Kal Penn mulls on language bridges, Indian connections, admiration for Indian actors and films, et al...
Bryan Durham (DNA; October 26, 2014)

Kal Penn (or Kalpen Modi, as he’s otherwise known) has a familiar, yet international face. You’ve seen the actor in stoner comedies like the Harold and Kumar series or The Rise Of Taj, in TV shows as varied as 24, How I Met Your Mother and House. He has also been one of the most public young faces in both terms of the Barack Obama administration. We had a sitdown with the actor recently to talk shop, home and hearth and more...

You’ve been to India before (for The Namesake). What’s changed?
I think the big difference is that The Namesake was shot mostly in the States. So, we shot two weeks in Kolkata, two days in Agra whereas my latest film Bhopal: A Prayer For Rain was a fully Indian production shot here (in Hyderabad and Mumbai). I think both were independent films, but this was made more on a shoestring budget. So, it was a huge labour of love and the cast this time around was much more international. In the case of The Namesake, I was the only American actor and then, there’s Irrfan Khan and Tabu, obviously. In the case of Bhopal, you had me, Martin Sheen and Mischa Barton and the rest of the Indian cast. It was actually really cool to go from one to the other because in that amount of time, it seems a lot more filmmakers kept changing the dynamic in India of what Indians think like. It’s obviously exciting to talk to some of these guys from film schools who are trying out new things. It was a really neat progression to observe over that period of time...

Do you have family here in Mumbai?
I do. I have family, here in Mumbai, in Ahmedabad, in Vadodara. So, it’s not the first time I’ve come here, I usually end up coming about once a year.

You share our PM’s last name. Think of changing back to Kalpen Modi?
It’s funny, you know, when any actor uses a screen name, and once you start working, you kind of have to stick to the screen name, but I remember when we shot The Namesake and it premiered, I remember an interesting parallel - Gogol and Nikhil are the two names of the lead character in The Namesake. I said, ‘What if we had Gogol Ganguly played by Kalpen Modi and Nikhil Ganguly played by Kal Penn?’ So if you see the credits, there’s kind of a dual credit. That was kind of fun. (Shrugs)

You’re from New Jersey. Your comments on Jersey Shore.
Oh God! (Shocked) Are they airing that here? The TV show Jersey Shore is not New Jersey. But I certainly don’t take it particularly seriously. The real New Jersey is very different (laughs) than the Jersey Shore.

Do you speak Gujarati?
Yes. Gujarati and English obviously. Not Hindi, my Hindi is terrible. It’s kinda attrocious, but it was kind of a learning curve with this movie.

Were you caught unawares when you found out you had to speak Hindi in Bhopal?
When I got the script for Bhopal; A Prayer, it was in English. The meetings we had were in English and then we flew in to Hyderabad from LA, and in the first rehearsal when I read the scene, I read it in English and our director Ravi Kumar looks over to his assistant, and they look at me and Ravi goes (imitates the director), ‘Achha, abhi Hindi mein!’ I was like what do you mean ‘Abhi Hindi mein?’ And he’s like, ‘You know you’re playing an Indian journalist in Bhopal in 1984. Of course, you’re speaking in Hindi! You know that, right?’ I said, ‘I did NOT know that. I thought I was speaking in English.’ He said, why would you think that? I go, ‘Ravi, you sent me a script in English, including my lines. He said, ‘In India, we just do that here, everything’s in English. We assume you’ll translate that into Hindi.” I was like what do we do now? We can’t make him Gujarati, he’s Bhopali!’ So We hired a language coach and a dialect coach and so, I had like a crash course in how to speak conversational Hindi as much as how to really get the lines across and get in authentic speaking-wise. I had done the research on the character itself, but obviously, the language of choice was something to work on... (trails)... and of course, the rest of the Hindi speaking cast was helpful in that and I think my point is speaking Gujarati was a helpful bridge to learning lines in Hindi as opposed to not having any frame of reference, right

The dialect of Hindi spoken in Bhopal is slightly different. Did you go for authenticity or accessibility?
It was my primary concern was ‘For God’s sake, don’t speak Hindi with an American accent. Let me try to cross this bridge first’. And then, after that, of course the particular dialects. So we had a dialect coach. And writer-director Ravi Kumar is from MP and had done a lot of research. He lives in the UK now but he has a very good ear for it too. So to answer that question, I’d have to read Twitter after the movie comes out and see what people say. From the trailer, I’ve got positive comments, which is flattering.

Going by the trailer, most of your scenes are with Mischa Barton. What was the most striking thing about her?
She was incredible to work with. A lot of foreign audiences know her best from The OC and this is very different role from The OC. I really enjoyed getting to know her and a sense of why do a movie like this.

Mischa said somewhere she did the film for moral reasons. What are your reasons for doing the film?
Varied. One of the big reasons was seeing Ravi’s passion for telling the story. I remember the incident vaguely as a kid and studying about it in college, but any time you do a story based on real events that’s not a documentary, I think at least in my case, you want to make sure that whoever wrote it wants to do justice to the story. Were clearly a fictionalised adaptation. I don’t think it’s a political film nor does it have a political angle. When I first heard about the movie I was apprehensive and kind of thought is this going to be a movie that takes a biased stand or is it going to be able to tell this tragic story by painting the complex picture that led to this. Talking to Ravi it was very clear he wanted to talk about that complexity so long story short, I felt like the complexities of tragedy are very rarely discussed.It speaks volumes that Ravi took the time to come up with the complexities in real life. Playing a complex character like Motwani is not something I would have got a chance to do normally. Ravi said he wanted to hire an actor who was funny and deeply serious at the same time, which was flattering.

Lawrence Kutner, Kumar Patel, Gogol, Taj, Kevin, Ahmed or Motwani, which character is the closest and furthest from you?
Furthest from Kumar from Harold And Kumar which is why I love playing him so much. He’s like way cooler than I am than I’ll ever be. So the fact that he’s so different and bizarre and cool, makes it lot of fun to play that character. Closest I would say is probably Kutner actually because his backstory was because he liked sports and so got into sports medicine, then took a leave from sports medicine to apply for this fellowship with Dr House and so there are some parallels there about taking dual passions multiple passions than taking a break moving from one thing to another, so that was kinda cool.

Think we get stereotyped on screen in Hollywood and international television?
Yeah I feel like Hollywood is always behind the curve on representation, whether its representation of a particular ethnic group or gender group or whatever it is. it always seems like you know.. they’re very slow to change. Now I will say I also think that even though Hollywood is slow to change, if you look at the last five years, there are a lot of incredible changes that we’ve seen in American film and television over five years. And I’d point to examples like The Mindy Project (Mindy Kaling’s show), It’s doing so well, She wrote it, produced it, in every episode, she plays the lead... it’s phenomenal. She’s like got her own show and it’s on a huge network because she has that kind of talent and because she does such a great job. And there are increasing examples like that. I do think, thankfully, that Hollywood’s moving in the right direction. (Empathically) Not as fast as we all would like but faster than it has in the past.

What would convince you to do a Bollywood film - song and dance and all?
That’s a good question. There are so many answers I could give you. (Exclaims as an afterthought) Cast Irrfan Khan! Also, I want to work with Tabu again also. I think it’s funny... if you had asked me that question ten years ago it would have been easier to pinpoint because 10 years ago, if somebody said Bollywood movie, you knew what you were getting into you knew -- three-hour movie with awesome songs and dances you’ll cry, you’ll laugh and its a movie you can watch with your parents. And its awesome. Now... it can mean that but not necessarily it can also mean something like Bombay Talkies with directors whove dones those types of movies in them flipped the scipt and done more independent stuff. In the last couple of months, I’ve seen Gunday, which is very different from D-Day, which is very different from The Lunchbox. And I could find something in each of those three movies that would make me say yes to work in some thing like this. Full disclosure, I’m not the best dancer. We've discussed already that my Hindi skills are lacking. So, those are like two big hurdles, but there are like so many people I’d like to work with .. anybody that’s shaken up that kind of dynamic. On the flipside, because I haven’t done a musical before, the concept of doing something challenging appeals to me. There are so many ppl I'd like to work with, like Irrfan again, I’d like to work with Zoya Akhtar, do a buddy comedy with Saqib Saleem, so many other actors who’ve done incredible work!

And actreses (apart from Tabu!)?
I really think Kajol is tremendous in everything I’ve seen her and I’m fascinated by how Priyanka Chopra’s had such an incredible way with her films and her Western music career; the way she’s managed her career to kind of as much as one can manage both worlds, really like take them both by storm, in completely different ways. That kind of professional persona seems awesome.

What about directors?
Lets see, the four from Bombay Talkies, Zoya (Akhtar) Karan (Johar), Anurag (Kashyap) Dibakar Bannerjee. It’s funny that those four did a collection together because that’s perfect but yeah, I would start with those four.