Radhika turns spy

Actress Radhika Apte will play “spy princess” Noor Inayat Khan in an untitled female-driven World War II drama with Stana Katic and Sarah Megan Thomas.

The Padman actress took to Twitter to reveal the news, as she shared an article, captioning it “Next project :)”.

The film will be based on real-life spies in then British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s “secret army”, the Special Operations Executive (SOE), tasked to “Set Europe Ablaze”, Deadline reported.

Radhika will play Noor — the first female wireless operator to be flown into occupied France during WW II, and the only Indian-origin secret agent of her time. After evading the Gestapo for months and pratically operating on her own following the betrayal of her Resistance circuit, she was finally captured and killed by the Germans at Dachau concentration camp in September 1944.

Noor was born in Moscow to an Indian father and American mother in 1914. Her father was a musician and Sufi teacher, and Noor was raised with strong principles and believed in religious tolerance and non-violence. Her great-great-great-grandfather was Tipu Sultan, the 18th century ruler of Mysore who refused to submit to British rule.

The film will revolve around British intelligence officer Vera Atkins and two of the women she sends into France as spies. Thriller film Equity actress Sarah Megan Thomas will play American Virginia Hall, the other spy, who survied the war.

Stana Katic, who starred in the long-running TV show Castle with Nathan Fillion, will play Atkins.

The film will showcase the sisterhood of these three civilian women “while entangled in missions to turn the tide of the war”, Deadline said.

“Atkins is a crafty recruiter with a secret of her own. Hall is a daring American with a wooden leg who was the first female field agent and ultimately the spy the Nazi’s dubbed ‘the most dangerous of all,’ and Khan is a pacifist of Indian descent who was the first female wireless operator,” said Deadline.

The Darjeeling Limited producer Lydia Dean Pilcher will direct and produce the film.