Actor Anupam Kher did ‘The Big Sick’ to fulfil a father’s wish
MUMBAI: When Kumail Nanjiani was casting his father in The Big Sick, his real father posed a challenge: Get Anupam Kher.
For more than one generation of moviegoers who grew up with Indian cinema, Kher is the quintessential father figure. He’s been in over 500 films and played a dad for a good three decades now. He’s familiar to Western audiences because of Bend It Like Beckham, E.R., Silver Linings Playbook, and Sense8. Surely there could be no one better suited for the part.
To millions of South Asian moviegoers, he is the collective fictional father. He’s family, and he knows it.
“I love life. I love working ... I discard all the things which I do not like because my energy will go into those areas,” Kher said. “I see what is amazing. Why will you and me meet otherwise if I had not done Big Sick?”
While the Nanjiani family grew up with Kher’s movies, Kher hadn’t heard of the man who would soon play his son. They connected via Twitter and ended up working together, because Kher, too, took Kumail’s father’s request to heart.
“I looked at it as a son wanting to fulfil his father’s wish, and I was responsible for that.”
“I looked at it as a son wanting to fulfil his father’s wish, and I was responsible for that,” he said.
Kher described The Big Sick as inspirational and a film that “breathes life.” Kher has his own autobiographical work, a stage show called Kucch Bhi Ho Sakta Hai (“Anything Can Happen”).
“There is an amazing sense of believability in that,” he said of an actor performing lived experiences. “And that’s what I admire.”
Added Anupam: “Culture is important. Culture is your identity,” he said. “I think people outside India are more Indian than Indians in India. Because their whole stress is that they need to maintain the culture.
I think over here the first generation Indians who come here, their main tussle will be with the second generation ... that they cannot explain to you why culture is important, because they’ve left it behind and they’re clinging onto that thing.”