AND THE WINNER IS...

CALL ME TABU

TABU HAS BEEN LISTED AMONG THE WORLD'S MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMEN, CALLED 'THE MERYL STREEP OF BOLLYWOOD,' AND TWICE WON INDIA'S OSCAR. NOW, THE NAMESAKE HAS BROUGHT HER TO AMERICA... AND GLOBALIZATION HAS NEVER LOOKED BETTER

When it comes to quality films, the month of March tends to be, shall we say, lacking. The films that were completed and good enough to qualify for the previous year's awards were released by New Years Day; those which studios feel have potential for the coming awards season are generally held until after the summer; and moviegoers are left with an assortment of stupid horror movies, half-baked comedies, and second-rate animation. Two or three times each year, however, we are given an unexpected gift—something other than crap to carry us over until the fall. This year, one such film was The Namesake (Fox Searchlight, trailer).

Adapted from Jhumpa Lahiri's best-selling semi-autobiographical novel of the same title, the film is a sweeping epic about the life of a family over many years—in certain respects, it is like Giant (1956), except that it revolves around a family from India instead of Texas. It was directed by Mira Nair, an Indian and one of the most respected women in Hollywood, and nominally stars another Indian Kal Penn (real name: Kalpen Modi), who proves he is much more than the funny stoner he portrayed in Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle (2004). Ask any of the people who helped the film to nearly $20 million at the box-office, though, and chances are you'll hear this: the film's real star is the actress who portrays Penn's mother, Tabu, a stunning beauty widely regarded as one of the greatest actresses to ever come out of India.

In The Namesake, Tabu portrays Ashima Ganguli, a beautiful young Bengali woman who, per Indian custom, is entered into an arranged marriage by her parents. When her ambitious husband finds work in New York City, she is expected to give up everything she has ever known to accompany him, regardless of her own feelings on the matter, and does so. As the years pass, the couple struggles to adapt to their new culture while retaining their own, a conflict best illustrated in the form of their rebellious son, Gogol (Penn). In an unfamiliar world, the one constant throughout is Ashima, who endures pain, suffering, and tragic loss during a rollercoaster of a life that she nonetheless lives with quiet dignity.

Tabu, whose performance is now generating talk of a Best Supporting Actress nomination, flew in from India to the United States last week to grant a select few interviews about the film. I spoke with her for 45 minutes about a wide variety of topics...

I have a silly first question for you I want to quickly ask because I’ve been worried—is the proper to way to address you Ms. Tabu, or is there a last name I should use?
It’s okay, you can call me Tabu. My full name is really, really long, so you’ll take twenty-four hours to finish it. [laughs]

How did it get shortened to Tabu?
It’s actually my family ‘pet name.’ My name is Tabassum—Tabassum Fatima Hashmi. So Tabu is, like, my pet name.

Easier to remember…
[laughs] And I worked with a director when I was eleven years old, and he was very fascinated with my name, and he insisted that I keep it as my screen name, though a lot of people didn’t agree, and I didn’t agree also. I mean, now, it feels very silly, because Tabu sounds like a small, little schoolgirl’s name, you know? It just has no, like, weight in it. [laughs]

Well, the only people with one name in this world are very big deals, you know? Madonna—
[laughs] Okay, if it puts me in that category, then I’m good with Tabu.

Can you tell me a little about where you grew up, your family, what your childhood was like…
Oh, my God. It’s so long back. [laughs] Okay. I was born in a small town of India—which is not a small town anymore—called Hyderabad. I don’t know if you’ve heard about it? I was born there. It is in the southeast of India. Now it’s the big I.T. and software hub—all the companies from the U.S. shifted to there. So I was born in Hyderabad, I grew up there, and I visited Mumbai every year, because I had family in Bombay—I like to call it Bombay. And I went to school in Hyderabad; I went to a convent. Then I got spotted by a family friend who was also a very big cinema actor and director, and he was in his sixties at that time—at a kid’s birthday party I got spotted—and he was looking for a girl who could play his daughter at that time. And that’s how I got into movies—I mean, to begin with. And then I had my sister come along with me for my first day of my shooting—she’s four years older than me—and a very, very, very big commercial producer—film producer—saw her, and he wanted to launch her for his film as a leading actress. So that’s how both of us got into the movies, and I’ve been acting since. I mean, I did that one movie when I was eleven, and then I went back to school and to my studies, and I did my schooling, and then I came to Bombay, where my sister lived, because by that time she was acting in the movies.

I understand the director Shekhar Kapur (Elizabeth) played an important role in your early years. Can you talk about that?
Sure. Shekhar—I used to call him ‘Shekhar Uncle’ until he stopped me from calling him ‘Shekhar Uncle’—he’s known me since I was a year old. He was a family friend, and I remember—he always told me later that, since I was a year old, he used to tell everyone that, “One day, I’m going to make her an actress.” So when I came to Bombay after my schooling—I was in college, I was in my eleventh standard—I was in my tenth standard still when he wanted me to do this film as a leading actress, this movie he was making. And my family and I thought I was too young, and I’d just finished my tenth standard, but he insisted. But that film never got made. And then again, like, two years later, he was doing another film, which was a launch pad of a big actor’s younger brother, so they were looking for an actress to play opposite him. And I was, like, fifteen at that time, and again, Shekhar, like, pounced on me, and he said, “Come on, again, do a screen test for me for this film.” And I was like, “My God, I’m right in college.” He insisted that I do that photo shoot for him, and then after the photo shoot he was like, “You are in my film.” And I was very reluctant, because I was really not interested in acting in movies, and I was very involved with my studies, and then I wanted to, you know, go overseas and study, and I wanted to be a doctor, and whatever. But Shekhar promised that after this one film I could go back to my studies—which never happened. And, funnily, he left the film! And I’m, like, “You got me into it, and now you’ve left me here all alone in this big load?” But, anyway, so that’s how Shekhar was instrumental in spotting me and spotting my potential. I don’t know what he saw in me; I really don’t understand, because I don’t think I had any ingredient or any makings of an actress at that time. [laughs]

My sense, from reading about you and also from your first few answers, is that you were never really that anxious to be an actress. For most young people in the movies, it’s sort of a dream come true, but you were never dying to do it. Why was that?
Because, you know, we didn’t grow up in a film atmosphere. I lived with my grandparents, because my parents got divorced when I was very young, and we lived with my grandparents, who were professors, you know? So I belong to a very, like, literate, and educated, and professional family—my grandfather was a mathematician, and my grandmother was a kindergarten teacher for fifty years, and she studied English literature—so we always grew up in this atmosphere with very strict, literal values. It was very important for us to get educated, and get a degree, and stand on our own feet. We had no influence of film, because also we lived very, very far away—I didn’t grow up in Bombay, I grew up in Hyderabad, and it was really, really like a small town, you know? We were so not exposed. We didn’t even have, like, a telephone in the house. And we were really from a very humble background, you know? And we just thought that we had to study, and get somewhere, and get married, and have children, and, you know, that was what life supposed to be. That was how we grew up thinking. And there was no interest—in fact, we didn’t even go watch so many movies. I didn’t even like going to the movies. My sister was a movie-freak; I think she somewhere always wanted to and dreamed of being an actress, so she was very excited when she got this break. But I was never even interested in going for the movies. I was more into my studies and stuff. So it was just incidental, and coincidental, and by accident that I got into the movies. But then, once I got into it, it grew on me, of course. And then—you know how it is—once you’re in the movies, you can’t leave. It’s so enticing. It’s, like, this whole seduction, and this whole love affair that you grow to have with it. And then you start enjoying what you’re doing. At some point, you start enjoying your craft. And it becomes personal. I mean, in my case, that’s how it happened. The big thing, okay, with my first film, I was really uncomfortable, and I was awkward, and I was angry all the time. But then I started doing other movies and, of course, when you see adulation, and you see fame, and then when you see money, you’re like, “Oh, my God. Wow!” [laughs] So I did all of that. I’ve got all my designer bags for myself, I’ve traveled the world, and did the glamour bit, and enjoyed every bit of what I was getting. And then, at some point, then I started enjoying what I was doing. I mean, my work got slowly, slowly isolated from the trappings of the film industry, and my stardom, and celebrity status. And then it became between me and my work, you know? And that’s what I started enjoying and started living with. And it’s really, really become me, and I have become my work, in many ways. And it’s become my identity. And it’s been so long that, you know, for me, my definition of my life is through my work, essentially.

Many Americans, including myself, have only a very vague sense of what Bollywood is and what makes it different from Hollywood. I know it’s a tough question, but I was hoping that maybe you could address that a little bit…
In the first place, it’s not Bollywood.

It’s not? Okay, I’m sorry.
No, no, no! That’s okay. For me, I can’t address it as Bollywood, because it’s a really recently coined term, and the Indian film industry is really huge, and Bollywood, it’s, like, really—I don’t know how to describe this word because I can’t associate Indian film industry with this term.

Is it a segment of Indian film, or is it an oversimplification?
Bollywood is just a very frivolous term that people use for Indian films—a part of Indian films which people see in the west, which is the big, commercial, mainstream, Hindi films, okay? So if you’re talking about that segment of Indian film industry, of course, I belong to that also. Indian film industry is really huge; we have so many languages and stuff. But, of course, if you talk about quote-unquote Bollywood, where I come from—I feel after working on The Namesake, I understood that it’s not very much different. I feel that the hierarchy is the same, the work culture is the same. Of course, it’s much more stringent with the laws and the unions here, which we lack in India because there’s so much labor, and there’s so many people involved, and at so many levels that it’s more of a—what do you say? The contract system has just about started to exist in India. We never worked with a contract. We just, you know, signed an agreement letter, maybe on the last day of the film getting over. And, you know, we just worked with, like, trust, and it’s been like that. But I don’t see much difference. I mean, of course, in the west and in America, they’re much more organized, also, because everything is contractual, you know? Everything goes back and forth according to the contract.

It seems that you also turn out a lot more film in India—for instance, I saw that you personally were a part of eight movies in 1996. To what would you attribute that?
Yeah, there’s a huge amount of movies being made every year. And every actor used to—I mean, it’s really changed in the past one year or so, when a lot of corporate sectors have gone into movie production and actors are doing one film at a time—but the concept of actors doing one film at a time was—like, nobody could even think of it. All of us were doing, like, twenty films at one time and shooting for three producers on the same day! We would do three shifts—you know what I mean, from one set to the other? Because the budgets were huge, and there were only so many actors, and there were so many movies being made that one actor was, you know, hired to do so many movies, you know? So that’s how everybody was doing so many things at the same time. Once I had four films released on the same day! [laughs]

[laughs] You must have had a fun time going from premiere to premiere that night…
We don’t even go from premieres! This premiere thing is also a new thing. [laughs] “Oh, my film is releasing today? Oh, alright.” [laughs]

Are there different approaches to acting in India? Here, actors often talk about using the Method or some other kind of technique. How do you get into a character, especially when, as you were saying, you sometimes have to jump from one role into another on the same day? It must be very hard to jump from one character to another…
It’s not, because we never take acting so seriously. [laughs] For us, acting is, like, “Okay, get into your costume, say the lines, and finish, and go.” [laughs] It’s about that much. But the thing is, see, with me, I never went to an acting school, like most of the actors from my generation—a few of them have. We just learned it along the way. I mean, that’s a really hard way of learning a craft, but that’s how it’s worked all these years. None of the actors went to formal training schools, you know, or studied acting. I’ve never studied acting as a subject. I think all by trial and error, and by making many mistakes, you know, using that whole process to come where I have, and that’s been my process, actually—working with different directors and, you know, by trial and error, and by experience, and just by doing stuff. And by doing it day-in and day-out, you reach somewhere, you know, you learn something. And, in that way, I think I have cultivated my own craft—I don’t even know what it is. I’m always at a loss when I’m asked this question because I’m not in the habit of, you know, this ‘approach,’ and this ‘research,’ and ‘getting into the character’—not a very usual thing that I’m used to doing. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing [laughs], but it’s been like that. I mean, of course, you learn along the way, and I think whatever you pick up from the world, and from your experiences, and from your exposure. And, I guess, with me, I have, like, a basic understanding of the character, and then I allow the whole experience of working with the actors, with my co-stars, and my directors on the set—I allow that process that to take over, and I trust that something will come out of it. I think, basically, if you’re a little bit sensible and intelligent, you can pull off anything, I think.

I’ve read that you actually took two years off from work prior to The Namesake, so I wanted to ask you how you were approached to do The Namesake, and what about it made you decide to come back to work?
I was at a stage in my career when I was totally, I think—now, when I look back—I feel I might have been just burned out with so many years of work. I’d been working since the age of sixteen, non-stop, until the day I felt like I couldn’t do it anymore, you know? I felt like I didn’t have anything in me to give to my work. You know, there was like a stalemate. And there was so much intense work, and these really, and deep, and intense roles that I was doing, and I kept doing them, and doing them, and doing them, and I was exhausted. And I got the one National Award, and then I got a second National Award, and I didn’t feel a thing. That’s when I stopped and I was like, “I don’t feel a thing?” It’s my second National Award and, you know, this is, like, scary. And I wanted to go away from what I was doing and to, you know, get an objective view, and just to be away from all that so that I could come back to appreciate what I was doing and I could enjoy it, you know? So I knew I had to, like, take a break from everything—everything was exhausting me, and I felt like I was being exploited. [laughs]. Because there was a stage where I became, like—I was carrying every film on my shoulders, you know? There were no big heroes to support me in the films, or my films were not padded with, you know, anything else. And I was doing these roles. And I was so fed up and tired of being constantly used for the films that I just ran away. I was like, “Leave me alone.” And I knew I had to do it. But then, after two years, I did a short film first, and then I was doing this regional film, and I started enjoying my work the best, you know? The sense of total objectivity toward what I was doing. And I was, like, not so consumed by what I was doing. And then The Namesake came. And I knew that, somewhere, I was looking for a different experience. Subconsciously, maybe, I wanted to, you know, experience something different—I mean, not in terms of my acting or my work but, I guess, the environment where I was working. And Namesake seemed like the perfect platform for that. And I wanted to, you know, just go and experience that—experience how it is to work with people who don’t know me and people who I don’t know at all. And that was a very, you know, interesting dimension that I discovered to my own career and my own profession.

When director Mira Nair called you, I believe you were already familiar with her. Were you already familiar with the book, as well?
Yeah. I’d read the book. I knew Mira for many years. In fact, Mira, in 1997, she came to meet me. She wanted to do this film called Bombay 2000, and I think she was approaching Sean Penn for that film, but that film didn’t take off for some reason. And then we were in touch—we bumped into each other at parties in Bombay when she came down to India and stuff—but we never worked together. And when I read the book, I knew that it would make a lovely film. Actually I was looking at Ashima’s character, and I was imagining myself. You know how actors are—you know, reading a script or a book, we always put ourselves into it and start imaging how it would be “If I were this character…” So I always, like, imagined myself as Ashima, and I thought that if ever it was made into a film, I’d love to play that role.

For people who might not have seen the film yet, or who are just interested in your read on the character, how would you describe who Ashima is?
Ashima, for me, is the quintessential Indian woman for whom life is about growing up, and finding her independence, finding a good suitor for her, and getting her married, and finding and living a full life with her husband, wherever the husband is, and finding her own bearings and her sense of belonging in her family, which comprises of husband and children, the family. So I see Ashima as that. I see her as most of the women in my family have been. So it’s not hard for me to understand Ashima’s character. It’s not hard for me to make a sketch of her.

And I know you’ve said you don’t do much to prepare for a part, as far as research or things like that, but I have read that Mira Nair wanted you to meet the parents of author Jhumpa Lahiri. Why did she want you to do that? And what came of that for you?
I think because Ashima’s character was based on Jhumpa’s mother herself, and Ashoke was based on Jhumpa’s father. I don’t know—no, not so much ‘based on them,’ but I’m sure Jhumpa got her inspiration for Ashima from seeing her mother’s life, also. So we met them. We went over for lunch. And I saw her as this typical, quintessential Bengali woman who was cooking for us, you know, who was looking after Jhumpa’s children, who was looking after Jhumpa, and, you know, entertaining guests, and who was full of, like, stories from India. And, you know, Ashima is so much her, you know?

It’s interesting to consider the role of women in society in India versus the United States. As an Indian woman who has experienced the United States, what are some of the differences you notice?
See, in India, because we have very, very, very ancient culture, it’s more based on traditional beliefs, religious beliefs. When it comes to men and women, and everything else, we apply all our traditional rules and regulations. So probably the opportunities for women were not as many and as great as what they are now, because a woman is a very strong character—I think women are basically very strong characters, whether they are Indian, American, or, you know, wherever in the world. But there is a sense of inherent insecurity—I don’t know if ‘insecurity’ is the wrong word—but we see the world essentially as male-dominated, you know, at least ‘til a few years back. And, with that, I don’t see much of a difference. Of course, women here are much more economically independent with their careers and their work, and there’s not much discrimination professionally where, you know, men and women are concerned. Economic independence was not of so much importance in India until a few years back, when women started understanding their own strengths, and their own needs, and necessities, and they started coming out and becoming financially independent and started to work. That’s a marked difference. I think that’s the only one big difference that I see.

Would you say that socially, though, it’s somewhat different? Recently there was a great uproar about Richard Gere kissing the Indian actress Shilpa Shetty, and it’s hard for Americans to understand why there would be such outrage over something like that. Maybe you can put it into some context…
Well, that’s a controversial issue to answer for me.

[Tabu is clearly very uncomfortable speaking about this subject, and eventually I move on to the next question.]

In the film, you have to age a great deal—not many actresses could convincingly do that. Was that the greatest challenge of the part, or was it something else?
Aging was definitely my concern, more because we were going to use makeup, and I was just hoping that the makeup looks convincing. You know? Because, I mean, I have aged in one of my previous films in India—two or three of them—but we didn’t use any makeup. The director just asked me to wear glasses [laughs]—I was playing the mother of this teenager who was getting married and stuff. But I was just hoping that the makeup looks convincing, you know, because it looks awful when aging makeup doesn’t work well and you can tell, you know, the lines have been drawn and those things have been added. So that was my only concern.

It must have been kind of funny to play the mother of Kal Penn because you’re not that different in age...
Almost the same age! And it was really funny—I didn’t for a minute feel like I was his mother; only when the shot was on, I had to just completely believe and have these motherly feelings towards Kal. Yeah, it was very funny. But we had such a great camaraderie when the shot was not going on. We were, you know, just joking around, and sitting outside, and going to parties, and stuff like that. And, then, suddenly in the morning, I was this woman who was comforting him, and things like that. [laughs] But, yeah, I mean, I was curious to know how the whole aging process would come out unscathed, and how Mira would guide me through it, and how she’d conceived the whole thing. And I was hoping to get input from her, which I always got, you know? If it was any out-of-character, she would point it out if you were doing something; and if you’re adding something, and if you’re improvising, she’s so happy and, you know, she allows you to, like, go with it.

Another person who was great in the film, and who I understand you had worked with before, was the actor who played your husband, Irfan Khan (who also appears in A Mighty Heart and The Darjeeling Limitedthis year). The two of you are really great together, and so I wanted to ask you how much it helped to have worked with him in the past…
Coming to think of it, it really helped. We did a really nice film called Maqbool, which was an adaptation of Macbeth. I was Lady Macbeth and he was Macbeth. It was a modern adaptation based on the Mumbai underworld. And, in that, our relationship was so completely different from The Namesake. And that comfort helped a lot, because we worked really well together, and we got along well together during Maqbool. So, coming to think of it, it was a great relief for me to have somebody that I’ve known, and somebody I’m comfortable with, who I could talk to, and joke with, you know? Because nobody—except Irfan—in the whole unit was familiar with me, and I was not familiar with anybody in the entire unit—except Mira, but Mira is the director, and she’s gonna be involved with so many other things, you know? But to have your co-actor as somebody that you’ve known—it really helped a lot.

You mentioned one of the reasons you agreed to do The Namesakewas because you wanted to have new experiences, and deal with new people, and work in new places. From what I understand, this film was shot around the world. Can you discuss what some of the locations were, and what it was like for you to work in unfamiliar places?
New York, Calcutta, and Taj Mahal. Actually, India is my home, so it was not unfamiliar, but New York was an unfamiliar working ground for me, in the sense that the unit was unfamiliar, the people were unfamiliar. The place, in a way, was not unfamiliar, in the sense that I have family in America, and I’ve been visiting America since I was, like, eighteen years old, so, for me, it’s always been, like, my second home—San Francisco and Chicago, that’s where my two sisters live, and I’ve been visiting. And, for me, I’ve always associated America with vacation, you know? I come, always for two months, and my sisters drive me around, and they cook, and it’s home. But New York was really like a jolt for me. It didn’t feel like America, because I’m used to living in these big homes in California, eating in sunny California, and suddenly I was in New York. Shooting and working in America was a completely different experience because they were new people, essentially, and I didn’t know anybody. The good thing was that I made friends in New York, I made friends in the building—Indian girls. And I was all alone in America when I came for Namesake—I mean, I couldn’t bring assistants and my staff because, according to unions, they couldn’t work on the film, and I had people from here who were doing my hair, makeup, and stuff. So I was totally alone in that whole process, and that was really new to me. I mean, in India, nobody can ever even imagine that an actor and actress would be anywhere in the world working without their own personal staff, you know? So that was a huge departure for me from the way I was used to working. You know, I’ve worked like that, like, sixteen years, and suddenly I’m all alone in this new place, I don’t know anybody except Irfan, and I was working like that, so that was a different experience for me altogether.

You are not unfamiliar with awards recognition. As we discussed earlier, you have twice won the most prestigious award for an actress in India. But now you’re being introduced to the American awards campaign process and all that goes with it. Is there any comparison between the two, as far as having to go out and do a lot of press and promote your work in order to get recognition—not that the work doesn’t merit it—but in order to bring it to the public’s attention…
Where the awards are concerned, it’s different in India because it is a public vote. Of course, the film has to be in the public memory when the award season is happening; it has to be hugely successful, because the main awards are based on the popularity of the character and the film; and then, of course, there are categories where the critics decide on the performance—we have a jury which decides that, and we have a jury which decides all the categories. I mean, I’m talking about not the National Awards; I’m talking about the Filmfare Awards, which are equivalent to the Oscars, probably. But we have a jury, which is selected from the film industry—a mix of different kinds of people from the film departments of cinema—and it’s the jury which actually decides the winners. So it’s different, it’s different. And, yeah, there is a select panel of jury members, even for the National Awards.

So is it exciting you for you to hear your name in the Oscar mix?
[laughs] I don’t even want to, like, think about it, because—like, I don’t want it to overwhelm me, you know? And it’s good that I don’t live here and I can go away, and be away from it, and look at it from a distance, and don’t let it effect me, and choose not to be, you know, carried away, either way. But, I mean, I think it’s huge, because like my friends, when they hear about it—people in India—say that, you know, “You don’t how big this is, Tabu. You know, nobody in India has gone so far.” And I’m like, “Really? Okay, I don’t know.” [laughs] Because, really, I don’t think I want to register it right now, you know? But, I mean, it’s fantastic, I mean, to think of it—I would never in my wildest dreams think of it, you know?

And could you see it leading to more Hollywood films? Is there, perhaps, a chance we might see you move to America, or is your heart really still in India?
I mean, I’ll move if I find more work here, you know? That’s the only reason I would move—if I have, like, two or three films and the contracts that I need to sign, then I’ll have to move here! [laughs] But it would be fun to do more work here. It depends on the kind of work that I get. It’s always fun to work. And I feel work—and especially cinema and acting—cinema is cinema all over the world, wherever you go. The principles of acting are the same, the principles of direction— filmmaking is the same all over the world. And that’s why I think it unites people and reaches out to so many people, you know? We could never think that, one day, we would be collaborating—India would be collaborating—with the big studios in America, and that America would even think of, you know, investing in Indian films, or looking at Indian actors, you know? But the world has really become small, and it’s fantastic to see this happening, you know?