Dressed to kill
Waris Ahluwalia plays a vicious gangster in Beeba Boys and brings his signature flair and style to the festival
Waris Ahluwalia greets the Star with a warm smile in a suite at the Inter-Continental Toronto Centre Hotel. For those who know him as a step-and-repeat regular on the New York social scene, street-style subject and Wes Anderson’s favourite character actor in films including The Grand Budapest Hotel and
The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, the smile is the only tweak to his signature look: tailored suits, personal jewelry and a turban.
“Never smiling in photos; always smiling in real life,” he says, of course with a smile. “I think that’s a much better balance. I’d rather be smiling in real life. Were you expecting to walk in here and I would be very stern?” He laughs, delighted. “I love that.”
His role as a gangster in Deepa Mehta’s Indo-Canadian crime drama Beeba Boys, premiering Sunday at TIFF before opening theatrically Oct. 16, gives no hints that Ahluwalia, 40, would be the easygoing guy on the couch, barefoot with a pair of zebra-print slip-ons nearby.
His character, Manny the Joker, will butcher a knock-knock joke as nonchalantly as he will a rival gang member.
A Fashion Week fixture and recurring red-carpet character, expect Ahluwalia to be a flashy addition to TIFF’s party circuit.
On Saturday night, he was expected at Mongrel Media’s Mongrel House party. It was a famous friend, Orange Is the New Black star Natasha Lyonne, who first told him about Beeba Boys, inspired by true stories of Indo-Canadian gang wars in Vancouver.
“She was like, ‘This is for you!’ ” Ahluwalia recalls. “I was like, I get it, but I don’t work that way. I’m not going to call someone and say I have to be in this film. A year later, in my inbox, is an email from Deepa. I called Natasha right away, like, ‘You’ll never guess what just happened!’ ”
The peacock style of the Beeba Boys, who wear brashly coloured tailored suits with of-the-moment menswear trends such as cropped trousers and printed zipups, came just as naturally to Ahluwalia. He has parlayed his status as a New York style icon into his own jewelry brand, House of Waris.
On Friday, he released a short film, a reshoot of the opening sequence of American Gigolo, titled appropriately Indian Gigolo. His tailor, Jake Mueser, did his own take on the slim-fitting suits worn by Richard Gere that launched Armani and redrew the silhouette of menswear.
“I think tailoring is having a moment,” Ahluwalia says. “There’s a new wave of people interested in handmade things.”
The short subverts what type of man can be considered a sex symbol in America, a conversation that Ahluwalia has been at the heart of before. In 2013, Gap ads featuring Ahluwalia, in his turban and chest-length beard, were defaced with racially charged graffiti.
“The face of America is constantly changing,” he says. “I was born in India but as far as my conscious being, I’ve been in America as long as I remember.”
And yet, despite his robust filmography, he still doesn’t have an agent. “They look at me and say ‘You might be typecast,’ ” he says. “Ten years later I still haven’t been typecast. Every role is completely different. I’m not one to wait for permission. So I will keep making films until Hollywood is willing to accept that I can actually be American.”