Desi Making Waves

By Sushil Cheema

Down Brick Lane with Tannishtha Chatterjee

Before settling with her family in Delhi at the age of eight, Poona-born actress Tannishtha Chatterjee lived in Japan, Australia and Kenya. As an adult in the film industry, she has spent time living, working and touring through India and Europe. But her travels did not prepare her for her most recent role as Nazneen Ahmed in director Sarah Gavron’s screen adaptation of Monica Ali’s popular and controversial novel, Brick Lane. In the film, she plays the lead role: Nazneen is a Bangladeshi mother of two girls who immigrated to London at the age of 17 for an arranged marriage. While promoting the film in the United States, Chatterjee spoke to ABCDlady about her acting career, the challenges of filming Brick Lane and her upcoming projects.

How did you get into acting?
I was studying chemistry. One fine day I just said, “18 hours in the lab for the rest of my life every day? I don’t want to do that. I want to do something else.” I had done a workshop in drama, and I enjoyed that, so I just applied for the sake of it. I got through, and that changed my idea of what I want to do in life. I didn’t know I wanted to be an actress. I just thought I want to study drama, and then mid-course I realized that I really loved performing.

How did you get cast in the role of Nazneen?
I got an email from the casting director of the film when I was in Paris [promoting the German film, Shadows of Time]. Then she sent me the script to read, but I couldn’t read it because I was traveling all the time. She set up a meeting at a particular place at 8 a.m. in the morning, and I came back to Mumbai at 2 a.m., and I was very tired. So I went up to bed. I didn’t eat anything. I just went to meet the director wearing jeans and a t-shirt. And she said, “We’re making Brick Lane,” and I said, “Monica Ali’s Brick Lane?” And she said, “Yes.” And I said, “Oh my God.” So anyway, I read, and I was the first person they met in Mumbai. And then she called me the next day again, and she said, “We really liked what you did, but can you come again and meet us and really be prepared this time?” And I was like, “Yes, yes.” So, the next time I met her, I had read the script by then, and I prepared the lines. I wore a sari, and I tied my hair into a bun and looked more like Nazneen. And then I think Sarah met every possible actress after that. After a month-and-a-half, she called me and said, “Well, it was too good to be [true] that the first girl who walked in was right for the part.”

Had you read the book before you got cast?
I read it after I actually read for the film. I knew about the book because it was talked about in India.

How did you prepare to play the role of Nazneen?
The book was a great source, but I hadn’t lived that life. So the book inspired me. I went to Brick Lane, and I met with women who are living around that area. I spent days with them. I did research for a month just to learn their stories and give them time to open up. And I had to become one of them for them to actually tell me the true stories. That’s the trick to really get into the skin of that character—I had to just live that life. Nazneen is a character of very few words. She doesn’t say much. She doesn’t express much. All of her emotions are really inside her, and the book describes that beautifully through words, but it was a process to find a way to bring that across on screen. To a large extent, I had to exist in that character for two-and-a-half months while I was filming. So I was quite a stress during that time, between learning the script, going to Brick Lane and meeting all these women. And learning how to sew and to pray, to wear a sari, to cook—those are the external things.

Are there any moments in your meetings with the Bangladeshi women on Brick Lane that impacted you the most?
There’s one woman who really took time to open up. She actually broke down in front of me—she cried—because she remembered Bangladesh. She couldn’t go back for so many years. She remembered her lover when she was 14 years old there, and she cried to me. She told me that [when] she moved to England for the first time, she was so scared that she wouldn’t go out. She wouldn’t talk to anyone outside. Even the vegetable seller—he would drop vegetables outside her door there, and then she would drop him the money much later after he had left. She wouldn’t interact with him because it really, really was the fear of the unknown. But after being in London for 20 years, she has come to terms—she goes out, she does all her stuff, she drives a car. She actually chats with the same vegetable seller whom she was so scared of 20 years back. He comes inside her house, has a cup of tea and then goes out.

How did these women react when they saw the film?
Some women couldn’t really believe that I would be trying to play a part like Nazneen. Then when they saw the film, they came and said, ‘Thank you.” A few of them came and gave me a hug and didn’t say anything. It felt very good.

Was there any controversy surrounding the filming of the movie?
We had to relocate for some time, but we did come back to Brick Lane and shoot again after a few weeks when the controversy had died down. It was a really small group of people who pictured themselves as the bullies of a particular culture. They thought there were offending things in the book, and obviously the film was being made based on the book. It was not about Islamaphobic teenagers. The protest was not about that, the film was not about that, the book was not that. The protest was about portraying a Bangladeshi woman having an affair, finding her voice, becoming independent and living her life in her own form.

Is this small group of protestors still upset about the movie?
We don’t actually know. There were so many people from the community who supported us throughout the filming. None of us could have done the film without them because the actors go into Brick Lane and meet those people and study everything in terms of culture. We had people from the community working with us, who helped us. And when we premiered the film in London at a festival, so many people from the Bangladeshi community came to watch the film. They really, really appreciated it, and they didn’t really understand what all the protest was all about. So we really don’t know because the protest died down.

Were the intimate scenes difficult to film?
Intimate scenes are always a bit tricky, but I had a very good rapport with both the actors [Satish Kaushik and Christopher Simpson]. We became friends. They both are actors who have a lot of compassion about their work and are very serious actors. It wasn’t a problem for me. Sarah was very, very sensitive. I thought it was aesthetically done. I saw the final edit, and I was very happy. It’s very important for an actor to be happy, especially with an intimate scene.

What was the most difficult part about making the movie?
I think the constant struggle of Nazneen being such a part of the film and not being able to express anything—not a word—and to have this very subtle transition that she was going through all the time and how to bring that about on your face and your eyes.

You have worked on a range of different types of films, from Bollywood to art house. What kind of films are you working on now?
I’m actually doing all kinds of films now but more of the films that have a very strong story line with strong characters and something else to communicate beyond entertainment. I’m doing a film on the Bhopal gas tragedy to be shot in India in October. But I love entertaining films, and I’d love to do a comedy as well.

You have done stage work in the past. Do you have any plans to return to the stage?
After I finished drama school, I went to Europe for one year and worked with different directors in different places. I traveled around a lot. Then I came back to India and did some stage work as well. In the last few years, I’ve been doing some projects on stage and on film. It’s only in the last few years that I’ve been so busy with films that I haven’t been able to do anything on stage. At the end of this year, I plan to do something on stage that will go into making a film later.

Do you think Brick Lane can be transferred to the stage?
[Laughs] I don’t know. I don’t know.

For more information about Brick Lane, visit http://www.sonyclassics.com/bricklane/

Back to Top