'Shahs' Star Asa Makes Oscars Short List!
Exclusive: She and a friend wrote a song that might snag an Academy Award.
Bravo stars have won Emmys and even been nominated for Grammys, but an Oscar? Yes, the Academy Award reserved for the elite of the elite in the movie world. It might be possible this year.
If you watch Shahs of Sunset, you know that Asa Soltan Rahmati has quite the music career going on (seriously, check her iTunes), and it turns out she and friend Sunny Levine penned a song for the Rashida Jones/Andy Samberg indie rom-com Celeste & Jesse Forever (buy the soundtrack here) that's made the short list for the 2013 Oscars. The song, titled "No Other Plans," is one of the total 75 songs making the list before it gets whittled down for the Best Original Song competition. We got Asa on the phone shortly after the list was released, and she was beyond excited. Here's our convo and you can listen to the song below:
Firstly, congratulations on making the short list! What were you doing when you found out?
I guess Bunny -- Sunny Levine [her co-writer] is his real name -- called me and told me. I couldn't even believe it. I thought he was kidding me. I was like screaming, I just couldn't believe it. I knew that Celeste and Jesse Forever was a really big deal at Sundance, one of the highlights for a lot of people. A lot of people were really affected by the music. I seriously still didn't think it was going to be like this. The other songs we're in the category with, it's a long shot [to get a nomination]. Literally we're with Adele for Skyfall and Rick Ross for Django, but it's amazing to be in the category with such amazing artists.
Is it validation in a sense to make a list like this?
It's such a blessing and I'm so humbled. People saw me last week and my mom was like 'What the hell is this, Persian pop priestess. Go get a PhD.' I've been working really hard for years at doing what I do and it's incredible that some things are coming to fruition. Whether we get nominated or not, this is incredible to me.
How did the song come about?
Bunny and I, he's my musical other half. We write all of my music together. This is one of the songs we wrote together for him, so he performed it and we started making music together because we're best friends. We grew up together, so it's fun and work all together. He was approached to do the score, and I know he put so much energy into it, but this is an original song, so we wrote it just for the movie. It's a quirky love story and the song lyrically, it's super cool and very different. It's good to see a song like this gets picked. Adele's 'Skyfall,' while they're great songs, they're obvious choices so it's great to see something indie like this on the list.
So we have to ask: What do you think your chances of getting nominated are?
I have a lot of hope actually. We might get nominated, who knows? How about one in 75, because that's the number of songs? [Laughs]
Where would the Oscar go if you won?
My Oscar is going to go directly in my art studio. And you know it's gold, and you know my thing with gold. I might try to make a necklace out of it for a while.
They're up against some heavy hitters in the music biz -- so spread the word to help get Asa some Oscar buzz!
