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It was still a path that was fraught with societys questioning, says Nair of the films interracial relationship.
The first memory well, there are more than one, and theyre kind of equal.
The combination actively changed my life forever.
In India, we have a lot to say about color, for sure.
In India still, you goddamn sell Fair & Lovely.
You still sell those creams, and you still sell that idea of fairness being beautiful.
It prompted me to explore that path: How is it that we think of it as a hierarchy?
How does it manifest?
So many exiles from Uganda, Ugandan Asians, really ended up there because it was dirt-poor Mississippi.
They could afford their businesses; they could afford to enter where it was not prohibitively closed to them.
And that was such a strange trick of history.
That is really how I pursued it totally based on research.
We must have interviewed 2,000 Ugandan Asian exiles in America and in England before we even commenced.
Did you see commonalities or differences between those groups?
One didnt think of it like that.
For me, it was entirely personal.
That swing was fluid for me, but not for many people.
It was very much a cliquish situation.
That was interesting for me, thatIcould, but what were the lines that divided us?
My writer Sooni [Taraporevala] and I wanted to find interracial mixed couples, especially in the South.
And we trudged a long way to find people who had lived that, and we did.
But they were few and far between.
They were like,This is our anthem.
And its so beautiful because, in the process of making it, we were still unusual.
I think we met, with difficulty, two couples in the South.
I faced an onslaught from Asian men when the movie came out openly.
Why are you doing this?
Why are you challenging us?
What do you think, that every Black man is Denzel?
Youve got something coming.
Openly, they would talk to me, in this country.
But it also did pretty well commercially when it came out.
It wasnt like it was just sidelined.
It did start up a conversation.
I saw it, I felt it.
The soundtrack was hugely popular.
But I would still say that Asian men were positively threatened by this film.
You went to Greenwood, you spoke to the 2,000 exiles, and then Sooni came in.
They considered themselves really Ugandan; they never quite settled in Mississippi and always longed forthatas home.
I was interested in Mina being their daughter, but she didnt see one as different from the other.
She was born and raised that way; that was her home.
Those things I brought, those pillars of the story.
But what Sooni brought was an extraordinary sense of what I now call political fun.
And we really share a sense of humor about how to see.
We have both been outsiders for a long time.
Its rare to be able to do that in writing and narrative, especially in such a prickly zone.
It was written for him, really.
I had success withSalaam Bombay!.
He was not a star at the time; he was up-and-coming.
He had doneFor Queen and Country, and he had just finished shootingGlory, but it was not out.
The Asian/Black thing was original for him.
That was a very lovely reason to meet me, but I was quite nervous.
I used to smoke only while casting, and I said, Do you mind if I smoke?
I remember thats how we began.
He said, Its your lungs.
And I was immediately like, [concerned gasp]:What have I done?
I started on the wrong foot!
Hes a real filmmaker.
The reason he met me wasSalaam Bombay!, truly.
We were prepared to, although it really affected us, and then he left that other film.
I dont know at which point.
And thats when he came back to us.
So thats how that happened.
How did the script change after that suggestion?
It was not so didactic as that.
And in that, I think he meant more,Get past the emblematic.
Really get into the vocabulary, get into the dreams of people in the same way.
And a huge part of that was being in Greenwood, and shooting that in Greenwood.
He is not a Southerner, and he was quite alarmed about the South.
Im living with you guys.
But he propelled us to go much further into the community, especially with the language.
We lived in Greenwood for six months.
We had people we worked with for the dialogue,real people.How would you say this?
It was more like,What else can we do?
And Demetrius was a real guy we met, in Myrtle Beach, of all places.
We were there as part of our research, and he was a carpet cleaner.
They do everything themselves, but the thing they dont do is clean carpets.
It requires technology of a sort that they dont want to get involved with.
But we amass this information literally like social scientists, and then we discuss.
Thats what Soonis wonderful bravery is.
She can see,Oh, its cleaning carpets that we have to get into.
I may not see that.
I went to Uganda to research and spent a week there.
There were roadblocks everywhere.
Getting out at 2 a.m. into the bush was routine there, but it was not routine for me.
And just that feeling of silent, unpredictable terror is something I brought into the beginning of the film.
It was also full of other peoples lived experience.
And among them, right behind Kinnu and Jay, were my mother- and father-in-law.
This is more difficult than that.
So hey, can Idi Amin just kill us off in your movie?
I will never forget that.
And now I see both of them there, and it makes us very happy.
They are both gone, but I will never forget that second morning.
Cinema verite is so observational.
Its an observer with engagement.
You dont really get to know a person just by looking at them.
If that were the case, I would have remained a photographer.
But I was not that, because I had to get involved with people.
I think it comes from actually my childhood, right from the beginning.
I still do that.
Yesterday I was talking to my Syrian Uber driver.
But it was always in my life.
It was a very small town.
This was my reality.
Thats what cinema verite gave me after photography.
But still, it was observational only.
What cinema verite taught me from early on was how to get engaged within the frame.
And often its very interesting and much more powerful sometimes than fiction.
So many people still think its a documentary, but its so not.
That, in hindsight, became a kind of style or signature that has propelled me still.
I never asked his permission in that sense, but I used to tell him where we were at.
But first I showed Denzel those photographs, before I met her.
And he was definitely intrigued.
But he was very unassuming.
He didnt say this or that, nothing about it; he just took it in.
And she is just wonderful in the sense that shes not somebody who is just agog with other stars.
She didnt even want to be an actor when I met her.
She was a film student, studying theory.
So there was no hankering that I could sense, which was great, because that never helps anyone.
They met, and they read, and it was very comfortable and not a strain in any way.
And of course they looked amazing together, which was incredibly good.
I knew that, but it was nice to see.
It was, I would say, formal.
It was not at all backslapping,Oh my God, I love youkind of nonsense.
It was a lovely, professional, and easygoing meeting.
For a couple of hours, we went through the script; we talked.
It was not really acting in a full-on sense at all.
It was just a reading of the script, with anything that emerged from it.
And you know, in the film, you’re able to see it.
Sarita has that sort of very good etiquette; shes not going to push.
But yet she is who she is, and she has that respect for the other person.
Its a way were raised.
I think you know what I mean.
Yes, I do.Tameez, we call it in our language.
In Farsi, itstaarof.Theres a little bit of etiquette, a little bit of distance.
Or to be forward.
I think thats why I love the phone-call scene and why it remains so erotic.
Theyre both unclothed, but the conversation is still very polite.[Laughs.]
What are you wearing?
We still joke about it.
What did you want out of their performances in that scene?
Yes, they were actually talking to each other.
Theres no one else there.
Its just the phone.
Its really about longing and desire, and youth, frankly the fun of it.
Its that, What are you wearing?
We have so much in common.
You find this fun in it so that you’re free to reveal yourself even more.
But this was just the early days, in that scene.
It was beautiful, actually, because Sarita is also a deeply honest performer.
Theres no falsity in her.
And especially in those first days, there was no knowledge of how she might appear.
There was no self-consciousness in that sense.
She really trusted me.
She was like sheis a younger sister to me.
We had just met, but she was very safe, I think, in my hands.
And with Denzel, he was a pro.
But he heard me as to what I looked for in him.
Im curious about the first kiss scene.
There are these very long takes where theyre just talking to each other, and there are no edits.
And thats where I found that bayou.
In fact, theres a picture of me shooting that scene that Maude showed me just a month ago.
It was kind of nuts.
Kissing is the yearning for contact in this particular way, and its never smooth or aesthetic.
It is kind of what it is, and it is about establishing that energy between two people.
The love scene later was done more in that constructed fashion, but not this scene.
They just are themselves, which is kind of what Sarita was and is in many ways.
Maybe Denzel less so, because he knows the form.
So I always let that moment keep going to see what it then reveals.
Whatever expression it is, its very genuine.
Especially in the case of, as they call them, nonactors.
Thats why I think it went on so long, because it was very pure.
There was something very affecting about that.
Thats my feeling or hope.
Thats my sense about the sex scene as well.
Yes, there are a lot of edits because that is how sex scenes are constructed in general.
There are these moments where I think,Should I be watching this?[Laughs.]
But its so tender at the same time!
I bought their relationship.
It was in Biloxi.
I must say that they were in that beautiful, formal,tameezrelationship throughout.
They didnt hang out together, they didnt do any of that.
I think they genuinely respected and liked each other, but it was quite a formal thing.
It was a good vibe.
That last day, we shot it in two interconnected motel rooms.
The three of us were in one while Ed was lighting the actual room that they would shoot in.
It was the last day of shooting, and Denzel had ordered crawfish gumbo for the crew.
We were having that crawfish, and I think we had Champagne?
I dont recall that so much.
Lets take this mood across to the bed!But Ed took his time.
And Sarita reminded me that I jumped into the middle of the two of them in bed.
Not in the location bed, but in the other bed.
And I still do my love scenes kind of that way.
I was literally in between them in a twin bed.
We were not allactivelycuddling, but pretty much cuddling.
Those days, there were no texts, but I thought,Come on, Ed.
Come on, Ed.
And then when we got to the bed, the real bed, everything was set up.
The track was set up.
We just had to transfer the mood to that bed.
That scene was choreographed.
I would be directing, Go this way, go that way.
It was a narration, a full narration.
The things we do, oh my God.
And thats how we did it: very delicately, and very quietly.
It was all about the sustaining of that good mood.
Was the ending always that Mina and Demetrius leave Greenwood?
That still shocks me.
Anyone different not just the race issue, not just the profession anything, you have to leave.
And its also that South/North thing.
For us to challenge who we are, that was like, Get out of here.
Thats alive and well.
Ive just spent many months in the South, and Ive seen that.
it’s possible for you to come back, but you have to leave to create a new way.
My partner is white, and that was a big deal to my parents, who are Iranian.
I think a lot about Minas scene where she says of Demetrius, I love him.
Thats not a crime.
And love, mixed with race I know bringing home a white person, yeah, its slightly shocking.
But if you bring a Black person into the home?
Its a slightly different vibe, although the rooted idea about race is still there, very much so.
This film was made 30 years ago, and so many aspects of it still resonate now.
Do you personally think the hierarchy of color is something we can ever ?Transcend?
I personally believe that it is transcendable.
I dont even actually think of it, because I live it.
And now Ive lived, what, 32 years in Uganda?
I dont see the color of our skins, frankly.
Maybe it is naive.
Maybe its a rare thing.
It is, it is.
But I can tell you that I feel very much that is utterly transcendable.
We are not emblems.
And thats what I mean about my experience in Uganda, or anywhere.
You cut to the chase, you distill the human condition.
We should nothave toexplain.
People force us to explain because we are so rare onscreen that weve got to do it all.
We have the Taj Mahal, we have this, we have that.
Thats not possible and should not be.
In that sense, I mean we should not be emblematic.
We should be way past that.
Thats what I admire so much about American cinema.
LikeLicorice Pizza: Its about first love in the Valley, and its very specific about that.
They had the confidence that this too matters.
We have to have that confidence, and be given that confidence, to go beyond the emblem.
We are real, flesh-and-blood folks like anyone else, and our stories must show that.
You know what I mean?
Our worlds are hybrid and alive and fluid.
Not many have gone there since.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
