Entertainment / Interview: Tabu & Ishaan Khatter Dish On Mira Nair’s Epic TV Drama ‘A Suitable Boy’

Interview: Tabu & Ishaan Khatter Dish On Mira Nair’s Epic TV Drama ‘A Suitable Boy’

Entertainment Dec 07, 2020

by Matthew Currie

Stars Tabu and Ishaan Khatter discuss bringing an Indian story to a global audience in director Mira Nair’s new streaming series A Suitable Boy.

Having already aired in the U.K. over the summer, Mira Nair’s A Suitable Boy arrives in Canada and the U.S. this week via streaming service Acorn TV. A sweeping, six-part adaptation of Vikram Seth’s 1993 novel, the series takes us back to 1951, four years into Indian independence, as a 19-year-old girl named Lata (newcomer Tanya Maniktala) has her own struggle for independence, encountering oppression at university, where her outside-the-box thinking goes unappreciated, and at home, where her well-meaning mother is determined to marry her off to “a suitable boy,” even as Lata’s eye wanders toward less suitable options.

One of many stories running parallel to Lata’s is that of Maan (Dhadak breakout Ishaan Khatter), the rebellious young son of a government minister, who becomes wrapped up in a forbidden, May-December romance with the renowned courtesan Saeeda (Tabu).

**Tabu & Ishaan Khatter Dish On Epic TV Drama *A Suitable Boy*: Young malcontent Maan (Ishaan Khatter) embarks on a May-December romance with courtesan Saeeda (Tabu). Photo Credit: Acorn TV**

When the series screened as the closing night presentation at this year’s COVID-hobbled Toronto International Film Festival, Nair joked in an interview with The Wire that A Suitable Boy was “The Crown in brown . . . as magnificent, with as much sweep as [that] series, but the budget was some 10 per cent of it.”

That’s true enough, but then, very few TV shows have the reported US$10 million-per-episode piggy bank enjoyed by Netflix’s Royal Family mega-hit. And the £16 million budget of this miniseries makes it one of the most expensive in the history of the BBC . . . which, for a show set in India, with an entirely South Asian cast, is nigh unprecedented.

Perhaps because of that, Tabu — cinema superstar that she is — felt right at home on the small screen.

“Actually, A Suitable Boy, it did not at all feel like I was working on anything other than a big movie production,” she tells us. “I felt like I am doing one big, massive-scale production. Also, Mira herself was very clear that she is shooting it like a movie; she does not know any other way. So, the crew was from the movies, and the way that she approached the show and the story was completely MOVIE.”

That said, you’d be hard-pressed to condense Seth’s epic novel into an actual movie. Even six episodes of television is pushing it, given the sheer scope of a narrative populated by over 100 characters.

Tabu & Ishaan Khatter Dish On Epic TV Drama *A Suitable Boy*: Having just watched her sister get married off, free-thinking young university student Lata (Tanya Maniktala) becomes the next project for her tenacious mother (Mahira Kakkar). Photo Credit: Acorn TV

“There’s the larger socio-political story, and then there are the more intimate stories, the personal stories,” explains Khatter. “There is very much the micro and the macro, and oftentimes [character journeys are] a metaphor for what’s going on in the country.”

Adds Tabu: “We have seen stories and movies and documentaries about the time of independence. But what makes Suitable Boy special is that you see a love story set against all that was happening at that time. You see different cultures, you see different sections of society, you see women, you see young people, you see the older generation. You get to see a glimpse of their lives, their values, their clashes, their priorities and how things were changing in people’s personal lives.”

Both Khatter and Tabu confess to not having read Seth’s nearly-1,500-page tome in its entirety prior to filming, though that’s not to say they didn’t rely on the author and his acclaimed work. Tabu spoke with Seth himself to better understand her beautiful, tragic courtesan, while Khatter actually carried a copy of the book around with him at all times, in case he ever needed a little added insight into the “kaleidoscopic,” “unpredictable” Maan.

Tabu & Ishaan Khatter Dish On Epic TV Drama *A Suitable Boy*: The series, like the novel before it, encompasses a sprawling array of characters, all grappling with the early days of Indian independence. L-R: Mikhail Sen as Amit, Namit Sad as Haresh, Danesh Razvi as Kabir and Mahira Kakkar as Mrs. Rupa. Photo Credit: Acorn TV

“It would be very helpful just to open a chapter and read vividly described moments that didn’t actually make it in the show, but they would explain what he does so much better,” Khatter muses, “because there is that much more of him there in the novel.”

The two actors’ roads to A Suitable Boy were, as you might expect, quite different. Having worked together on 2006’s The Namesake, Tabu was the first person Nair approached about coming aboard this project. “It was January 2018 when I [saw] her at a friend’s casual dinner, where I had also taken my dog [laughs]. I will never forget. Nobody had any clue about it, and that’s where she mentioned she was going to be doing A Suitable Boy and that she would love for me to be a part of it . . . And she was so particular about this character; I think Saeeda must be one of the characters that Mira loves the most in the story. And I knew that playing Saeeda with Mira in in this story, with this big production, would be just ideal for me.”

Khatter, meanwhile, didn’t meet Nair until his audition, at which point, she made quite the impression. “I immediately recognized that she is as enthusiastic, if not more, than all the young people in the room. And she has such a great, infectious energy about her. She is all that and more, despite being so distinguished and experienced and having made her name . . . She still has that same fire and that curiosity and that fire to tell stories.”

Tabu & Ishaan Khatter Dish On Epic TV Drama *A Suitable Boy*: Saeeda (Tabu) is a renowned, talented courtesan, coveted far and wide, who finds herself surprised by a love affair with a much younger man. Photo Credit: Acorn TV

Khatter was, of course, working with giants on both sides of the camera, playing the love interest of an actress he’d grown up “in awe of.”

“To be able to work with her was, in a way of course, surreal,” he explains. But ultimately the experience “was very enriching, because there was a very real give and take. She was very easy, she was very open, she was fun. She didn’t have an air about her, like ‘I’ve been here, I’ve been there, I’ve done that.’ She’s got the same [grounded] attitude toward her work, with all that experience guiding her. It’s a beautiful mixture . . . She’s fiercely intelligent; she understands her characters in-depth.”

Scripted entirely by Emmy-winner Andrew Davies (War & Peace, Les Misérables), Nair directs five of the six episodes herself, in what has unquestionably been a labour of love; after all, she’s been trying to get this book to screen for over two decades. Both Tabu and Khatter say they were excited to help their director make her dream project a reality, and to share it with a truly global audience.

“It is a deeply rooted Indian story but also, it has a universal appeal,” says Khatter. “There are so many themes that are in many ways just universally human themes. I think it’s wonderful that it’s reaching as many people as it could.”

And indeed, muses Tabu, now that the show is arriving on North American shores: “That sort of completes the journey for A Suitable Boy.”

**Tabu & Ishaan Khatter Dish On Epic TV Drama *A Suitable Boy*: Lata (Tanya Maniktala) dances with Amit (Mikhail Sen), whom her mother would dub a very *unsuitable* boy. Photo Credit: Acorn TV**

A Suitable Boy debuts on subscription streaming service Acorn TV on Monday, December 7, with two episodes, followed by new episodes weekly thereafter.

Main Image Photo Credit: Acorn TV

Matthew Currie

Author

A long-standing entertainment journalist, Currie is a graduate of the Professional Writing program at Toronto’s York University. He has spent the past number of years working as a freelancer for ANOKHI and for diverse publications such as Sharp, TV Week, CAA’s Westworld and BC Business. Currie ...

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Interview: Tabu & Ishaan Khatter Dish On Mira Nair’s Epic TV Drama ‘A Suitable Boy’

by Matthew Currie

Matthew Currie

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