Just like Hollywood is never going to stop making films set in World War II, India is never going to stop making films set against the backdrop of colonial India. This was such a formative and tumultuous 80 years or so, that there are so many fictional stories yet to be written, and a seemingly endless supply of historical stories still yet to be discovered. Ae Watan Mere Watan is a great example of that. This story of Usha Mehta vs the Empire waited 80 years to be told! I think we should all be grateful to Kanan Iyer and Darab Farooqui for finding and elevating this story to the level that they have. But just like Usha’s, there have been, and there will continue to be, so many captivating stories that take place in colonial India. And obviously in colonial India, most of the white people were British. So if I am going to take on a role in a film set in one of the most turbulent and formative periods of Indian history, a period out of which so many incredible stories arise, then it only stands to reason that my character would be of British descent. However, that doesn’t mean that all my roles are necessarily negative. Simply look at Jhansi Ki Rani in which I played Robert Ellis a British officer torn between his duty to the empire and his affection for the Queen of Jhansi. Indeed, in some literature it is suggested that the two had an affair. If you look at my portrayal of Winston Churchill when he was serving on the Northwest frontier in the 1890s working, living, and fighting alongside his Sikh regiment in the Discovery series 21 Sarfarosh you will see a strong positive character. But, of course, I have also played negative characters like Charles Johnson in Chittagong, Vasco Da Gama in Urumi, and Frederick Jackson in Golondaaj. And of course, everything in between like David Anderson in Bose, Mr. Ribbs in Phule. I would say about a third of my roles have taken place during colonial India. They’ve been positive, they’ve been negative, they’ve been somewhere in between. And all have been unique and distinct in their own way. John Lyre is completely different from any character I’ve played in the past. And I’m incredibly grateful that people continue to look to me to play roles, whether they’re set in colonial India or in the 2000s like Khufiya, or the 80’s like Main Aur Charles, or the present day like L2E or Joker.
But do you find yourself limited by the color of your skin and nationality?
Oh, absolutely. I think all actors are chosen for roles based on how they look and how they perform. If we don’t perform well but we look the part, we won’t get it. And if we don’t look the part, but we perform well, well, then unfortunately, we won’t get it either. So we’re all limited by these boundaries. But par of our job as actors is to try to push these boundaries as much as possible. But, I am a white male and I will be cast as a white male, and I just have to be fine with that.
How do you look at India? Is it home now or do you divide your time between India and the US?
India is absolutely home – one of my three homes – alongside South Africa and The Netherlands. While I have my family in The Netherlands, my film career is in India, and, a couple of years ago, I shifted my music career from India to South Africa.After my first three song and music video releases here in India, Still on My Mind, Twenty Days, and A Bhagavad Gita Song, I had to come to terms with the fact that in India, music is so inextricably connected to film that a song is not identified by the singer or song-writer, but by the actor who dances and lip-syncs to it on screen. And my songs were simply never meant to be in Indian films. My lyrics are in English, and I write not from a brief or a narration, but strictly from my personal experience. So, my music just doesn’t naturally lend itself well to being in Indian films. Therefore, It doesn’t get played on the radio or on tv, and thus it doesn’t get discovered through the usual channels. However, with the exception of musicals like La La Land or A Star is Born where the soundtrack is intertwined with the film, film and music are completely separate in the rest of the world. And so outside of India my music just has a better chance of reaching its audience. At the moment, my two most recent singles, Pride and These Four Walls play every single day on the radio in South Africa – and they have even gotten plays in Europe and the USA. It is a feeling like none other when I’m riding in a taxi in Cape Town and one of my songs comes on the radio!
So have your songs have stopped releasing in India?
Just because it is doing well abroad doesn’t mean that I have stopped releasing my music in India – indeed, I triple-check every time I have a release to make sure that it is there on all the Indian platforms as well as the international ones. It is very important to me that the people that know me from my films and series, and have supported me all these years, can also get to know this other side of me through my music. And I am incredibly grateful to have such phenomenal support in India that my streaming numbers from here, especially on the music videos, are always very very strong. In fact, a lot of people leave comments on the music videos on YouTube indicating that they found me through my acting and subsequently discovered my music- and that’s a lovely feeling. So, film career here in India, music career (and adventure sports) in South Africa, and family time in the Netherlands- These are my three homes.
Where is your family? Do you have close friends in the entertainment industry?
I am a dual national, American and Dutch, and I have family in both the US and the Netherlands. However, I very rarely get time to travel to the US, and with my film career in India, my music career in South Africa, and my mother living in the Netherlands, these three tend to be the countries that I am in most of the time.Like any other profession, as an Actor you have your work friends and you have your outside of work friends, and I consider most of the actors, DOP’s and directors that I’ve worked with, especially those that I’ve worked with multiple times, to be friends. But these generally aren’t the friends that I play poker or football with, they are the friends with whom I create. They are the friends with whom I spend long hours on location, have in depth discussions about character and art, and experience incredibly intense emotions. And they are the friends who make the effort to see my creative work and congratulate me on my success, and vice versa. When working with someone on very intense, violent, vulnerable, and emotional scenes, you almost always draw a connection. And these experiences forge strong bonds that last even if you don’t meet often. For example, when I arrived on location for Devi Chowdhurani, my sixth Bengali film, Prosenjit Chatterjee and I met like the closest and dearest of friends – I am so fond of him, and it has been so long since I’ve seen him because we don’t spend a lot of time together when we’re not shooting, but we’ve been exchanging messages and appreciating each other’s work for all these years since we first worked together on Yeti Obhijaan. And this is similar to almost all of my film relationships / work friendships. Akshay Kumar and I, for example, just began shooting ‘The Untold Story of C Sankaran Nair’, which is our first film after Joker. When we reached location, we met with a hug and caught up on all that we’ve been doing since the last time we worked together. Rajkumar Rao and I have known each other for nearly 14 years, spending time together on Chittagong, Bose, and most recently Roohi – and it is always a joy to connect. Richa Chadha and Ali Faisal and I have met a number of times after having completing Main Aur Charles, and Inside Edge and Khufiya. And another of my Main Aur Charles co-actors Randeep Hooda and I met up a week before the release of both of our films and he greeted me, hilariously, with the French accent he used in the film!
But yes, there are some friends, like music producer Debarpito Saha, actor Danny Sura, and celebrity host and interviewer Siddharth Kannan who exist in both my worlds, as I exist in theirs.
Tell me about your forthcoming projects?
My next release is likely to be Bak Bak, a dark comedy series on Amazon Prime that stars myself and Divya Dutta in roles like you’ve never seen before. I don’t want to reveal too much because it’s not been given a release date quite yet, but it is a very, very interesting series from director Raja Menon in which my character speaks only Hindi, and pure, pure, Hindi at that.Phule is a film that I have recently completed with director Ananth Mahadevan, our second collaboration, the first being Dr. Rakhmabai. And while in the last I was paired with Tannishtha Chatterjee, in this one I’ve had the pleasure of working with Pratik Gandhi and Patralekha . While I’d met Patralekha before, her husband Rajkumar Rao and I have worked on three projects previously, this is my first collaboration with her and Pratik. Like Kannan Iyer, Anand Mahadevan is using his platform to shine a light on a lesser known, but incredibly important and inspirational figure in Indian history- Jyotirao Phule, who was a pioneer in the field of education. I look forward to talking more about Phule when it’s queued up for release. Pokkhirajer Dim will be my next Bengali release. It’s a fantasy film made for kids and the young at heart. I’m not revealing too much by saying that it is truly ‘out of this world’… since it features a UFO and a magic horse on the poster! Pokkhirajer Dim is a beautiful story, and it has been lovely to work once again with SVF who produced my most recent Bengali film: Golondaaj, for which I was nominated for Best Actor by the West Bengal Film Journalists Association.And, speaking of Bengali cinema, I’m presently shooting Devi Chowdhurani, my second with Prosenjit Chatterjee with whom I starred in my Bengali debut Yeti Objhijaan in 2017. Devi is a very ambitious period project, and a very interesting one, but there’s still quite some shooting left to do, so I don’t think that will release until 2025. Then there’s L2 Empuraan, the second instalment of the Lucifer franchise, Lucifer 1 being the highest grossing film in Malayalam of all time. Director / Actor Prithviraj and I first met on Urumi, and we got along really well and kept in touch ever since, so I was happy to join him for a short cameo in L1. In this second instalment I have a larger role, and then in the third, even larger. It’s nice to grow with the franchise, and, such a pleasure working with Mohanlal for the first time. We are still shooting, so L2E probably wont be out until 2025 or 2026.Then there is The Untold Story of C Sankaran Nair, which is the first time I’m working with Akshay Kumar after our last outing Joker. This marks my first collaboration with Dharma, after having just enjoyed the success of AWMW with sister company Dharmatic. ‘The Untold Story’ is a historical project focussed on the aftermath of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre and because it is still in production, it’s release is still a ways off.
And then, finally, I am putting the finishing touches on ‘Ghosts’- My next original song and music video recorded and produced at Cosher Studios in South Africa, and shot on the streets of Cape Town. I’ve been experimenting with different styles, just allowing each song to find its way to a genre, and this one has turned out a bit more electronic than my others. Nevertheless, it will be no surprise that Ghosts features a guitar at its core, my primary instrument, and the kinds of introspective lyrics that my listeners have come to expect from my compositions. Of all my projects, this is the one about which I’m most excited, and I’m hoping to see it release in June / July of this year. There are a few more about which I cannot yet comment – but considering these alone, I’m incredibly excited for 2024 and 2025!
Do you aspire to direct a film anytime soon?
At the moment, I feel I do not have the technical knowledge necessary to do justice to someone else’s story. So, directing a film just isn’t going to happen until I’ve developed those skills. However, because my music is so incredibly close to my heart, and I wouldn’t trust anyone else to understand quite how I want them made, I personally direct the Music Videos for all my own Original Songs. While every song’s audio is available on on all the platforms – the International ones like Spotify and Amazon, and all the Indian ones as well Like Hungama, JioSaavn and Gaana- every song also has a music video available at Youtube.com/AlexxONellMusic – my official artist channel. Directing these has at least given me an introduction to the process, but I’m also a very democratic director who likes to work in a collaborative way rather than a dictatorial one. And I work with a very small team, so, I don’t think these experiences have quite prepared me to make a film. I’d have to assist a director to really learn what I need to know, and at the moment, I’m both content and incredibly busy acting, making music, and enjoying my adventure sports like paragliding, scuba diving, motorcycle riding… so, maybe someday, but probably not someday soon.
