Directed by Roshan Sethi, A Nice Indian Boy, starring Karan Soni and Jonathan Groff, Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, and received four stars here on BollySpice, is now available to rent or buy on digital platforms.
A charming romantic comedy, full of heart, A Nice Indian Boy is an expression of love in all its forms: family love, friendship love, and true, happily ever after love. The story begins with a meet-cute that evolves into a beautiful journey, which has our heroes reaching their hands out for their own happily ever after (HEA). Naveen is a self-effacing, soft-spoken doctor with a boisterous mother, Megha, seemingly perfect sister, Arundhathi, and quiet father, Archit. The Gavaskars are outwardly accepting of Naveen’s sexuality but have never had to confront it in practice. Then Naveen (Karan Soni) meets Jay Kurundkar (Jonathan Groff), a white man adopted by two Indian parents, and Naveen brings him home to meet the family. What do you think happens…will they get their HEA? You’ll have to watch the film to find out!
Roshan Sethi, talked with Stacey about this brilliant film, including revealing what it was like to work with Karan Soni and Jonathan Groff, the inclusion of moments of Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge into the film, and what the feeling he hopes stays with audiences after the film fades to black.
Check out some highlights from the interview and then click play to watch this incredible conversation about all things A Nice Indian Boy.
Roshan revealed, “A Nice Indian Boy is so personal to me and a beautiful script. So I was very, very lucky to get the chance to direct this.”
Discussing the inclusion of DDLJ, the director said, “It’s obviously probably the biggest movie of all time and is running in a theater in India almost 30 years after its release, or more than 30 years. It is the ultimate iconic Bollywood version of romance. So, we were very lucky that Adi (Aditya) Chopra, who’s the director of DDLJ, gave us permission to use the footage from the movie, in our movie, one of the first times it’s ever happened. And to be able to overlay a queer story over an iconic Bollywood story obviously has a certain historic and emotional significance as well.”
Adding to that, “I think when you grow up gay, whether you’re South Asian or not, then you view romance and the movie depiction of romance almost from the outside. It’s very hard to imagine yourself in a lot of those very sweeping Bollywood love stories. So the fact that this movie puts puts him not only like in a relationship with DDLJ, but literally inside DDLJ when he recreates it, has a has a kind of character significance.”
In reply to the question, ‘Karan Soni was brilliant in this. He had almost three sides to him — the person at home and who he was, his work persona, and then he almost goes inside himself in front of his family. So, how did you work with him to become Naveen?’ The director said, “I really didn’t work with him. He just came with that. It’s close, actually, to who Karan is in real life, for one thing. But for another, he is a more inward person than he is an external person. He grew up gay in India. That’s not like a situation that encourages full expression. Often, I think that kind of personality is forged as a survival or coping mechanism in a place where it was difficult, at least for him, to be gay. I think it’s a very difficult thing to show the complexities, like what you’re describing, the three versions of him, I think, are so true. It is shown with performance because that’s not actually in the writing. You’re sensing it from his behavior, from his gestures, from his face. That to me is such next-level acting. And he’s doing it so quietly that you don’t really realize how sophisticated it is.”
So, I never ever, ever, ever, ever thought that I would hear THE Jonathan Groff sing to ‘Tujhe Dehka’. Sethi said, “Yeah, yeah, oh my god – he just loves to sing!”
The director had nothing but praise for Jonathan Groff: “He was amazing. He is full of love. I actually don’t think I have met another person in all my journeys on this planet who is as full of love as Jonathan. He radiates it at every moment. He wants to believe in people, he wants to sing, he wants to fall in love. He just is. He is the exact person that you think he is.”
As for what he hopes audiences take away with them, “I hope by the end of the movie, just like a distinct feeling of joy and love and family.”
There is SO much more, so click play to watch the full, amazing,and fascinating interview!
Thank you, Roshan Sethi, for this incredible conversation.
Please read our full rave review here
Then go watch A Nice Indian Boy now.
Pictures courtesy of Levantine Films
