Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. The movie A Nice Indian Boy opened over the weekend and it was a New York Times critics pick. It is a welcome return of the rom-com. Naveen, a shy, introverted Indian American doctor, meets the person of his dreams at a Hindu temple. This after several weddings and promises that his special day would come soon enough. He meets Jay, the person of his dreams, a freelance photographer. Their courtship brings out a different side of Naveen. One that's happier, more carefree. Even though Naveen is already out to his traditional Indian American family, he's still a little hesitant to introduce them to his first serious boyfriend who is white, having been adopted by Indian parents. A New York Times review says, "In this vibrant addition to cinema's romantic landscape, love isn't the only winner. Cultural understanding and the freedom to choose your own path, triumph as well." A Nice Indian Boy is playing in select theaters now. The film's director, Roshan Sethi. Did I get it right, Roshan?

Roshan Sethi: Yes, you did.

Alison Stewart: Yes. Nice to meet you. [laughs]

Roshan Sethi: Nice to meet you. Thank you for having us.

Alison Stewart: Also joining us is the actor who plays Naveen, Karan Soni. Hi, Karan.

Karan Soni: Hi.

Alison Stewart: Also actor and comedian Zarna Garg. Hi, Zarna.

Zarna Garg: Hi. Namaste. Thank you for having me.

Alison Stewart: Happy to have all of you. Roshan, this was built around a play. When did you first hear about the play, A Nice Indian Boy?

Roshan Sethi: Well, the play's been performed since 2014. But I only heard of it after it was adapted into a script by a company called Levantine Films in 2020. It took six years for it to reach me. Then at that point, I was approached to direct it with Karan to star at around the same time.

Alison Stewart: The film was adapted by, I think it's Eric Randall?

Roshan Sethi: Correct. Exactly. Really talented writer. The play was written by Madhuri Shekar.

Alison Stewart: What was interesting about the adaptation of Eric Randall's play?

Roshan Sethi: It expands the play naturally and gives it scope. It also bookends the play with two weddings. It begins with an Indian wedding and it ends with an Indian wedding. Without spoiling too much about whose weddings those are and why it's structured that way.

Alison Stewart: Zarna, you are booked and busy with your standup career. What interested you about this role?

Zarna Garg: It was not the money. [laughter] No, it was working with these guys. Look at these guys. They are amazing and adorable. I knew that whatever they did, it's going to be outstanding. I just want to say our director Roshan Sethi is also a cancer surgeon. If you're going to have somebody give you directions, you want a nice Indian doctor. Let me tell you that. If he is equipped to do that, he's definitely ready to take me onto a big screen.

Roshan Sethi: It was a medical set, that's for sure.

Alison Stewart: Well, Karan, what was your opinion of rom-coms?

Karan Soni: I love rom-coms. I actually grew up in India and I only moved to America when I was 18 to go to college. I watched a lot of Bollywood, which-- A lot of Bollywood, we don't use the word rom-com, but it's just epic romances, especially at the time when I was growing up, so big Bollywood song and dance, romance musicals. I loved love stories. Then it was so exciting to make this movie because in many ways this movie is like an homage to Bollywood but in a very Hollywood movie.

It combines both those worlds, I think in a very unique way. It felt like this very eerie thing where as a kid you've watched these movies and then you're a grown adult and you're in one. It was very cool and hard to wrap my head around sometimes.

Alison Stewart: Karan, you play this introverted, a little bit awkward doctor. How do we get a sense of who Naveen is?

Karan Soni: I'm just playing Roshan because Roshan and I are also dating. When we began dating, actually Roshan and I worked a little bit on the script as well. One of the first changes Roshan wanted to make was to make the character a doctor. Originally he was a tech worker. Roshan often says that medicine is an easy profession to be closeted in or to not have your entire personality come out because people don't really want to know what doctor's personal feelings are.

That really actually helped me with the character because it's-- The character starts off very shy and then by the end of the movie, loving openly and being him, his full self. His profession almost lets him hide in a way. When Roshan and I first began dating, he was quite awkward and shy with me. Our first date was four and a half hours. I would say that's a good first date. Lengthwise. It ended with him wanting to shake my hand from like 5 feet apart as if I had some infectious disease.

For the first year or so of dating, he never really showed much emotion and personality. What does it say about me that I stuck around let's not focus on that part. But it was really fun for me because I was able to channel a version of him. There's a very interesting first date scene in this movie, and so much of what I'm playing is stealing from Roshan directly.

Roshan Sethi: Our first date, Karan was a lot like Jonathan Groff's character, actually, in that he was effusive and overflowing with love. On our first date, he recapped the Bollywood movie that I had seen, and he recapped it in such detail that by the end, he had moved himself to weeping. He was crying at the recap of the Bollywood movie of Kal Ho Naa Ho. I was just sitting there robotically frozen, giving him nothing as he moved himself to tears with just the memories of a Bollywood movie.

Alison Stewart: Well, first of all, I have to ask, are you in the same house in different rooms?

Roshan Sethi: We are.

Karan Soni: We are.

Alison Stewart: Oh, boy, I can't wait to hear this conversation after we go off the air.

[laughter]

Roshan Sethi: We are. I go upstairs. He goes downstairs.

Alison Stewart: Jonathan Groff plays the other romantic lead in this book. Roshan, why was he the right fit?

Roshan Sethi: We just all loved him. He's the number one gay in the country.

Alison Stewart: Mee too. I love him. Sorry.

Roshan Sethi: We went to him not knowing him at all. He had seen our first movie, 7 Days, and he really liked it. Karan is the lead of 7 Days. The first thing he said to me on the phone was, "Could that guy in 7 Days play gay?" I was like, "He definitely could play gay because he is gay with me. We're gay." Jonathan was on board after that, basically. Then we found Zarna, and the rest is history.

Alison Stewart: Zarna, you've done standup in your standup act about bringing home a white boyfriend. Your daughter brings home a white boyfriend. Can you tell us what are the taboos that come around dating preferences within immigrant families?

Zarna Garg: Certainly, having a different culture is a little bit of a shock. Because you don't know. I find that Indian parents, myself included, we want the mix, but we just don't know what we're doing. We honestly don't know. We've lived these isolated lives for so many years, decades even. I have friends. My sister has lived in America almost 50 years. But we live within the Indian communities, and we don't know.

Suddenly when somebody is in an intimate part of our life, like staying in our house and waking up with us and all, we get a little frazzled. But we're learning. What better way to learn than to have Jonathan Groff be that guy, to be your son-in-law? I mean the most easy guy to love and get along with.

Alison Stewart: Karan, your character is just so afraid to bring home Jay to his family. Why is he so afraid?

Karan Soni: I think what this movie deals with is so interesting. it's not a coming-out story but it's really what happens afterwards. I'm obviously gay myself with Roshan. I came out when I was 19, I'm 36 now. It's been a while since that moment. But I remember prior to coming out I felt like the minute I come out it would be like a light switch. Everything would be healed and fixed and all this anxiety and all these self-hatred thoughts I had would all go away. But that's not what happened.

I felt in my experience it's gradual coming out constantly in life. One big coming out is introducing the person you're dating to your family. Because initially for a short amount of time. But my family didn't take it well when I came out to them. I just remember being like, I don't want to re-traumatize them with this new thing that they have to get accustomed to. It's interesting because it's not even a queer thing. I find I know so many people, straight friends who are dating people that they feel like their parents wouldn't approve of and they're lying to them about their relationship.

In America and India, it's like so many friends and that their kids have a whole romantic life outside of what their parents think they're doing. I think it's just this classic thing of what expectations are for family and what ends up being the reality of who your child is and what their life is. What's so interesting about the play in this movie is that on the surface they want me to date a nice Indian boy. But Jonathan's character, because he grew up with Indian parents is maybe the most Indian character in the entire movie. It bodes this question what are you really judging and where does your prejudice begin and end? It's such an interesting play on all of those things.

Alison Stewart: Roshan, to ask about Jonathan playing the love interest because in the movie he's a white kid adopted by Indian parents. I was curious what your conversations were like with Jonathan. This could feel real and not just a plot device.

Roshan Sethi: Honestly, there were no conversations. He was coming from Doctor Who and we had no time to chat before he arrived on set. I didn't give him an upload on being Indian. There's a scene in the movie, as you know, where he has to sing a Hindi song that I didn't prepare him for in any way. He just arrived having figured it all out on his own by assimilation. It was incredible.

One of the questions the movie asks is what is culture? Because, for example, I'm Indian, but I'm raised in Canada and my connection to being Indian is secondhand in a way. I have an immigrant mother, but I myself have barely been to India. Karan, on the other hand, is born and raised in New Delhi, left when he was 18, and then made the rest of his life in America. Zarna is also born and raised in India, left when she was, I think, older than 18.

We're all approaching this thing of being Indian in different ways. It almost proves the lie. When I speak Hindi, I sound worse than Karan's white brother-in-law who is learning Hindi on Duolingo. It's such a tricky thing to know, what is it to be Indian? We've gotten so obsessed with identity politics in a lot of ways. One of the downsides of that is we've forgotten that we're all interested in each other and we're all connected to each other in ways that are sometimes surprising.

Alison Stewart: That's interesting.

Karan Soni: I would say Los Angeles yoga teachers can speak Hindi better than Roshan.

Roshan Sethi: Oh, absolutely.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: That's such an interesting point, Zarna, is that you all bring a different experience to this project. What of your experience were you able to bring?

Zarna Garg: Just the mom life. I don't think this is an Indian mom story. An Indian mom worry. It's a mom story and a mom worry. Every mother is worried about the same thing about their kids. Every mother has the same ambitions and aspirations, give or take. In my standup comedy, the audience is very global. It's not just Indian because every mother, every daughter-in-law, every mother-in-law sees something of her and it feels like the same thing in this movie.

I don't think you have to be Indian. I don't think you have to be anything specific to enjoy this movie. Any human being with human relationships, you're going to get in there and just feel all the fields that we wrote as A Nice Indian Boy.

Roshan Sethi: The reaction is so universal. If you go on Letterboxd from Rotten Tomatoes audience section, people all have the same reaction, no matter who they are. You can look at their user IDs and see that they really run the gamut. The movie actually tested highest among white women, which I think even more than among Indians, because we are all interested in each other, as I said before. That's one of the beautiful things that the experience of making the movie has illustrated to us.

Alison Stewart: We're talking about the new film A Nice Indian Boy. We'll have more after a quick break. This is All Of It.

[music]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. We are talking about the new romantic comedy, A Nice Indian Boy. An introverted doctor introduces his family to his white artist boyfriend. We're speaking with the stars Karan Soni and Zarna Garg, as well as director Roshan Sethi. Zarna, tell us a little bit about this family. What do you think is the ethos of being in the family that this movie is situated around?

Zarna Garg: This family is every American family. It's full of love, but it's full of complications. There are a lot of contradictions. The husband is irritating as hell, which many, many people in the country will relate to. The mom is trying to balance everybody's feelings. Keep the son happy, the daughter happy, the husband whatever. Just keep him out of everybody's way, which is very realistic. If you have a family with kids and all, sometimes that's the answer. Please go sit in the other room. I think this family is every family. It's every American family for sure. It's a family that's full of love, but also full of fears and doubts, which is very normal.

Alison Stewart: I think generational differences, too, is a big part of it.

Zarna Garg: Absolutely.

Alison Stewart: Karan, early in the film, your mom is trying to-- she's trying to recount the plot of Milk to you while you're on the phone, while you're at the job. This is really funny thinking about it. What is he thinking in that moment as his mother is trying to reach out to him in a very odd way?

Karan Soni: I think it's such an interesting thing because actually, even though this was in the play, my real-life mom is very much like this. She has taken it upon herself. After the very short initial feeling of her not feeling supportive, she's now the most supportive mom. She has made herself the person in her neighborhood who reaches out and helps people. Often it comes from the right place. I'm the problematic person in this situation. I'm cringing at her methods.

For instance, she lives in Georgia. She'll go up to random Indian parents and be like, "Your child is gay. I just know it. When they decide to come out, you let me know. It's going to be really hard, but I will help you." These parents are like, "I'm sorry, what?" Then she's like, "I just told them their child's going to be gay." I was like, "Oh my God." The intention of it is so pure, which is that she wants to spread love and support and she wants to do good. The characters aren't explained, but it's always so interesting because as a child, your first reaction always when your parents do anything like that ends up being cringed. But in reality, how lucky am I? How lucky is the character to have a mom like that?

Alison Stewart: As people can understand, this is a comedy. This has got some laugh-out-loud moments. Roshan, what's important, first of all in directing a comedy, and what do you know now is important about directing a comedy?

Roshan Sethi: The lesson I learned is in some ways something that I knew before, but just that has been emphasized by the making of this movie, which is that you have to cast funny people because lines, oddly enough, and dialogue often is not funny. You can get audiences to smile, but it's very, very hard to get them to laugh out loud. Audiences feel like they're more resistant than ever and they will often, however, laugh or even a mediocre line if it comes from someone who just feels funny. Like Zarna just feels funny no matter what she does or says. Then that's added by all the brilliant things that she says.

That's true of all the greats, Tina, Amy, like Kristen Wiig. These are people who are just Maya Rudolph. These are people who are just funny. we respond to that energy. Karan is like that as well. It was amazing watching them. Both Karan and Zarna improvised many of the funniest lines in this movie. The recap, for example, that you just described, I thought it was funny if Zarna recapped Milk.

Karan wrote that entire monologue and then Zarna read it to him in character. Then Zarna came up with my favorite lines in the movie, which I won't ruin because we're on the radio. But my absolute favorite joke in the movie when they first come home and are sitting in the living room watching gay tv, came from Zarna for the father to deliver. You just have to cast people like these two who are such comedic geniuses.

Alison Stewart: Zarna, you have a background in stand-up, so does Karan. Ask Zarna Garg first, how did this help you in making this film? Your background in stand-up comedy?

Zarna Garg: I think it gives you an intuitive feel for the timing. Where to pause, where to punctuate for a laugh. At least that's why in hindsight, I feel like I could do what I did. This is my first movie ever. I didn't know really what I was doing. My whole plan was to listen to whatever Roshan says because I was like, I don't know what I'm doing. But I've aligned myself with these two geniuses, so I should not reinvent the wheel here and just listen to whatever they're saying.

But even as they are giving directions, some of the lines have to be delivered in a way that makes sense to your brain. But because I'm on a stage practically every night of my life since the last six years, I think intuitively I just knew where to pause and how fast to go with the words. Other than that, I take no credit for this performance. It's all Roshan and Karan.

Roshan Sethi: No, no, no, no, no, not at all.

Alison Stewart: Karan, how about for you in terms of stand-up?

Karan Soni: I never actually ended up doing stand-up. I was so scared of it. But the live comedy I did always was improv. I went to USC and LA. Then eventually when I got my first small commercial agent, they told everyone to go to UCB Upright Citizens Brigade, which is a theater that started in New York but is popular in LA too. I would say my theory is teach someone to be funny or teach someone timing. But you can hone what makes it work.

The thing I learned at UCB was just to listen and to be grounded. No matter how crazy the situation is. You want to be within the world that has been set, the rules that have been set in the scene. Otherwise, the scene just goes off the rails. Those skills, I feel I took over to film acting as well, which is always to be in the story and make sure the comedy and improv is coming from what the character would really do versus me just making a joke to make the crew laugh. That's something I definitely learned through UCB. The yes and of it all.

Alison Stewart: Roshan, do you believe that? That you can't really teach somebody to be funny?

Roshan Sethi: Yes. Nobody can teach me, for example. That's why you just have to cast funny people. There's no way around it. People don't understand how critical acting is to comedy. It's actually not the writing, it's the acting more than it is anything else to make people laugh out loud. In editing this movie with Stephanie Kaznocha, the movie's editor, it takes such timing and delivery to get people to feel happy enough to actually laugh out loud.

When you get an audience to laugh out loud, it's the most miraculous thing in the world, and it's the most human thing. It's amazing watching people laugh because they always look at each other. That's the most interesting thing about laughter because as humans, the only reason we laugh is for tribal bonding. That's the reason you should be seeing comedies in theaters, because you laughing at home alone is not only pathetic, it's also not useful biologically.

Alison Stewart: I'm pathetic.

Roshan Sethi: But you laughing--

[laughter]

Karan Soni: Oh my gosh,

Alison Stewart: It's so sad.

Karan Soni: Oh, my gosh. This is how Roshan directs. He's very [unintelligible 00:19:58] [crosstalk]

Roshan Sethi: That's what happens when a doctor directs.

Karan Soni: He would come up to us and be like, that one was pathetic. Then we kept going till we got there.

Roshan Sethi: Listen, nobody is more pathetic than me. Honestly, literally, nobody is more pathetic than me. You can ask Karan. When you go to the theater and you look at each other and you feel each other and you laugh together, that's literally why we're alive. As crazy as that sounds and as extreme as that sounds. When you experience it, on something like Bridesmaids, for example, just to take an example of a movie that had people roaring in the theaters, it really is the most magical thing in the world.

Alison Stewart: Zarna, I'm surprised you said this is your first movie.

Zarna Garg: It is my first movie. That's right. I didn't even want to do this one. The truth is that I actually declined this one because I love these guys so much that I wanted their movie to be a big hit. I was like, go hire somebody who's really good and knows what they're doing and is experienced at that level. They were very insistent that this was the right role for me. In fact, I remember Roshan is like, "Zarna, this is the role of a mother who's disappointed in her husband and kids." I said, "I'm in. I'm in. No one can play that role better than me. Let's go."

Karan Soni: I think your words were not even Meryl Streep could play better than you.

Zarna Garg: Yes. I was like, Meryl Streep sit down. Am I allowed to say that? I had originally suggested, maybe Meryl Streep needs a job. Put her in a tanning booth and let her do this.

Roshan Sethi: No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Meryl Tanning.

Zarna Garg: I wanted the best possible mother for this. Look at these guys. The story of this movie. In a world filled with hatred, anger, and everybody is wanting to rip each other to shreds over the most minuscule things, these guys come up with a project that is so full of love and hope. You talked about laugh-out-loud moments. I have now, since the movie released, watched a movie at least 10 different times in 10 different theaters in different cities as I've been touring.

Even 11:00 PM show, I'll pop up just to see what's going on. The amount of people that are holding each other's hands and just silently sobbing along with the movie or laughing so hard that they're crying. It's like, I don't think I've experienced anything like this in decades. This is once in a lifetime experience. I didn't want to be the weakest link in this movie, which is why I was hesitant to act in it.

Alison Stewart: Were you scared? Were you scared to be [unintelligible 00:22:33] [crosstalk]?

Zarna Garg: The only reason I wasn't scared is because I trusted these guys. I really psyched myself into believing that if they think I can do it, I can do it. But on my own, I would have never dared to imagine that this is a role for me. It's a very, very good part. It's like a very integral part of the story. The mother plays a big role in the beginning and in the end. It's not one of the side roles where the mom is just cooking in the background. The mom is really actively involved. There are a lot of movies where you don't even know what the mom's doing. [unintelligible 00:23:07] [crosstalk]

Roshan Sethi: You don't cook at all in this movie?

Zarna Garg: Not at all.

Alison Stewart: Dad cooks.

Roshan Sethi: He's cooking.

Karan Soni: Dad is cooking.

Alison Stewart: Dad's cooking in the movie.

Zarna Garg: Well, let dad do something because he's otherwise irritated.

Roshan Sethi: What else would he be doing?

Alison Stewart: Roshan, why do you think this? Where does this movie fit into today's landscape of the rom-com?

Roshan Sethi: I think people want an experience of joy and escape and fun. It's really, really hard to find that because when you watch things at home alone, you're pausing, you're looking at your phone, you're often not with other people. Sometimes you are with other people. But when you go to a theater, your attention is demanded and you laugh and hopefully cry with other people and you feel the togetherness of being human. That's a really special and actually almost rare thing to experience now and find.

That's the thing I'm most interested in this adding to the current theatrical experience because there is obviously a lot out there, but there's very little, I feel, that offers this experience which hopefully doesn't sound immodest, but if you read Letterboxd and the Rotten Tomatoes audience reviews, you'll see that I'm not making it up because I'm a very blunt doctor and I would never make it up.

Alison Stewart: Karan, what does this movie say about being one's authentic self?

Karan Soni: Oh, wow. What it says is that it's not always easy. I think the main character, my character, has to really go on this journey. Interestingly, it takes Jonathan's character for me to come out of my shell. I think Jonathan's character is maybe the most authentic character in the movie. It's interesting how infectious his energy is. It leads to a of us dealing with our stuff. But specifically in Indian culture, there's so much shame and so much hiding of who you are and this family has their secrets and a lot of that stuff and how toxic and bad it can be over time.

Both the children in the movie have a completely different idea of what the parents' relationship is, but they've never spoken to them directly about anything. It isn't until the end that they understand their parents better than they ever did. What's so interesting about the movie is you go into it and I think in the beginning a lot of people think the parents are going to be these stereotypical maybe characters that you've seen before who are loveless and hanging out for comedic relief.

By the end of the movie, they're almost the most nuanced people. It's this interesting flip the movie does, which is that you go into it being like, oh, I think I know these characters. by the end, you're crying and wanting the love of the parents, this deep, long love that they've had that's been quiet and not showy. I think all of that comes out in the movie.

Alison Stewart: The name of the movie is A Nice Indian Boy. I've been speaking with Karan Soni, Zarna Garg, and Roshan Sethi. Nice to meet all of you.

Roshan Sethi: Nice to meet you. Thank you for having us.

Karan Soni: Nice to meet you.

Zarna Garg: Nice to meet you. Thank you for having us.

Alison Stewart: Go have a conversation now in the same house, now that we're done.