H-Wood's Newest Star Is An 8-year-old Indian

    • TNN
    • Publish Date: Jan 15 2017 11:41AM
    • |
    • Updated Date: Jan 15 2017 11:41AM
H-Wood's Newest Star Is An 8-year-old Indian

Tess Joseph is searching the cafe for an adorable noun. "He looked like a small...," she trails off, struggling to describe the pint-sized star of the film 'Lion' who had Twitter cooing when he arrived onstage at the Golden Globes with co-actor Dev Patel, both dressed in matching bow-ties and tuxedoes. 

"Pocket of sunshine," the casting director finally says about Sunny Pawar, her eight-year-old find from Mumbai, who almost outshone actress Meryl Streep's anti-Trump speech in the applause department. Though the Disney film did not win an award, that standing ovation made Joseph's four-monthlong treasure hunt — involving over 2,000 kids, 50 schools and three cities — worth it.

Ever since 'Lion'--which tells the true story of Saroo Brierley who goes missing as a kid, is adopted by a couple in Australia and later sets off to find his roots--started marinating in Oscar buzz in November last year, the press has been after Joseph for a possible "Slumdog angle" behind Pawar. "But there is no such story to him," says Mumbai-based Joseph, careful not to divulge too much about the boy before the film's official release in India even as she prepares to fly to Los Angeles this week along with Lion's Australian casting director Kirsty Mc Gregor for the Casting Society of America's (CSA) awards ceremony. 

Actor Sunny Pawar from the film 'Lion' poses for a portrait while promoting the film in New York City, New York, U.S. January 5, 2017. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson
 
In a first for an Indian casting, the CSA has nominated the drama film for best casting. "The best part of being a casting director," says Joseph, whose workshop footage showed Pawar lifting a bicycle twice his size, "is to be able to show the director the first glimpse of his vision." For the film, Joseph followed her unconventional, meticulous trademark search template.
Just as they scanned 400 schools across the North East while casting for the film 'Sold', which was about child trafficking, Joseph and her team of assistants indulged kids in schools across Mumbai, Delhi and Pune in games to help filmmaker Garth Davis find the shy Pawar in a school in Mumbai. It was Pawar's ability to "react rather than act" that made Joseph curious. Joseph often tends to surprise teachers by picking the quiet ones. "I was myself a mouse in school," says Joseph. With his soulful eyes and husky voice, Pawar, then 6, seemed to fit well into the slippers of the protagonist Saroo — who, incidentally, belonged to an orphanage "that is right next to my Calcutta house," says the casting director, who is originally from Calcutta, referring to a coincidence that made the process special.
To prepare the 6-year-old who didn't know English, the crew of 'Lion' had even created a children's book version of the film. "He was quite internal, quite quiet, but independent and strong," said filmmaker Davis in a recent interview about Pawar, who will now be starring in a Hollywood film titled 'Love Sonia'.

Patience, says Joseph, is key when it comes to casting kids. "You must give kids at least three chances to open up," says Joseph, speaking through experience as the director and producer of Bournvita Quiz Contest, and now producer of the global campaign for girl education 'Girl Rising India'. "You can't pre-judge them in a room," adds Joseph, who has heard local directors dismiss kids superficially for being too "pudgy". Her sensibility stems in part from the fact that her casting journey that began with director Mira Nair. "She believes in looking for the right person rather than the right actor," says Joseph.
The importance of preserving childhood on set has been her biggest takeaway from working on foreign films. It was on 'West is West' that she first watched a boy being tutored and finishing his holiday homework on set. "The kid never stopped being a kid." This is perhaps why Joseph loved it when in a recent interview, Pawar was asked what the most memorable part of working in a foreign film was and he said: "Chocolate."

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Kashish Verma Bharti Public School Swasthya Vihar

It''s amazing!

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