Amara Karan is back on the big screen this week as she teams up with Harish Patel and Kulvinder Ghir for new comedy Jadoo.
We caught up with the actress to chat about the film, working with director Amit Gupta and taking the film to the Berlin Film Festival.
- Jadoo is set to hit the big screen this week, so can you tell me a bit about the film?
It is a beautiful film about two brothers who are part of a family run Indian restaurant. They fall out catastrophically, and they tear the family recipe book in half; the elder brother takes the starters, half of the recipe book and the younger brother takes the main courses half of the recipe book, and they set up rival curry houses across the road from each other.
I play the daughter of the eldest brother, and I am determined to get them together, cook together and make up in time for my wedding day. My character also wants to discover the mystery as to why they fell out in the first place.
- You will be taking on the role of Shalini in the film...
She is the daughter of the eldest brother; she is a lawyer working in London and her fiancé is this gorgeous surgeon, played by Tom Mison. She is going to have this wonderful marriage to him and have this wonderful wedding.
But her objective is to get her father and her uncle to get together and cook together; she tricks them and tries to manipulate them to try to get them to be together. It is a mystery; nobody knows why they fell out and why they won’t speak to each other, they just haven’t for a long time.
She has a young brother and two cousins, her uncle’s children, and they, along with his wife, conspire to get these two brothers to get together and cook together.
There is also cooking competition that comes to Leicester by the world-famous Madhur Jaffrey and they all conspire to get the two brothers to cook together for the competition.
- What was it about this character and Amit Gupta’s script that initially drew you to the project?
It is a wonderful story - as I hope I have described - it really is a great story. I love any genre film as long as it has an interesting, gripping and intricate story that has twists and turns and comedy as well as being very moving. I want the full palette of colours; I want a bit of everything.
This script was very good as it was very well-written and there was a wonderful part for me. It was so right that Amit Gupta wrote this script himself, because it draws on his own family experience.
The movie is set in Leicester, and it is very much a product of Leicester; the Belgrade Road is known as the Golden Mile because of all the jewellery shops and sari shops as well as the Indian restaurants. On top of that the whole team that was assembled was phenomenal; I was in heaven. It was just an amazing job.
- I have mentioned Amit Gupta already, and he has penned the screenplay as well as being in the director's chair? So how did you find working with him - this is only his second feature film?
I saw his first film Resistance in November 2011 in the cinema, and I turned around to my friend at the end of the film and said ‘oh my god, I have to get in touch with Amit Gupta again. Resistance was Amit’s first film, and it was fantastic.
I had met Amit, through a friend, a couple of years before I saw the film. I had also seen a short film that he had done called Love Story, and I just thought ‘this guy is my director.’ I love his taste; I love his style, and he is really good.
A couple of months later I found out that he had this script Jadoo, and destiny just conspired. He was just brilliant to work with, and he had a great cast and crew.
He has such great attention to detail, and he works very very well, and he invests so much in it and thinks so carefully about everything. He attracts really quality people; the whole team were fantastic.
The set was incredibly relaxed because he knew what he wanted, he loved all the people that he was working with, and so he really trusted everybody and everyone was so passionate about it.
Everything was there in the script really. He was very straightforward about what he wanted, and he was very calm. And we all enjoyed Leicester very much (laughs).
- How collaborative a filmmaker is he when it comes to developing your character? Was he quite open to ideas about where you wanted to take them?
That is a really good question. I think that it is different for every single role, and every different director whom you work with. There was a lot already in the script to go off and go on but he did let me take it and make it my own.
He was very good with the actors because he worked with what they brought to the table, and he didn't necessarily stick rigidly to what he had originally intended the character to be.
He very much wanted the actors to own their roles, breathe life into it and bring their own spin and their own take on it; that was really nice. I think that that is why the performances are so engaging, because everybody did that, and they felt free to do that.
- The movie also sees you reunite with Harish Patel so how did you find working with him again?
I was thrilled. I was dying to work with him again, and I got my wish. He is brilliant. It really is an honour to work with him - as well as the whole cast.
We had a great time, and I knew that it was going to be great. I felt in very good hands; when Harish is on set you are very happy, and you are also challenged. It is fun coming to work.
- Tom Mison and Kulvinder Ghir are just some of the other names on the cast list. You have touched on this already but what the feeling like on set during the shoot - you do seem to have had a really good time?
We really had a wonderful time. Everyone was very relaxed, and it had a real family feel to it. Everyone really loved Leicester, and Leicester loved us. It was a really good vibe.
And I think that you can tell that in the film because you end up getting really engaged in the story, by the end of if you find yourself moved to tears; that is hard to achieve.
It is a sensitive thing, and it is a very delicately balanced energy, and that was what we had on set.
I was always confident on set observing how much passion everybody had for what they were doing and how much unity there was amongst the cast and the crew. Every day was a solid working day, and it was always very productive and very creative.
- The movie is released at the end of the week so have you been able to gauge any early response to the film so far?
I was thrilled to go to the Berlin Film Festival with this film, which was just a dream come true. We watched the film with the audience, and it went down amazingly.
It was subtitled in Berlin - obviously for the German audience - and it played perfectly; every single beat, joke and moment the audience got although it was in subtitles.
If an audience is watching a film in subtitles and is on cue with every response, then you have really hit the mark. I had seen a screening of it already, and I knew that it was in very good shape.
As you say, when an audience sits in an auditorium and doesn’t know the story and sees it for the first time, how much will they get engaged with it? And they really got engaged with it. I feel that audience members are really going to go with it when they see it.
- I was going to ask you about the Berlin Film Festival, and I was wondering how you found your overall experience there as it is a big festival?
It is humongous. Our film was just a small part of the festival, but it was amazing. If you are a fan of film, as I am, it is heaven as everyone there from the press to the filmmakers and the organisers all love film; they are mad about it.
The organisers of the Berlin Film Festival organised it spectacularly. We had this Michelin star German chef prepared a meal for the audience after they saw the film; this film does make you very hungry (laughs).
We had this wonderful introduction to the film by this chef; the filmmakers gave a little introduction; we saw the film and then we all went over to this beautiful candle lit tent and had this delicious gourmet three-course meal.
It was just magical; it was utterly magical - by the way, Jadoo means magic, so that was a little unintentional pun (laughs). It was like the best night; it really was.
The organisers had thought about the film and had made an event out of it. I just felt that the film was in the best hands, and the festival really takes care of each film, and thinks about audience’s experience of the film and the wider context of it all.
It was part of the culinary section within the Berlin Film Festival; it is a very interesting section because it is about wider issues such as sustainable food, food distribution, energy and the environment and food and health.
The Berlin Film Festival is quite exquisite and advanced and takes the filmmaking process to a whole other level in terms of getting the audience to engage with issues and culture and politics. It was ridiculously amazing (laughs).
It was like being in this little world of elite minds - it is like an exclusive club, but without being snotty. It is just a bunch of people that have engaged their senses and engaged their souls and engaged their intellects - you can’t be anything but inspired by that energy.
- The last time we spoke you were promoting All in Good Time, so what have you been up to since then?
Gosh, quite a lot (laughs). I did a play in the West End with Meera Syal, and, I’m afraid, the late Paul Bhattacharhjee; we did Much Ado About Nothing. I played Hero in the play, and it was set in India.
I also shot a film with Simon Pegg called A Fantastic Fear of Everything, which was the first film for director Crispian Mills.
Then I also have, coming out in autumn, this wonderful new comedy called Ambassadors; which is about the British Foreign Office in central Asia. It stars David Mitchell and Robert Webb, and they play the British Ambassador and the Deputy British Ambassador. I play the Political and Trade Ambassador at the Foreign Office. It is very satirical and very funny.
- Finally, what is next for you going through the second half of this year?
I have Ambassadors coming out, and I have Jadoo. I have another play project, but I can’t talk about it at the moment because it is in development. So that is what is coming up later this year.
Jadoo is released 6th September.
