All the actors except Dev Patel were cast by me. Initially, the film was meant to be completely in English, so we had a collaborator in Great Britain who was trying to cast the film. But we decided to cast Indians for the other characters because the story didn't come alive with actors from the UK or America.

We were not happy with the people we saw here for Dev Patel's part, which is the oldest version of the Jamal Malik character. It needed to be a good actor, around 18, someone who could match the performance of the two other actors playing that character in the younger age groups.

The casting took a long time -- I started in March 2007 and went on until October. To match people in three age groups, you really have to spread your web. I looked across five cities in India -- Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Bangalore and Jaipur.

Since the film was meant to be completely in English initially, I visited schools. But as I went through the process, I realised that the youngest ages of Jamal, his brother Salim and Latika had to be in Hindi. Middle class, educated kids of that age -- six and seven -- have very little inhibitions. You don't get that special quality from educated, middle class children. So I convinced Danny that we should shoot the youngest age in Hindi.

This led to another process where I had to go to the slums of Mumbai and Delhi and find kids who could act; kids who have the attitude, the performance level etc. It was hard, because they don't have the exposure and experience of professional actors. There are 6-year-old kids in Mumbai who do ads, but they are very pushy, which is not ideal for our project. The street kids had the qualities we needed; it was then about getting performances out of them.

We saw at least 100 children for each part and finally, found Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail to play Salim, and Rubiana Ali to play Latika, in the slums of Mahim (northcentral Mumbai). We found the actor to play the young Jamal, Ayush Khedekar, in the suburbs of Mumbai. He is the son of a Marathi theatre actor named Mahesh Khedekar. Mahesh is a regular parent who had a dream for his son and also the right discipline.

Since this age group was to be shot in Hindi, I wrote the dialogue for one-third of the film and eventually became the co-director of the film so that I could direct these Hindi portions.

The producers insisted that the next age group had to be shot in English, as the money was coming from the UK to make an English language film. They would say that I was trying to sabotage the film because I'd already converted one third of the film to Hindi! So we stuck to English for the 12-13 age group and the 18-19 age group, as was earlier intended.

For the middle age group, we found the boys in Campion school in south Mumbai. Tanmay Chheda plays Jamal, and Ashutosh Lobo Gajiwala plays Salim. We needed a dancer for Latika's part, so we took Tanvi Ganesh Lonkar, a dancer. This was the toughest part to cast, especially the two boys. This age group -- 12 and 13 -- is a very tricky one. It's the pre-adolescent age group. It's a funny time in your life when you are confused because of initial feelings of maturity, sexuality and love. Also, the boys are playing street kids when they're actually not.

We had to get the age right. We couldn't cast a 10-year-old because if you go slightly younger, it would be like imposing something on them, and that would look foolish.

For the third age group, we found Dev Patel in London. We saw a lot of Bollywood actors for the part, but they either felt too old -- even a 22 -- or 24-year-old looks very mature for Jamal's character at 18 -- or lacked that purity and innocence. The other thing was that all these actors in this age group are trying to build their muscles and look tough. We had to start shooting soon, and if we didn't find the 18-year Jamal we couldn't lock the younger actors. So in order to make the film on time, Dev Patel was cast from UK.

We cast Freida Pinto as Latika. Freida is a model, she is very warm, affectionate and grounded, which was important for the part.

Madhur Mithal plays Salim. He had won the reality talent show Boogie Woogie as a child by impersonating Michael Jackson. He comes from Agra, and after the win, the family moved to Mumbai so that he could find work as a full-time entertainer. He was 16 when I first met him, and 17 by the time we started shooting the film. Since he plays the older brother to Jamal, we had to make him look older -- we gave him coats and gold chains so that he could look and feel older.

And then there were a whole host of other actors like Anil Kapoor, Irrfan Khan, Mahesh Manjrekar and Saurabh Shukla.

In the picture: Loveleen with Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail (who plays Salim) and Ayush Khedekar (who plays Jamal)

Also Read: Review: Slumdog Millionaire

Back

|

Next