Mira Nair with Kate Hudson and Riz Ahmed at the Venice Film Festival screening of The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Hi, this is Mira here,” her lively voice rings out over the phone. One of our most significant exports to Hollywood, Mira Nair, the maker of films like Salaam Bombay!, Monsoon Wedding and The Namesake, is in India to promote her Friday film The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Over to the 55-year-old power woman.

When you first read Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist, did you at once know you’d make a film on it?

The first note of inspiration to make the film came not from the book but from my first trip to Lahore in 2004. My films are popular there and I always wanted to go there because my father was educated there. I had used this wonderful ghazal of Farida Khanum in Monsoon Wedding called Aaj jaane ki zid na karo and I couldn’t believe it that she sat just a foot away from me in a function at Lahore and she sang the song for me. I could have died! I was dazzled by the portrait of modern-day Pakistan that I had so not read about in the newspapers. It immediately inspired me to do something contemporary on Pakistan.

A few months later I read Mohsin’s novel in the manuscript form before it was published and I thought this was my opportunity to translate this modern tale of Pakistan into film, but more importantly, I felt that the story was a dialogue with America. Like Mohsin, I have lived half my life in the subcontinent and half of it in New York City. I really have lamented that since 9/11 there has been such a wall between these parts of the world… such myopia, largely brought on by (George W.) Bush’s dictum that ‘either you are with us or against us’. I feel that everything that happens from that world to this world is a one-way monologue. I wanted to make that bridge… make it a dialogue… and that’s how the film happened.

You have positioned it as a coming-of-age film, while most are looking at it as just a post-9/11 story…

It definitely is a coming-of-age story! But then, 9/11 is a game-changer… it made the world a different place in one stroke. But I strongly believe — and please quote me on this — that we are defined not by the events of the world, but by our reaction to it. And the reaction to 9/11 has created consequences that we are still paying for… and we will always pay for until a time comes when you hold a hand out. This is the story of a young man who finds himself after spending a decade in America, post-9/11. I hope that through this young man [Changez played by Riz Ahmed], we manage to find ourselves.

Like Changez, you have straddled different worlds and cultures. You must have felt a sense of identification with your protagonist at various points?

Well, deeply. I definitely understand what it feels to be more than one thing (smiles). And that’s what the film is… a return to complexity and a response to the way we portray ourselves in this way or that… either you are Hindu or you are Muslim. It’s not just that, we are much more than that, you know. And I am also many things. But my roots as a desi are so strong (laughs) that I can fly elsewhere. If I didn’t know where I came from, it would be difficult for me to be what I am today.

You have adapted The Namesake, but you have said that it was very tough to turn The Reluctant Fundamentalist from book to film. What were the biggest challenges?

The book is a monologue where Changez speaks to someone who never says a word. In our film, we had to first invent an American who Changez could speak to and who would respond with as much feeling and pain. I also had to rework the third act where Changez is betrayed by America and returns to Pakistan. We don’t know what’s happened to him in these last few years and while we were writing this film, the world was a roller coaster — Osama (bin Laden) was killed, The Times Square bombing had happened…. I wanted this film not to feel like a capsule of another time, but to come across as a story of contemporary times.

Uncannily and very bizarrely, the Boston Marathon bombing happened just three days before the film’s release in America and set up an entire surge of curiosity about my film. Here’s a Pakistani man who comes to America and starts believing he’s American and then he’s betrayed by an event that takes place over which he has no control. My film shows the whole issue from a point of view that you haven’t seen in a 9/11 film before… a viewpoint that isn’t American. And look at the film itself… it has a brown person in the middle of the action supported by A-list Hollywood in the form of the Liev Schreibers and the Kate Hudsons of the world, but it is his story. And that’s a very important story for the youth of today, especially the youth of the subcontinent that still thinks that the grass is greener on the other side.

You struggled for years for the film’s funding and casting…

The challenge was to find Changez and it took me about a year-and-a-half to find Riz Ahmed. I went to many countries, starting with Pakistan, then India and England. I was looking for intelligence and worldliness and, hopefully, sex appeal (laughs), because Pakistani men are extremely alluring for the most part.

I found Riz to be a very interesting combination of an actor, a rapper and a politico. He had sent me an audition tape a year ago but somehow I couldn’t think of him in the role. But at the end of the journey, I said to my casting director: ‘Please find me intelligence and authenticity’ (laughs) and I found that in Riz… someone who is at home spouting Faiz’s poems and equally comfortable as this ruthless corporate guy and then bedding an American woman and then coming back to Pakistan and giving fiery political speeches. You know, my bullshit barometer is very high (laughs) and I had to tide through a lot of mediocrity to get that rare combination in the form of Riz.

After casting Riz, we worked on our screenplay and that was admired by a lot of actors. Liev Schreiber and Kiefer (Sutherland) both said ‘yes’ rightaway and I remember Kiefer repeatedly saying how it would be his “honour” to be a part of the film. One thing he told me was that Americans had been impacted a lot, but they had also made so many mistakes. And that’s what my film is. Every actor wants to do work they are not known for and Kate (Hudson) is this romcom queen, but she wanted to be a part of this film and she wanted to meet me. But her agents had neglected to tell me that she was eight months pregnant (laughs) and the minute I opened the door, I burst out laughing because I was supposed to shoot in a month and she was so heavily pregnant! She knew the film wouldn’t happen with her but we ended up speaking for a few hours and I really loved her. I went off to make the film, but it collapsed because the investor ran away. We were up and running in two months and by that time Kate had given birth and she literally came to the sets with her month-old child and did shots between breast-feeding!

Your first major film Salaam Bombay! re-released in March to celebrate its 25th year. That must have been special…

Oh ya! It was so amazing. For the re-release, we did these digitally remastered prints and I hadn’t seen the film on the big screen for many years. The British Film Institute had done a homage to Salaam Bombay! in its 21st year but since then I hadn’t seen it. To see it again was extremely moving. And making it was such a happy experience because even 25 years ago, it was such a modern film. Nothing in it seems dated and yet no one can make it today because Bombay has changed so much! It was great that we could re-release it on the big screen because the young generation hasn’t really watched Salaam Bombay.

Are you set to take Monsoon Wedding to Broadway next year?

I’ve been cooking it for about four years now and we are almost there. I have a couple of songs to put in and we are entering rehearsals in September. You know, I like the adrenaline of risk and it’s a new step for me. It’s true that I started off with theatre… I came in as a stage actor many years ago… but I hope Monsoon Wedding on Broadway will be a very different encounter. I am really looking forward to it.

You passed up the chance to direct The Twilight Saga: Eclipse and also Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix. Do you regret that?

I have been a part of studio set-ups off and on. It’s great that they asked me and that these actors wanted to work with me, but I was busy with The Reluctant Fundamentalist when Twilight was offered to me and when Harry Potter came my way, I was doing The Namesake. You know, my movies come out of my DNA. Once I am deeply into something that defines me, it’s very difficult for me to jump off and do something completely different, even though it may be lucrative. I really don’t have any regrets, but I am happy that I have been considered for such huge franchises.

I am glad that I am looked on as a filmmaker who speaks to the young and who’s got a finger on their pulse and Twilight and Harry Potter are both franchises that appeal to the young. But honestly, lots of directors... good directors... can make those kind of films, but I feel that I make certain kind of movies that other people may not be able to (smiles).

Which has been your most personal film?

I have to deeply connect with a film to be able to live it and make it. All my films have been close to my heart, whether it was Salaam Bombay which was a tribute to a city on the move or Monsoon Wedding which captured the essence of Indian life and festivity. The Namesake was special because it was so much about so many of us… parenthood, displacement, finding one’s bearings in a foreign land and ultimately coming to terms with life... happily.

Finally, when will Shantaram [starring Johnny Depp and Amitabh Bachchan, based on the bestseller by Gregory David Roberts] get off the ground?

(Laughs out loud) Shantaram is sleeping! We have to wake him up! I would really love to wake him up because it’s an eternal story that would make for such a wonderful film. I am prodding the powers that be, but there’s no action on it yet. I am literally ready to go but it’s actually Warner Bros that holds the reins to it and also Johnny Depp who was so passionate about the script when he first read it. But honestly, I see no movement on the film now. Now that I have finished Reluctant, I will try and see how I can revive it, but I believe it will definitely happen one day if we all put our shoulders to the wheel.