Bharat Nalluri
Interview By: Andrea Tuccillo
AndreaTuccillo@TheCinemaSource.com
Bharat Nalluri may be new to American audiences, but in his native Britain he is quite a popular television director having worked on such acclaimed British series as Spooks, Hustle and Life on Mars. He showcased his talents for tackling tough material when he directed HBO's Tsunami: The Aftermath. Not one to do the same thing twice, Nalluri took on a much lighter project soon after with his big-screen directorial debut: Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day.
Miss Pettigrew is a fun, fast-talking comedy set in 1930's London about an out-of-work governess (Frances McDormand) who takes a job as a social secretary for a ditzy yet glamorous aspiring actress named Delysia (Amy Adams).
I spoke with the director while he was in New York promoting the film. Friendly, personable and not at all jaded with the movie business, Nalluri excitedly chatted about his foray into feature filmmaking and his high-hopes for releasing a feel-good flick as opposed to a depressing tragedy which seems all the rage in Hollywood these days.
Q: Miss Pettigrew is based on a book that not many people know about. Were you familiar with the book before you took on this project'
A: I never heard of it at all. It was written in 1938 so it's been around a while, then it went out of print'it was very successful in its time and then it went out of print for many, many years and then a publisher put it back into print around 2000, 2001 and it was again hugely successful in a kind of low key way. It was one of those well-respected books and was certainly the biggest book this publisher had published in terms of sales.
The really interesting fact and what I didn't realize was the lady who wrote it, Winifred Watson who passed away around 2002 at the age of 96, hails from my hometown where she wrote it and lived next door to me basically. When I used to live there she lived one street away from me and I never realized, never met her, didn't know her. Somehow or another 30 years later I end up working on a film so maybe she was looking down on us.
Q: How did you prepare for a period piece like this'
A: Endless research. It you're gonna do something like this you want to really do it right and the other thing is you want to kind of deliver something slightly different. I just didn't want to deliver another 1939 piece set in London. It was like what is slightly left-field, what haven't we done before, what haven't we seen before. That for me is the exciting thing. You take what everyone's expecting and take it slightly left-field or right-field and you give them a jazz club which kind of probably existed, it was a bit of a cutting edge jazz club for the time. We heightened this whole film because we decided that Delysia was driven by the movies and Miss Pettigrew is driven by the movies and they know that world so we kind of heightened it. If you look at it, it had a lot of reference to movies from that period. And then in truth, you hire a brilliant production designer like Sarah Greenwood who was Oscar-nominated for Atonement and you let her loose and she comes up with thousands of suggestions and ideas which are all brilliant usually and then you work with a fantastic costume designer like Michael O'Connor and a great DOP and you get a great team around you and enthuse them with the idea that you do something slightly different. You do a lot of reading, which is not hard. I quite enjoy looking at pictures of London in 1939 and reading all the books from the time so that's part of the process as a director for me.
Q: Did you research any movies from that time period for inspiration'
A: A lot of people go, 'it feels like an homage to a movie of the time,' and it's not based on any specific film. I call it my homage to Sunday afternoon TV viewing because somehow everyone does this'you've been partying on a Saturday night, Sunday you're relaxing at home and TV starts playing these old black and white movies from the 30's. In England it used to be on the BBC on a Sunday afternoon and the family would gather around and watch. And for me, it was just like hundreds of those films all glued together somehow permeated into my brain and that's kind of the influence. But it's a very subtle one, I can't pinpoint to a very specific film.
Q: It certainly does evoke feelings of the 1930's classic screwball comedies, especially with that rapid-fire dialogue.
A: That's driven by the script. The script is very fast-paced. There's pages and pages of dialogue and if you shot it'and I'm sure that's where screwball comedy comes from'because if you actually shot it at the pace that we now speak you'd still be in the cinema trying to get to the end of it. And there's something really dynamic about that rat-a-tat pace. The great thing is I'm working with such fantastic actors. When you've got Amy Adams and Frances McDormand delivering that dialogue it's totally understandable.
Q: Speaking of which, you got to work with Frances the veteran actress and Amy the hot new talent. What was that like'
A: It was fantastic because they both had a lot of mutual respect for each other. Frances is a huge fan of Amy's acting and vice versa. And Frances, it's her movie, she's Miss Pettigrew and she leads from the top. She leads with such wisdom and wit and generosity that it's like we were all literally whistling our way to work. It didn't feel like work at all. You're getting up every morning and going 'Hey, I've got Frances McDormand, I've got Amy Adams.' People were hanging out on set way after we've called wrap at the end of the night.
Q: The characters of Miss Pettigrew and Delysia start off seeming like complete opposites, but come to realize they have more in common than they thought.
A: At the beginning, Amy has got kind of three boyfriends. She's not that likeable in a way and in lesser hands you'd probably want to slap her, but because it'd Amy Adams somehow she makes you fall in love with her and then you slowly realize that she's in a position where many women of that time were of having to make tough decisions about how you're gonna live your life. There's no support system, there's no social system, there's no family coming; you have to somehow work your way through life. And the moral of the film is follow your heart not your head. And I think that's the wisdom Miss Pettigrew imparts and you slowly realize that they are both very similar.
Q: As you mentioned, there are a lot of male love interests in this film. What was like working with the guys, like Lee Pace who plays Delysia's one true love Michael'
A: Lee Pace is like Jimmy Stewart, isn't he'
Q: Yes! I was thinking that exact same thing, actually.
A: He's so handsome which is utterly sickening for every bloke on the set. It's just like effortless charm because of his Texan demeanor. He's an absolute gentleman. He's a brilliant actor. He's got an innate confidence in him and somehow that comes across and his eyes are amazing, aren't they' So everyone falls in love with him. Everyone!
That was a great experience because I didn't really know his work. I watched Pushing Daisies and he's doing really well for himself. He's now off the Richter scale and that's Lee Pace on the launch pad and gone into hyperspace. I think he's one to just kind of grab coattails of now.
Q: What about Ciaran Hinds, who plays the love interest for Miss Pettigrew'
A: Ciaran Hinds is such a consummate actor, such a heavyweight. It's a hard role. He comes in and he's so light with what he does. You think he's giving you very little but he's giving you everything you need. And again, the most charming person ever really.
Q: This movie was a change of pace for you. How did you approach it in terms of style'
A: When you're making a movie about the tsunami you're looking for the dirt, the truth, the sweat, the pores and this is a film that's kind of, there's fakery going on, there's a sham in this world and underneath it there are real people that have forgotten. As a filmmaker it's fabulous when you get to make beautiful pictures.
Q: And speaking of beautiful, this movie even has a makeover scene for the dowdy Miss Pettigrew. But I liked that it wasn't overdone. She still looked like herself. Was this a conscious decision'
A: It was a very conscious decision to not go for the whole Pretty Woman thing. That was as much from Frances as it was from I. we wanted to keep it very real in a way and I think that really works. I think it's a very simple, subtle thing. But even for Miss Pettigrew's character that feels so huge, that little step
Q: So what can we expect next from you'
A:I tend to pick stuff that's about as opposite as I can to the last thing I did because I don't know what the dictionary word for it is, but I have a fear of pigeon-holing. So whatever it is, all I can say is it'll be completely different. I hope.
