The film industry requires its members to quickly develop a thick skin, accepting brickbats as easily as plaudits, something Freida Pinto knows well. From Mumbai to Los Angeles, the Bafta-nominated actress has been dissecting her vulnerabilities and emotions ever since 2008’s Oscar-winning juggernaut Slumdog Millionaire changed her life. Life, at the moment, is good; she is living with her husband, Cory Tran, and their three-year-old son, Rumi-Ray, and watching her latest screen effort unroll — the second season of Surface, a popular Apple TV+ show.
The 40-year-old is new to the psychological thriller starring Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Sophie/ Tess Caldwell, a wealthy amnesiac who is trying to gather the pieces of her life. In the new season, Sophie is sure that her mother’s death several years prior has to do with the secretive Huntley family, which is part of the British aristocracy. The family’s scion Quinn (Phil Dunster) is engaged to Grace, played by Pinto. For Grace, it is a world of privilege and she is unaware of the Huntley family’s narrative.
“She feels like a fish out of water, but she also has the confidence to hold her own in a very powerful family like the Huntleys. We’re given the script ahead of time, so we know what this family is capable of. My character knows what this family is capable of, but there were times when I intentionally chose to forget what actually happens, especially in my scenes with Joely (Richardson, plays the role of Olivia Huntley). I wanted to forget what the script actually says about the Huntleys. So, time and again, I remember every time, going into big scenes where I actually know what happens next, just to kind of remember the fish out of the water, but still confident,” she told t2 over a video call.
Slow-burn moment
As the fiancee of Quinn, Grace is his moral guide. Quinn is trying to “make a good life for the two of them” but there are “forces outside of his own personal control, including family expectations”.
Not helping the situation is the presence of Callum (played by Irish actor Gavin Drea), a journalist, who is trying to reveal the truth about the family. How much can you trust what people are telling you? Are they congruent with their actions, words and thoughts?
As the new season progresses, Grace bonds with the lead character Sophie and becomes aware of the mess in the Huntley household. The first season of the show (in 2022) mostly unfolded in San Francisco where Sophie lived a luxurious lifestyle, married to financier James (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) but she couldn’t live with the reality of not knowing her own secrets. The only clues came in flashes. Those memories had to do with London and a world of aristocracy, luxury and privilege.
Pinto was not a part of the first season but she enjoyed watching it enough to join the cast. “It was one of my pandemic watches because I was looking for something new. Oliver Jackson-Cohen was part of the show, and I wanted to watch it because he was in it. I enjoyed it. It was interesting that a couple of months later I got an opportunity to be part of this show. I was already a big fan. I’m also a fan of slow-burn psychological thrillers, not just things that come at you at lightning speed. So that excited me as well. Knowing the tone of the first season, I was pretty excited to get into the second season, which is much bigger… the picture blows up a lot more,” the Mumbai-born actress said.
‘You’re not alone’
Pinto has also been dedicating time to Freebird Films, a production company she founded. It wants to develop and produce “provocative stories with the intention of challenging stale assumptions, reflecting and celebrating diversity”.
Besides Surface, the 2023 film North Star has also been critically successful. The directorial debut of Kristin Scott Thomas also featured Scarlett Johansson, Sienna Miller and Emily Beechman.
On Surface, she is mostly seen opposite Phil Dunster. “I got so much time with Phil. One of the connecting points is our desire to kind of do something different in this industry, which typically typecasts people once they’ve seen them in something really big. Phil comes from something as massive as Ted Lasso (in which he played the main role of AFC Richmond striker Jamie Tartt) and then it’s about how you break the boundaries of what people see you as. Similarly, for me, after Slumdog Millionaire it’s been that. We also connected on the ways of this industry. When two actors sit and decode, we don’t really come up with real answers, because who knows what this industry is all about, but it gives you a kind of comfort and the sense that you’re not alone; we’re all just looking for answers, and we’re all just trying to do our best,” said the actress with hits like Slumdog Millionaire, Trishna, Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Knight of Cups.
At the end of the day, how does one deal with the truth? “I kind of live in this righteous world in my head. Everyone’s an adult and they should be able to deal with the truth. Also, I’m learning with my child that you don’t have to tell them the truth all the time. But with adults, you just tell them the truth.”
Life is about having an identity and that never stops evolving. As an actor, Pinto knows this better than most of us. “For the good and for the worse. I think that’s human nature. The core of who you are is always there, but then there are layers… that’s life and new phases of life that you enter, the things that you see, traumas that you experience…. If I ever think of myself, where I am today, and who I am today, the core of me, my principles might have stayed the same, but the way I approach things has completely changed. I think it changes every couple of years. I feel Grace in the show also changes from the start of the season to the questioning self, to what the questions lead her to, what the answers to those questions lead her to, and the decisions she makes based on that. I think we all wear masks.”