Dubai: When a cricketing sensation from Down Under decides to act in a rom-com with an Indian flavour, what do you think would be his biggest challenge?
“The awkward scenes with a lot of kissing,” says Brett Lee or Binga, the former Australian fast bowler on a visit to Dubai this week to promote his upcoming film Unindian.
“But it was shot and done in a very tasteful way, it was not in your face. When I watched the film entirely for the first time, I was with my wife holding her hand and with my mom and dad; they were all laughing and I was thinking ‘Okay, I am still married and this is good’,” he adds candidly.
Starring opposite Tannishtha Chatterjee in the $5 million, 106-minute UnIndian due to be released in Dubai on August 18, Binga sure knows how to stir up the excitement. The film also features well-known Indian actors Supriya Pathak, Akash Khurana and Gulshan Grover.
Lead role
Asked how he landed the lead role of the affable youth Will, he points to producer-director Anupam Sharma (also visiting) with whom he has worked in commercials in the past. He lets on that he must have received at least 50 scripts from Bollywood but what made him take the plunge with Unindian was the trust he enjoyed with Sharma as also the script and the story behind it.
The film revolves around the romance between Will, an Australian teacher with international students in Sydney, and an Indian girl Meera whom he happens to meet at a Holi celebration he attends with an Indian friend. The title, explains Binga, derives from Meera’s character and “the fact that she fell in love with a ferangi (foreigner) who is not part of her culture. The overriding message is that love has no boundaries.”
On his part, Sharma says the film was tailored for Binga. “We did the script with Brett, the loveable Australian, in mind,” he says, adding how a remark by the cricketer that he would never walk into the field “unprepared” had reassured him of his sense of commitment.
Sharma says he was convinced Binga, a “consummate professional”, would apply the same exacting standards of play to acting for which he had an “element of hunger”. It was just a question of the ace cricketer, also a talented singer, to don the garb of a performer-actor.
No stranger to Bollywood and all things Indian, Binga made a cameo in the film Victory and also appeared in the music video for Asha Bhosle’s single You’re the One in 2006. The single went to top the Indian music charts. In 2011, he launched Mewsic, a music centre in Mumbai, to reach out to disadvantaged kids.
Musical treat
Binga’s immense musical talent is there for all to see in Unindian too with the treat In My Shoes which he wrote and recorded with his music partner. The rest of the film’s music has been scored by Salim Sulaiman and Amanda Brown from Australia.
Although Binga’s dialogues in the film are in English, some of his “impromptu” one-liners in Hindi during the rehearsals have made it to the script – like “Shukriya Bhai (thank you brother).”
He says the special bonding among the crew members is what ensured that the filming process was smooth. So were there no conflicts at all? “None, except on the issue of whether we should have butter chicken or rogan gosht (mutton curry),” recalls Binga, adding he is now ready for his next film.
Clearly, “the actor-lion has tasted the blood”, as Sharma put it.
