What does Bollywood have to do with Christmas?
I put this question to film director Gurinder Chadha, and the answer, it turns out, is quite a lot.
“Bollywood is all about singing, dancing, joy,” she said. “So I think that for me, the idea of making a joyful Christmas film, with singing and dancing, it comes naturally for this time of year.”
And that’s exactly what Chadha – best known for directing the 2002 film Bend It Like Beckham – has just done.
With a cast including Kunal Nayyar, Hugh Bonneville, Pixie Lott, Boy George, Danny Dyer, Charithra Chandran and Eva Longoria, her new musical film Christmas Karma is a Bollywood spin on Charles Dickens’ classic, A Christmas Carol.
But Chadha says it’s also “a British film” celebrating a wide range of musical traditions.
The 65-year-old, who wrote and directed it, has also been busy working on her sequel to Bend It Like Beckham. This summer, she confirmed to the BBC that a revival is in the works.
Speaking to me at a central London hotel earlier this week, she indicated she was feeling the pressure to get it right.
“I’m working on the characters. These are big boots to fill,” she said. “I don’t want to rush it. The last thing I want is people to go, ‘it’s not as good as the original’.”
First published in 1843, A Christmas Carol tells the story of the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge, who hates Christmas, but is transformed after a series of ghostly visits.
In Christmas Karma, we are met with a modern-day Scrooge called Mr Sood, who goes on a similar journey of redemption.
Nayyar, best known for playing Raj in The Big Bang Theory, plays Mr Sood – but says he is nothing like Scrooge in real life. “I love Christmas,” he tells me. “Who doesn’t love Christmas? Of course I love Christmas.”
The actor said he always celebrated Christmas growing up in New Delhi. “Indians have a beautiful procurement to celebrate all festivals,” he said.
The first ghost to visit Mr Sood is his former partner, Jacob Marley, played by Paddington and Downton Abbey star Hugh Bonneville.
He’s also visited by American singer and actor Billy Porter, who acts as The Ghost of Christmas Present.
Porter says that up until this film, he was “definitely” more of a Scrooge.
But Bonneville professes to be a huge Christmas fan. He also rejects suggestions that November is too early for a festive film to come out in cinemas.
“I used to be Bah Humbug about it, and want Christmas decorations to go up on, frankly, Boxing Day, but I’m getting earlier and earlier,” he said.
“Although I do draw the line at certain Christmas songs being played too early, I think they should be banned.”
As a sidenote, I had to ask Bonneville about whether he’s planning to go and see the new Paddington musical. “I’m going next week,” he told me. “I’m looking forward to seeing that equally timeless story being told.”
In Christmas Karma, Mr Sood is depicted as being among the 28,000 Ugandan Asian refugees who came to the UK in 1972 after being given 90 days to leave the African country by military dictator Idi Amin.
In later life, we see Mr Sood being dismissive of refugees seeking asylum in the UK. “The rich ones always forget their roots,” one bystander remarks.
But after being guided by the ghosts of Christmas – played by Eva Longoria, Billy Porter, and Boy George – Mr Sood reconnects with his past.
Chadha says the inspiration for her Scrooge came from a “Grinch-like” family member who used to criticise them for celebrating Christmas. “‘I don’t know why you’re all doing this. You’re not white’,” she says he would tell them.
Later, she came to understand that, like Mr Sood, he was “carrying the trauma” of having been forced to leave his home country as a child.
But she also says she was inspired by certain politicians.
“It also made sense to me to make my Sood say slightly right-wing things, because when I was writing it [during lockdown], we did have a government that had members of the Asian community who would have a similar background,” she said.
For Leo Suter, who plays Mr Sood’s underpaid employee Bob Crachett, there’s an important message he hopes people take away from the film.
“Dickens’s work has lasted… a very long time, because of the message at the core of it. The original text is that empathy, morality, and generosity is better than being a Scrooge and being miserly,” he said.
“And what the film does so well is totally bring that spirit into quite a complex and nuanced discussion of migration and racial things going on in modern Britain,” he said.
The film also has a Bhangra Christmas song, and a tribute to George Michael with Bollywood superstar Priyanka Chopra Jonas singing a desi take on Last Christmas.
“I feel like it’s got all the things that you want in a Christmas film,” adds Pixie Lott, who plays Suter’s on-screen wife Mary Crachett.
“It makes you cry, it makes you laugh. It’s so feel good, but it also touches you in a way that makes you think about your own life.”
Christmas Karma is in cinemas from 14 November.
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