Clarion Ledger talks to Tanya ( Kenya ) Wright

COLUMBUS — In 2006, when Tanya Wright first penned the script for a very personal film she hoped to one day make, she had never heard of Columbus.

But while in the city to meet a business partner, the native New Yorker and Los Angeles-based actress had what one might call a Possum Town epiphany.

"I was here, and we were talking about making a couple of movies," said Wright, who plays the character Kenya in the HBO series True Blood.

"I had this script I wrote several years ago that was very dear to my heart. We actually weren't going to make this one any time soon (but) I looked out the window one day and realized this is the perfect place to shoot this movie, just perfect in every way."

Butterfly Rising was Wright's directing debut and what she calls a passion project inspired by an experience in her own life.

"My brother, Barron Wright, died suddenly in 2005, and I was ... changing, wide and deep. My attraction to butterflies during this period of my life was strong. A butterfly - with its four stages: egg, caterpillar, cocoon and, finally, butterfly - is the result of a metamorphosis, the complete transformation."

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