Actor plays a quirky Punjabi in his 512th film, which is being shot in Los Angeles
Sanyukta Iyer (MUMBAI MIRROR; January 26, 2018)

As a comic ode to Gene Kelly’s iconic song “Singin’ in the Rain”, which was also the title of the late actor-dancer’s 1952 musical-romance, British-Canadian filmmaker Indrani Pal-Chaudhuri has gone on the floors with a film titled Singh In The Rain. The musical romcom follows an aspiring Indian-American singer who invites a Sikh chef to her sister’s lavish wedding only for them to discover that he is a “fake”. The laugh riot is presently being shot in Los Angeles in a 20-day schedule. It features Annapurna Sriram, Shane Paul McGhie, Pooja Batra, Amol Shah and Anupam Kher as the quirky Pratap Singh complete with a turban.

The 62-year-old actor who will next be seen in Neeraj Pandey’s Aiyaari, describes it as a “picturesque shoot in Malibu for my 512th film”. His “great new journey” across the seven seas will continue till February 15. “The film in its essence revolves around how — first comes love, then arranged marriage!” laughs the veteran actor who revealed this project at the Screen Actors’ Guild Awards on Sunday where his last Hollywood film, The Big Sick, was nominated in two categories — Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture and Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role.

Two days later, The Big Sick made it to the 90th Academy Awards for Best Original Screenplay. “I am so proud to be a part of this gem of a film. I’m also thrilled that writers Emily Gordon and Kumail Nanjiani are nominated for the Oscars. Their script for The Big Sick was so incredibly pure. It made us laugh, cry, and everything in between,” Anupam gushes, adding that it was wonderful to re-unite with the entire team at a sit-down dinner. “It was a night to remember.”

The actor, whose repertoire boasts of acclaimed Hollywood films like Silver Linings Playbook, A Family Man and Bend It Like Beckham, will next be seen in an American-Australian thriller, Hotel Mumbai, directed by Anthony Maras, featuring Dev Patel and Arnie Hammer. Shot in and around South Bombay last year, the film is based on the 2009 documentary, Surviving Mumbai, which follows the terrorist attacks on the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel. Anupam will be seen as chef Hemant Oberoi in the film. He will also soon start shooting The Accidental Prime Minister where he plays former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

The Big Sick is a delightful romantic comedy and based on the true story of the life of the Pakistani-American stand-up comedian Kumail Nanjiani. Kumail plays himself in the film and Zoe Kazan plays his love interest. How Kumail’s courtship began with Emily Gordon and objection raised by their respective families’ forms the rest of the film. There’s also a hospital angle that takes the film to another level (and hence the title of the film). The film has humour, romance, emotion, drama etc in the right doses. Kumail’s interactions with his family are hilarious and his association with Emily’s parents is beautifully shown. One wishes however if they had enlightened more about Kumail’s love story at a later stage. But the film has enough content to keep viewers happy. Honestly speaking, I had never heard of Kumail before and he has done a splendid job. He’s simply terrific. Zoe Kazan is charming and delivers a wonderful performance. Holly Hunter and Ray Romano however have more screen time and their scenes are amazing. Anupam Kher leaves a huge mark, in the climax. Shenaz Treasury sadly is wasted – she has far more potential. Vella Lovell (Khadija) and Kuhoo Verma (Zubeida) are most memorable out of all prospective brides. For the Indian viewers, the bad news is that few dialogues are muted. And believe it or not – the ‘no smoking’ ticker is present throughout the film, which has no smoking scene at all!

My rating - **** out of 5!

Following seven years on American TV, the VJ-turned-actress returns to India as a travel vlogger and because she misses her dhansak
Kunal Guha (MUMBAI MIRROR; March 26, 2017)


Shortly after the release of Delhi Belly in 2010, Shenaz Treasurywala travelled to San Diego for a friend’s wedding. In the US, she also auditioned for the role of Aubrey Wentworth in the soap opera One Life To Live.

Treasurywala didn’t make the cut, and decided to head back to India. “The day I was to leave, I got a call which changed my life.” The part of Rama Patel had been written into OLTL to accommodate her, and she was a New Yorker overnight. Now, seven years after her move to Brooklyn, the VJ-turned-actress is returning, and will soon release a book — All He Left Me With Was A Recipe — on her experiences.

Having starred in one of America’s longest running TV soaps and a Netflix film among others, Treasurywala decided to return because she “misses home, family, friends and dhansak”. “Recently, I was unwell, and a friend of mine travelled across the city to get me Dhansak, and eating it, I just knew I had to get back,” she says over the phone from New York.

Treasurywala says that, unlike other actors, she’s never been too picky about her roles. “I will play any role, just give me the job. Actually, I am often typecast as Middle Eastern or Pakistani here. Having said that, there are just one or two ethnically diverse roles in a show or a film. So, usually at auditions, I am competing with Latinos, Blacks, Middle Easterners, Chinese and Indians for any part.” But being profiled at auditions fades in comparison to the struggle she had to endure during her first few years in America.

“The snowstorms and blizzards in New York are not for the faint-hearted. It takes a lot of adjustment to wake up every day in minus 10 degrees and grey cloudy skies.” But the real challenge began when her show was shelved. “Two and a half years later when One Life To Live got canceled, I cried. I had to go to auditions, I had to hustle — something I didn’t have to in India because my first job as a teenager was with MTV, and I was a super success at 18.”

But her first break inspired her to keep trying, and before she knew it, she was a correspondent on Comedy Central’s Nightly Show that is produced by Jon Stewart. Then came Brown Nation, NBC’s Indian-American comedy. “I happened to go to a bar where I met a writer and cinematographer. Next day, as I was walking to school (she did a screenwriting course at NYU on the side), I ran into one of them again, and he introduced me to a director. They called me in to shoot a pilot. A year later, they shot the show and a year down, it got picked up by Netflix.” Treasurywala has also starred in Knocked Up-director Judd Apatov’s The Big Sick, starring comedian Kumail Nanjiani and Ray Romano. “I don’t invest in PR so every little job I do isn’t plastered all over the newspapers in India, but I’ve had success here.”

The great American dream is obviously not without its downside. “The scene is the same as in India, but nobody calls directly, one must have an agent or manager, and the scope of making money is much less than in India. Taxes are ridiculous, and there’s no end to bills.”

While some may argue that her Hindi film career didn’t receive the same overwhelming response as her VJ stint, she feels that one “can’t win at everything in life immediately”. “I didn’t set out to be a Bollywood actor. My first film, Ishq Vishk, just came along and I went with it, and it was a big success. I continued with MTV almost right up until Delhi Belly, which was also a big hit,” says the actress who shipped all her furniture from Mumbai to New York when she nailed her first TV gig and only recently decided to do away with it all. “I have sold all my furniture and have been living out of a bag and crashing at Airbnbs.” Airbnbs? That’s right. Treasurywala is also seriously pursuing making a living out of travel, and is a popular travel vlogger. “I work, save and travel. I just fly around the world exploring in between acting gigs. I made a choice since I was very young to spend my money on experiences and not things.” Years ago, Treasurywala had to choose between hosting her own show on MTV and a job as an airhostess with an international airline.

“Sunil Lulla, then MTV’s boss, told me that I can choose to see the world, or allow the world to see me. If I picked the second option, he said, I’d be able to afford to travel the world anyway,” says Treasurywala, who has, till date, visited over 100 countries and recorded her travelogues. Being a travel vlogger allows her, she says, to also pursue her other passions: photography, hosting and interacting with people. “It’s like MTV’s Most Wanted all over again — it’s interactive — I respond to my fans,” says the Youtube star whose channel has knocked up four and a half million views.

Anupam Kher on his 500th film, Hollywood production The Big Sick, which is set to premiere at Sundance
Roshmila Bhattacharya (MUMBAI MIRROR; December 24, 2016)


Five hundred may just be a number but when it’s the 500th film for any actor it’s a milestone. The Michael Showalter-directed The Big Sick, an upcoming American romcom, is inspired by the real-life story of comedian Kumail Nanjiani and his wife Emily V Gordan who’ve written the screenplay. Besides Kumail, the film also features Holly Hunter, Oscar and Golden Globe winner for The Piano, Emmy Award (Everybody Loves Raymond) winner Ray Romano, Zoe Kazan as Emilyand Anupam as the patriarch of the dysfunctional Nanjiani family. It will premiere at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival on January 20.

While it’s a story of the trials and tribulations of an American immigrant family and a father-son conflict, Anupam insists it’s not heavyduty serious and his is not a stock Caucasiun character. On his suggestion, he was turned into a mystery novel writer seeking his son’s approval with the recurrent query, “Have you read the manuscript?”

“For the first time I’m playing a comic-comic role in an international production. Michael did not stick to a fixed script but let us improvise on the set,” says the actor, revealing that he almost lost out on the role because there were issues over his work permit so he’d return to his hotel everyday without shooting. Finally. unable to wait any longer, he makers set a deadline. “They told me that if the work permit didn’t arrive the next day by 2 pm, they’d have to replace me. An hour before the deadline expired, I finally got my permit,”Anupam recalls, speaking to Mirror from London.

In 2017, he has three other international projects, including Tabrez Noorani’s film about sex trafficking, Love Sonia, the American-Australian thriller, Hotel Mumbai on the 2008 terror attacks, and a third project he can’t talk about yet. Quiz him on numbers, 500 in particular, and he says he was lucky to come into the industry in the 1980-’90s when a lot of work was happening, admitting that one year, he was shuttling between 27 films.

Not all the roles were memorable but he’d been told by maker Manmohan Desai that it is better to keep your diary full because people came to you more if you were not available and he took the advice to heart. “I was a gold medallist, from NSD, yet I was jobless for three years. I was hungry and humiliated so when the offers started coming, I was loathe to turn anyone away,” reminisces the actor who hates tags like ‘legend’ and ‘thespian’ because in India that would mean a Lifetime Achievement Award and retirement. “I’ve only reached the interval.”

Today, he agrees, things have changed but he’d still work in a Chinese film for the joy of being directed by Ang Lee and give the nod to a Robert De Niro or Clint Eastwood film even if it is a onescene appearance. But India is now a large market and he when touring the US, he was so delighted to see Priyanka Chopra’s solo billboards that he’d get out of my car and clickpictures. He’s equally proud of Deepika Padikone who trained at my acting school.

What keeps him going? “I like to challenge myself and still fear failure but now I am more relaxed and have started enjoying my work,” he says.

His debut film, Saraansh, is being remade. His take? “I don’t want to sound arrogant but Saaransh would work only if I return as BV Pradhan and Bhattsaab (Mahesh Bhatt) as director. It was not just a film, it was life’s philosophy created from the depths of passion, hunger and desperation. How do you replicate that?” he asks.