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.”

DNA (January 29, 2015)


The London-based Bend It Like Beckham director arrives in Mumbai next week for casting. The film will chronicle the last six months of Lord Mountbatten’s tenure in India, which marked the end of the British Raj.

Shares the director, “There are these so-called facts that we grew up reading about Mountbatten’s closing months in India. And there are these secret documents which I’ve unearthed. These point to another truth which I’ll reveal in my film.”

She has bought the rights to two very important books on the subject as well. “My husband Paul Mayeda Berges (who has co-scripted The Viceroy’s House) and I have bought the rights of two books Narinder Singh’s Sarla’s The Shadow Of The Great Game and Larry Collins & Dominique Lapierre’s Freedom At Midnight. These, plus the documents we’ve unearthed, will serve as the basis of the plot,” says Gurinder.

Buzz is, Chadha was keen on casting Colin Firth as Mountbatten, Naseeruddin Shah as Jinnah and Saif Ali Khan as Jawaharlal Nehru, but she counters, “I want actors who fit perfectly into every part. I see a lot of very natural actors in India now. And I’m eager to work with them.”

Gurinder will also go location- hunting during her trip to India. “I’ll be shooting in and around Jodhpur and Rajasthan.”