‘The more I make films the more Indian I become about it,’ says Gurinder Chadha of her new Bollywood musical-inspired adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Christmas Karma.
Stuffed to the gills with colourful merriment, all-star casting and an eclectic mash-up of new music and songs from the likes of Nitin Sawhney, Gary Barlow, All Saints’ Shaznay Lewis and Ben Cullum (as well as Priyanka Chopra’s ‘Desi version’ of Wham’s Last Christmas), the acclaimed director has laid out a festive – and unashamedly cheesy – feast for fans.
Having won over audiences with her beloved movie Bend It Like Beckham, writer-director Chadha has also had success with releases like Bride & Prejudice, Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging and Beecham House, the 2019 TV period drama she co-created.
It’s accrued her the type of recognition in the industry that means Christmas Karma’s sprawling ensemble boasts Boy George, Hugh Bonneville, Eva Longoria, Danny Dyer, Billy Porter and Pixie Lott – and is led by The Big Bang Theory star Kunal Nayyar.
And it’s her open and relaxed approach to finding her actors she’s talking about.
‘[With] casting you can go out with all these ideas in your head – or when you’re writing – but it’s always going to be the right person in that role and then you cannot imagine anyone else. So I have this attitude of, when it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be,’ she tells Metro.
But she did pursue leading man Nayyar and ‘persuade’ him to take the part.
‘He wanted me to cast him as a sort of hot James Bond-type person. He was not planning on me ageing him up and giving him grey hair and being a sex pot for aunties everywhere!’ she laughs. ‘But there was something about him and his manner that I really loved. He has this quiet intensity and he felt a little melancholy to me – so I could see it before he could see it and once I [did], I just didn’t even look at anyone else.’
For Nayyar, he insists he ‘didn’t even think about Dickens or Scrooge or all the other adaptations’ when it came to his character, here re-named Mr Sood and a child immigrant to the UK in 1972 as part of Ugandan President Idi Amin’s expulsion of the country’s Indian minority. The Indian community had first arrived as migrant labourers in the previous century to work on Uganda’s railway.
‘I thought okay, here’s a character that suffered immense pain and then had some redemption – let me investigate what that looks like as [with] any character I would play. I really tried to stay true to just whatever Sood, not the other Scrooges or any adaptations, went through as a human and that was my North Star.’
Christmas Karma’s Mr Sood is ‘an Indian Tory who hates refugees’
In Christmas Karma, Sood’s tough introduction to life in Britain has made him a hard and unyielding man, unwilling to help anyone else after amassing wealth for himself. Chada described her Scrooge to UK Parliament in January 2024 as ‘an Indian Tory who hates refugees’.
‘I wanted to tell the story of someone who had to leave their home through no fault of their own and come to Britain as a refugee and be traumatised by that, because there was so much about refugees in the news – I wanted to show how this happens to people,’ Chada explains.
This is a British Christmas movie, this is what we all look like
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But she says she didn’t appreciate how the film would feel even more urgent upon release, given the highly charged political climate around immigration and ongoing protests outside hotels housing asylum seekers.
‘I did not know when I first wrote the film during lockdown how prescient it would be today [with] all this talk now of immigration and refugees and this very ignorant spin, I would say, on it,’ she continues. ‘You’ve got to look at the history of what is happening, and in the film I do attempt to tell you a bit of the history of why a character like Sood ended up in Britain.’
For Chada, it appears clear that there’s a lack of perspective.
‘You’ve got to look at that history of British people as immigrants going to India and Africa in the same way that people are coming here: they went to seek fame, fortune and a better life. Some people forget that side of it and only focus on this side of it.’
She calls Christmas Karma ‘a very human story of all these movements of people and how we’ve ended up where we are today, and then that coming together of the fact that this is who we are as a nation’.
‘This is a British Christmas movie, this is what we all look like,’ she adds. ‘And the most important thing is to be human, is to have empathy, and to give. That’s what Charles Dickens was saying and that’s what I’m saying today.’
Assembling Christmas Karma’s starry cast
It’s a story that clearly resonated given the star power she was able to attract. While she had been ‘exploring all the Dames in Britain’ for the Ghost of Christmas Past, but ended up rewriting the part for Longoria after she pitched herself for the role over dinner following Chadha hosting a special screening of her directorial debut, Flamin’ Hot (“Excuse me, I’m Mexican – we own ghosts! Day of the Dead?!”).
Casting Porter as the Ghost of Christmas Present came about because of needing someone who could sing gospel and who had ‘authority’, given his ‘gargantuan task in turning Sood around’, while Chadha has been a fan of Boy George – who plays the Ghost of Christmas Future – ‘from when he first came on the scene’.
He’s tasked with singing Barlow’s ballad Pain of the Past as well as his acting role, which he was ‘totally up for’ helped along by loving the drama of his costume’s sweeping robes.
And let us not forget Dyer’s singing cabbie role, with Chada laughingly remembering him quipping to her: “Look at that versatility mate, I’ve got it all!”
As well as songwriter Lewis popping up in the cast of Christmas Karma following her appearance in Bend It Like Beckham, Vikings: Valhalla actor Leo Suter – who stars as Bob Cratchit – is also working with Chada again after Beecham House.
‘We got on famously and had such a blast doing that that TV show,’ he recalls. ‘So then the chance to work with her again on a film that has her kind of infectious fun and energy – just reading the script, you could tell that Gurinder was going to sprinkle her magic dust on it.’
Pop star Lott plays his wife Mary, unsurprisingly taking on a fair amount of the film’s singing – and she’s an unabashed fan of the season, with a Christmas show and song planned this year too (‘I’m literally like all guns blazing!’)
‘It’s all the things that you want in a Christmas film, and that’s just very me. I love Christmas films, I started watching them already in September this year with my little one, [two-year-old] Bertie. So to be a part of one and for him to be old enough to understand hopefully, it’s very exciting!’
In fact, such is Lott’s commitment that she’s taking part in interviews just weeks after giving birth to her second son – ‘I didn’t want to miss out, I’d get FOMO!’ – with the help of her parents looking after her two boys elsewhere in the hotel.
When discussing who from the stacked cast they were most excited to meet, Suter calls his first encounter with Lott in the recording studio ‘a total highlight’ while they both remember an inspiring speech from Porter on set, discussing the industry, where he ‘just laid down the law’ – but demur on sharing further detail over what he said.
While Suter was reasonably confident about the ‘daunting’ challenge of singing (he has two songs with Lott, A Gift is Still a Gift and Boy Inside the Man), he learned the guitar from scratch to play it live on set, which Lott says he ‘nailed’.
But it sounds like this won’t get him any any recognition at the carol concert his organist father puts together each year at the local church.
‘I won’t have a solo – my brother gets the solos. He’s a very good singer. I’m just on the bass line,’ he laughs at Lott’s outrage.
Christmas Karma is in cinemas from today.
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