Mira Nair: Scouting for locales and talent

After Reese Witherspoon, Bath and William Makepeace Thackeray, it?s Rani Mukherjee, Aurora Studios and Jhumpa Lahiri for Mira Nair. The maker of Vanity Fair is here to scout locations and talent for The Namesake.

Come December, the Monsoon Wedding maker will park herself in Calcutta for more than a month to capture the city leg of the three-stops-three-continents saga on celluloid.

Landing in the city on Saturday, Nair headed straight for Aurora Studios, in Salt Lake, to check out the floors. ?She wants to use both our floors for the indoor shoot,? said Amit Agarwal, one of the directors of Aurora Studios.

?While she hasn?t yet confirmed it, she was very impressed with our infrastructure and checked out our date schedules for end-November and the first week of December,? he added.

Nair, who read The Namesake en route to her last schedule for Vanity Fair, was reportedly so moved by the Lahiri novel that she pushed back her next venture ? a movie adaptation of American playwright Tony Kushner?s political play Homebody/Kabul.

The Golden Lion-winning director plans to shoot indoors (Aurora most likely) in Calcutta for as many as 22 days, while the outdoor shots will be canned during the rest of her stay in the city, before she flies back to New York for a six-week shooting schedule there.

The cast is still hush-hush, but Rani Mukherjee has been signed up for the female lead of Ashima. Speculation over ?a big Hollywood actress? to play the lover of Ashima?s son Gogol has reached fever pitch, while mystery still surrounds the Bollywood casting for the male lead of Ashoke.

The majority of the remaining cast could well be from Tollywood. ?As many as 10 to 12 actors will be selected from Calcutta and the criterion is simple: they have to be fluent in both English and Bengali,? said a source.

Of the local actors, most would make fleeting appearances, but two or three would have ?meaty roles?.

Nair is in town deciding on the outdoor locations and also screen-testing some actors for the important roles. Among those who have already tested for the director, who shot to fame with Salaam Bombay, are Anasuya Majumdar and a young, busy TV actor who chooses to remain anonymous till he gets the nod.