Following its acclaimed premiere at SXSW in 2024, “A Nice Indian Boy” will make its theatrical debut on April 4. Adapted from the play by Madurai Shekar and directed by Roshan Sethi, the film celebrates family, Indian tradition, and “the bigness of love.”
On the night of his sister’s traditional Indian wedding, Naveen (Karan Soni (Deadpool, Abbott Elementary)) is reminded by his family, “You’re next.” However, there’s one caveat: Naveen is gay. When he falls for Jay (Jonathan Groff (Frozen, Hamilton)), a white man adopted into an Indian family, Naveen must confront his own family, society’s expectations, and his ideas on love and identity.
ECHO sat down with Roshan and Karan to chat about how their real lives and relationship inspired the rom-com, their most memorable moment from filming, and more!
ECHO: Roshan, as a Bostonian, I was so excited and surprised to see that you still work part-time as a doctor at Dana Farber Cancer Institute and as faculty at Harvard Medical School. Did your own experience influence Naveen’s character?
Roshan: I actually took the originally scripted character, which was to be a tech worker, and changed him into a doctor, in part because I found medicine to be a good way of understanding his character. The nature of medicine is that it does sort of closet you because you put on the white coat and you become a neutral object. You’re not disclosing your humanity or personality to your patients in order to be professional, but also at some cost to your sense of who you are and your sense of how much you can share. So that was a deliberate change. I do work at Brigham Dana Farber, and I talk about Brigham to Karan constantly.
ECHO: Karan, did you borrow any of Roshan’s stories for Naveen?
Karan: Yeah, in the first date scene where I’m talking about the hospital stories. That was just something that, when Roshan was working on the script, he was like, “Just remember to improvise a bunch of stories.” And I basically just repeated things that he had said to me, exciting moments in the hospital, like the Panera Bread. But to most people, it would be quite boring. So that was fun to be able to get that out into the movie.
ECHO: While filming the movie, you both were planning your own wedding. I am curious, did creating this film make you appreciate the process of planning and putting together a wedding even more? Did it also inspire you to incorporate certain elements, like maybe a dance sequence?
Roshan: We are going to get married in a courthouse, so our wedding will be the exact opposite. There may not even be other people other than family. Yeah, we always wanted to do a courthouse. And then I think doing this movie just reinforced that we never want to do something this big ever again. Why d people do big weddings? I don’t get it. But every time I go to a big wedding, I’m like, “This is ridiculous, a waste of money and time.” And then I also cry every single time.
Karan: That’s true. But no one is more upset that we’re not having a big Indian wedding than Jonathan Groff, who, for people who don’t know, is famous in his personal life for officiating weddings. He’s officiated like 25 weddings or something, and he was so sad. He would want to officiate ours, but he was so sad that we weren’t going to be doing that.
ECHO: One of the moments that made me laugh out loud was when Jay meets Naveen’s family for the first time, and Naveen’s dad says, “We play this gay TV for you,” and puts on the show about DILFs. Have you had any similar experiences with your friends or family?
Roshan: I have never had the experience of a family member trying to connect with me in that way, or really in many ways. But, I mean, Karan’s Mom is the biggest gay supporter on planet Earth. And she used to text me crazy random facts, like, “There are 12,000 LGBT people in Chandigarh,” a random city in India. But she’s on it. She’s so with it.
Karan: Yeah, she is really the Zarna character. We rewrote some of the lines directly from things my Mom has said. She lives in Georgia in a smaller town, and she’s like the mom who’s basically the gay whisperer mom. Like, any parents, she’s like, “I’m here when your child comes out.” And they’re like, “What?” And she’s like, “I can see it. I can see it in their eyes that they’re going to come out. Just know it’ll be hard, but I’m here.” You’re like, “My gosh.” And I’m just like, “Maybe don’t out these kids.” Yeah, she’s the biggest supporter of all of that stuff.
ECHO: Do you have any favorite memories of filming?
Roshan: Well, we never had a formal engagement, me and Karan, but I just started telling people we were gonna get married, and he never corrected me. And that’s the way it basically got. During the movie, we were shooting the engagement, there are actually two engagements, but we were shooting the second one, and Karan had the prop ring on his finger. And as a joke, he took it off and put it on mine. I started weeping immediately. Then I started running around the set, just showing people, being like, “Look at my ribng !” It was crazy because, if you know me, I’m like a blunt, hard-hearted doctor. But then I was suddenly acting like a giddy bride, just all around the house. It was a very interesting little window into my soul.
Experience the “bigness of love” on the big screen! “A Nice Indian Boy” arrives in select theaters on April 4. Get your tickets here!
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
