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In ‘A Nice Indian Boy’, actor Karan Soni questions why two gay men can’t have their own DDLJ

It isn’t easy to push for your story to be told—or told right—explains Soni, recounting his experience playing Pavitr Prabhakar (the Indian Spiderman in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse). “The writers Phil [Lord] and Chris [Miller] are amazing, but they were so focused on Pavitr’s visuals that the character didn’t end up having much of a personality. I was too scared to say anything about it.” Luckily, someone else did. “Some animators on the movie were Indian and they set up a call with the writers to say: ‘We’re disappointed. We expected this character to be more.’”

The writers, remarkably, had no ego about it. “They said, ‘It’ll cost money, but let’s do it over.’ Hasan [Minhaj], me and a few other brown writers did a mini writers’ room. They showed us the character sequences, which never happens when you do voiceovers, and the character was better for it.”

Finding that bridge between cultures has been a big part of Soni’s life as well as this film. “Honestly, Roshan and I just wanted to make a Bollywood film in Hollywood,” he laughs. “Hollywood people love to say, ‘I want to watch Bollywood’ but they get bored or don’t understand it. Someone asked me, ‘Is RRR a gay movie? Because the two men hold hands in that song,’ and I said, ‘No, that’s friendship!’”

Tristan Fewings/Getty Images

  

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