series is that it does show both perspectives, and what Sofia experiences when she discovers she’s pregnant and the conversations she has with her family. What was it like collaborating with Cala’s mother and bringing her experiences to the screen? How did she influence the script?
Sean: It was a mix of what I knew and what Kyle and I imagined. We didn’t want it to be exactly like her experience. We wanted to approach it from the outside in, but also take the time to imaginatively explore what this situation could have been like, because we didn’t want it to feel like a documentary. We also wanted to respect her privacy as a mother. We showed her the script. There were a couple of things that she said wouldn’t make sense for how she felt, and some things that dramatically worked better for the script but weren’t her experiences. But we used Cala’s mother as a foundation, and then with the respect for the character that Kyle and I were building together, we delved in, explored, and imagined. That was a lot of fun because it helped me see it from the mother’s perspective as well, and consider all these things that she might have been going through.

Rowen: That makes for such great storytelling. So often writers are told to write what they know. It’s cool hearing Sean say that because that’s exactly what these stories can do for us. They give us a new perspective on things. The writing coaches and teachers that I had in college would tell me, “If you want to tell an autobiographical story, switch some key things around, so that you’re allowed to see it from a new perspective, see it in a different way, because it’ll make your story more compelling.”

PC: Rowen, I have a strange question for you: what is your level of proficiency when it comes to Spanish? What is that process like when you’re playing someone who does have that language barrier with the other characters? How much do you want to know what’s being said in the scenes because you brought such believability in those moments?
Rowen: That was all naturalism. [laughs] I don’t know a lick of Spanish. I grew up in Canada. We learned French, or they tried to teach me French, but I know little to nothing. It was funny on set. Kyle and Sean are both fluent. Kyle would be directing and say something in Spanish. He’d say, “Listo,” which I learned is the Spanish word for “ready.” That’s about all I got. I would get ready, but I wouldn’t know what I was ready for. But I think it worked pretty well.

Sean: [laughs] I think Kyle forgot sometimes that Rowen didn’t speak Spanish. He’d set everything up and say, “Action.” Rowen would be there like, “Where are we going?” [laughs]

Rowen: That honestly made my job a little easier in a lot of ways. Jamie Castro was our casting director. I was speaking with her husband, Drew Rausch, who’s a great actor himself. He mentioned how there’s this moment-to-moment feeling of reality in a lot of the scenes. I was like, “Yeah, because I was in the moment, actually responding and trying to listen and understand what these people were saying.” [laughs] I was in the dark a lot of the time, so I think it helped make my performance better. [laughs]

PC: This series is such a love letter to Argentina. Sean, how has this country and community impacted your journey as a storyteller? Rowen, having filmed there, what impact has it had on you?
Sean: Buenos Aires is such a magical city. Anish Merchant, who plays Poker Matt, said that New York City and Buenos Aires are secretly in love with each other. They have this connection. I lived in New York for eight years before moving down to Buenos Aires. What I found is that there’s this amazing, talented, vibrant theater community. Everyone’s dramatic. Everyone talks with their hands. Being there, Rowen had to do this on a smaller scale, but being there long term and really having to learn the language and everything, helped me find the humor in the situation.

The Argentines have an amazing sarcastic sense of humor as people. They’ve gone through economic crises. The way that they’ve gotten through this is that they’ve developed this amazing resiliency through humor. That made its way into the writing.

Rowen: Sean reminded me of this night that I had there where they have this thing called Microteatro, which Sean has a play going into soon.

Sean: Yeah, in September. They’re like fifteen-minute short comedies. You go to this amazing theater experience and you see three or four different comedies. There are Broadway and TV actors who do this for the love of the theater community. They change plays once a month.

Rowen: What I saw at that Microteatro, which I had already gotten about Argentina at this point, is that everything you see has this passion to it. Anish’s character in the show has a line about the fury but in a passionate sense. That passion drives so many people down there. Honestly, if I can toot my own horn, that’s what I’ve been about my whole life. I’ve always been passionate about the arts. I was a theater kid from the early days. It was always something that I loved and was passionate about. Being down there, what I was able to connect with in that community was our shameless, fiery passion for doing what we love. That transcends language barriers. It was an amazing experience and one that I hope to continue.

PC: Beautifully said. Sean, you’re in the early days of your festival run, but what does the future hold for this show?
Sean: We filmed the pilot that’s premiering at Tribeca. We haven’t filmed any more of the season, but Kyle and I have mapped out our ideas for the rest of Season 1, which will be eight episodes and includes a flashback episode to Barcelona, revealing the origin story of how Josh and Sofia met. It’s going to be a fun episode. Our idea is to find a partner to develop the rest of the season with and find a home for it, which we hopefully will be able to do through Tribeca.

Make sure to follow Sean (Instagram) and Rowen (Instagram). Screening times for Yanqui below:

• Village East by Angelika – Sun June 09 – 2:45 PM
• AMC 19th St. East 6 – Wed June 12 – 6:15 PM
• Village East by Angelika – Sun June 16 – 12:00 PM