“I felt like Russell Crowe”
Gurinder Chadha, the director of BRIDE AND PREJUDICE, tells The Guardian that she found making the film an exercise in diplomacy.
The making of Bride and Prejudice required enormous feats of diplomacy. It was shot on three continents (although with a budget of only £12m, Chadha had to be inventive: for a hotel in Beverly Hills, read Stoke Poges golf club) and the cast came from three, very different acting traditions. “It was tough because every actor thought their way was best. The Americans thought Bollywood was very inferior. And the British actors thought they were better than the Americans. I felt like Russell Crowe in Master and Commander; it was my job to keep on course and I kept steering it with my map of British-Asian sensibility. What I’ve ended up with nods to Bollywood and to Hollywood and elements of it feel like the movie Grease. But it is actually a very British movie.”
The AustenBlog staff would like to point out discreetly that Ms. Chadha would do better to compare herself to Captain Wentworth on the Laconia, but we are Hornblower and Aubrey fans as well and probably should shut up.
