“Ben Kingsley, Gandhi, drinking beer”
Veteran theatre personality Dolly Thakore’s memoir is honest about her life, its elements of glamour, love and heartbreak. This excerpt from Regrets, None is about her experience as the casting director for Richard Attenborough’s Oscarwinning film, Gandhi
In July 1979, Rani Dube passed through Bombay. She’d brought Richard Attenborough with her. Richard’s long-cherished dream project, Gandhi, was close to realization... On the 25th of July, Rani brought Richard over to my apartment at around 3 in the afternoon. I was breastfeeding Quasar. We chatted for a while. The walls of our home, as ever, were covered with photographs from plays Alyque had directed. Talk turned to the theatre, to the BBC, to children and life. At half five, I rang Alyque to say, “Ahem, Richard Attenborough is here, and would you come home and we can all have dinner, because, you know, Richard Attenborough?’
... the moment Alyque walked in through the door, Richard turned to me and said, “That’s my Jinnah.”
Two days later, he rang me up. “Dolly, it’s Richard,” he began. “We’re starting work on Gandhi, as you know. And I was wondering if you’d like to be the casting director?”... I jumped at it. Although no one I knew really knew what ‘casting’ entailed. So, it was just like every other job I ever had.
...Richard had already decided on his Gandhi: Ben Kingsley. He was going to cast all the white parts from Britain (and in the case of Martin Sheen and Candice Bergen, the US). I had to find all the Indian actors.
I also worked as a theatre critic at the time, and I watched almost every play on the boards, across the city. I spotted Rohini Hattangadi and called Richard in Delhi.
‘There’s a young actress I want you to see,’ I said.
‘Kasturba?’ he asked. ‘Kasturba,’ I agreed.
Richard was leaving Delhi for London that night. But he would stop in Bombay if he could meet this actress... Rohini had a show that night. It was past 11.30 before she made it to the Centaur. Richard and I were sitting on the couch, and the moment Rohini walked in through the door, he clutched my thigh.
“This is it, Doll!” he whispered. Richard had seen something intangible – a quality, an essence. He had a hunch about Rohini. She’d fit into his vision and further it. He could see her on screen.
That was what casting was about. That was what one half of filmmaking was.
…‘If she can lose about eleven kilos, that’s my Kasturba.’
This, then, was the other half of filmmaking: the journey from casting to the shoot. I rang Rohini the next day. Together, we went to see a Dr Vishnu Khakkar at Kemp’s Corner. He was a dietician… He examined Rohini, heard the brief and then told her that she could eat two chapattis and a bowl of dal for lunch and dinner, and nothing in between. And she had to walk for an hour and a half every day... She lost five kilos, and I called Richard with a progress report. ‘Send her,’ he said.
The delegation to London comprised Rohini, Smita Patil, Bhakti Barve and Naseeruddin Shah.
Smita Patil was very much the trendy pick. She was quite a big star by then... But she wasn’t right for the role. She was too sultry, too aware, had too much spark for that version of that story. It would’ve been bad casting. My pick – so much water under the bridge now – was actually Bhakti Barve. She was a fine actress. And I felt that she looked like Kasturba... Naseer’s trip was a political move. He’d made it clear that he was only interested in playing Gandhi. And Richard was set on Ben. But Naseer was a star, a name in the Bombay film industry, and Richard wanted to pitch a host of other parts to him – Nehru, in particular. Which shows how well he knew Naseer. Because that was never going to happen.
...Richard said ‘no’ to Naseer playing Gandhi. Naseer, in turn, said ‘no’ to Nehru. He wasn’t part of the film which – to this day – feels odd, given that I cast 498 Indian actors. A lot of people remember him being in the film! They’ve ghosted him in, because it feels logical that he would’ve been there. Naseer would have to wait about two decades to play Gandhi in Feroze Khan’s stage production.
Richard called from London to say that Rohini was his Kasturba. He loved her simplicity and naivety – things that are difficult to fake on screen. ..
One of the major criticisms at the time
was that Ben Kingsley was too ‘muscular’ to play Gandhi. Ben did all he could to remedy that. He was on a strict diet, and he did a lot of yoga. When he arrived in India, we removed all the furniture from his hotel room so he had to sit and sleep on the floor. The walls were covered with pictures of the Mahatma.
The backlash to the casting decision was inevitable... How could a foreigner play Gandhi? Bizarrely, the makers of ‘parallel cinema’ were the only ones who raised the issue... The protests were orderly. No one ran around breaking things; there were write-ups and opinion pieces. Richard was polite, but firm – Ben Kingsley was his Gandhi. All said and done, Ben was of Indian stock. His grandfather had migrated from India. I mean, we were really straining the boundaries of credibility with his Indian ancestry, and everyone knew it... We were lucky that Richard had been dealing directly with Mrs Gandhi. That meant we could be firm. Sometimes, we just had to buy peace. Ben occasionally wanted a beer at the end of a day’s work, and we had to ensure he wasn’t seen by the press. We’d already had one headline: “Ben Kingsley, Gandhi, drinking beer.” He was also an attractive man in the middle of a career-defining performance, so we had to shield him from the ladies... It was an exhilarating time, but it was bloody hard work. Luckily, Richard and I had found our wavelength early with Kasturba and I had a strong sense of what he was looking for.