Huma Qureshi opens up about her pre-Partition period drama in which she interprets history
Avinash Lohana (MUMBAI MIRROR; December 24, 2016) 

Last September, Bend It Like Beckham director Gurinder Chadha kicked off an eight-week schedule of her period-drama, Viceroy’s House, in Jodhpur. It’s a truelife recreation of the final months of British rule in India with Huma Qureshi as the interpreter Aalia.

The film is a story about the Partition and the 56-year-old filmmaker, along with her co-writer husband, Paul Mayeda Berges, has spent five years on research and has an interesting take on the subject. Huma, who spent three months prepping up for her part, informs that Gurinder was very particular about the diction she wanted so she met Jaya Thadani, an interpreter from the time, in London who had many interesting anecdotes to share about Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru.

The 30-year-old actress has a family member who relocated to Pakistan and recently reconnected with her parents, Saleem and Ameena Qureshi.

“My grandfather has a house in Delhi. I was told that during the Partition many people, who didn’t have a place to stay, lived there for months. The film also talks about giving love a chance at a time when religion and hatred divided people,” says Huma, who enjoyed working with English actors Michael Gambon and Hugh Bonneville and American-British actress Gillian Anderson.

“It was a colourful, flavourful khichdi of actors from different countries. We’d complain of the heat during the day and go for dinners after pack-up. I’d bring them chips, cheese and olives like Santa and cheer them up,” laughs the actress who has another release coming up, the Bollywood sequel of Subhash Kapoor’s Jolly LLB, in which she plays Akshay Kumar’s wife Pushpa.

She’s also finished shooting for the Hindi remake of the Hollywood horror film Oculus with brother Saqib Saleem and admits the siblings fight and disagree on everything. “It’s important to have discussions to maintain a healthy relationship and Saqib and I are more like friends,” she smiles.

Bring up the name of Sohail Khan with whom she’s been linked in the recent past, and she retorts, “I can’t date my brother.”