I was blown away by Adarsh Gourav
I did not know him (Adarsh Gourav) before the project. He is so good! I went up to the director and asked, ‘Who is that guy?’ KERI RUSSELL, Actor
Hollywood actor Keri Russell recently had the opportunity to work on a project with actor Adarsh Gourav, the star of The White Tiger (2021). And she was blown away by his talent — so much so that Russell now wants to learn more about Indian cinema and culture.
Russell, who has appeared in projects such as Honey, I Blew Up the Kid (1992), Mission: Impossible III (2006), Waitress (2007), August Rush (2007), Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014) and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019), worked with Gourav on Extrapolations, a drama series focusing on the near-future impacts of climate change.
“That actor (Gourav) is so good! I have a very small part in the episode, which takes place entirely in India.
I’m the only English speaker in it,” says Russell.
The 46-year-old continues, “I did not know him before that (the project). From the first scene we did [he was so good]. We were shooting at night and we had to do this crazy action thing... I went up to the director and asked, ‘Who is that guy?’ And he said, ‘Well, he’s done a bunch of projects in India’. I was blown away by him!”
She has yet to fulfil her wish of visiting the country: “I have never been to India, but I would love to come and visit the country!”
Meanwhile, the actor says she was elated to come out of the whole pandemic situation and get on a set. Russell was recently seen in Cocaine Bear, a film set in the mid-1980s that follows a series of mishaps after a drug-addled bear goes on a rampage.
Talking about the project, she says, “I was on the phone with Elizabeth Banks (actor-filmmaker), discussing a different project. The next day, she called me back and said, ‘Hey, I’m directing this crazy movie; do you want to read it?’ We were in the middle of Covid-19, everything was so hard for everyone; but it felt like the right time to do such a crazy, fun, ridiculous, funny movie.”