Halo is your
first colour-blind casting since you started shooting for Western movies four
decades ago.
Yes, it is indeed amazing that we have a cast
that includes Korean, African American, English, Indian, Hungarian and none of
the actors are cast for their ethnicity and more important, all of us retain
our natural accents, a proof that the world shrinking and becoming a global
village.
It was not like that when you started?
No, all these years, I have been cast as a South
Asian. I remember asking my director John Schlesinger way back in 1988 why he
cast me as the boy’s mother in Madame Souzatska when the
character in the book is a Jew and John said that Indians are a part of the
British fabric and this must reflect in the choices. The struggle for colour
blind casting started then and we are seeing the results now but there is still
a long way to go.
What was the process of preparation before the filming?
We had a bootcamp in Budapest where did some readings, workshops
and then on the sets at Korda Studios that was transformed into the Halo world.
The actors met only on the sets because
all protocol had to be observed for covid.
To be continued