Poorna Jagannathan on facing ‘intense ageism’ in Hindi cinema: They couldn’t ever cast me

New Delhi, Mar 4 (PTI) Actor Poorna Jagannathan, known for “The Night Of” and “Never Have I Ever”, says she would have loved to work in more Hindi films post her debut with “Delhi Belly” but the intense ageism that she encountered left her feeling “underestimated”.

The industry landscape has overhauled now due to the arrival of streaming services but when Jagannathan was in India, she said the filmmakers just couldn’t place her in the right roles.

“I felt like they couldn’t ever cast me… When I landed in India, I was 40 years old, I had a child and they had no idea what to do with me or how to place me. The streaming culture has really affected who gets to tell stories now, but there was a very particular type of actress that would play different roles. And my Hindi is not great, so there was a language barrier,” Jagannathan told PTI in an interview.

The only full-fledged movie she did in India was Abhinay Deo’s 2011 film “Delhi Belly”, a dark comedy which became popular for its edgy and adult humour.

The movie, which had a mix of English and Hindi, starred Imran Khan, Kunaal Roy Kapur and Vir Das as three struggling roommates who find themselves being hunted by a ruthless gangster.

Despite the film’s success, the actor said she found it difficult to get roles.

“I did ‘Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani’ but I just felt underestimated. There was just no role for me. There was intense ageism in the industry when I was there. Things have really shifted. Priyanka, Deepika and all these people are really shifting what it means to be a woman in their forties, but not when I was there. I felt like I would’ve loved to have worked more, but it just didn’t happen,” Jagannathan said.

Jagannathan found critical acclaim in Hollywood with her role of Safar Khan, a Pakistani-American whose son (Riz Ahmed) is jailed in a murder case.

The success of the show led to roles in “The Blacklist”, “Better Call Saul”, “Ramy”, “Big Little Lies” and “Never Have I Ever”. She was most recently seen in the George Clooney and Brad Pitt-starrer crime comedy “Wolfs”.

Her latest series is “Deli Boys”, a comedy about two Pakistani-American brothers (Asif Ali and Saagar Shaikh) who unexpectedly inherit their father’s illegal empire after his sudden death.

“It’s like ‘Deli Boys’ and ‘Delhi Belly’ have some crossover in terms of their humour and sensibility. It’s both very absurd. It’s very dark, it is very physical. And that is completely my sense of humour.

“When I read ‘Deli Boys’, I was like, ‘Absolutely 1000%’ and just by reading the first episode… Very few scripts are written for jokes nowadays. ‘Deli Boys’ just writes for comedy. It’s a vehicle for the audiences to laugh their a**es off. So, I loved getting a script like this.”

She plays the role of Lucky, who can “cook biryani and cocaine with equal talent”.

“Imagine playing a gangster and a cocaine drug lord at 52. It’s like a fantasy. I always say I have a teenage son and you have to out-gangster them every morning when you wake up,” she added.

And there is a fun story behind how she found the character in a Parsi woman she met at a restaurant in Toronto.

“I was with my mother and this Parsi lady was there with her two grown sons. And just the way she spoke to us, the Parsis are so wonderful and so delicate, but when she wiped the food off hers, like a 28-year-old son, I was like, ‘This is it. I have found her in a Parsi lady in Toronto’,” Jagannathan said.

“Deli Boys” blends crime, comedy, and family drama while also exploring themes of identity, the immigrant experience, and the allure of the American Dream from a South Asian perspective.

Asked about the changes she has seen in the portrayal of South Asian immigrants in the west, Jagannathan said her career in Hollywood can be a case study.

“I can really do the trajectory of my career on the evolution of the writing and the characters. I’d play only very stereotypical characters in the beginning, only like a couple of lines as a nurse or a doctor, down to having the privilege of playing Lucky now,” the actor said.

She also compared “Deli Boys” to Netflix’s “Beef”, not in tone, but in how it marks a new phase of representation.

“It is like representation 2.0. What happens after? What does it look like after we’ve told our stories and we go to the next level? It can take many different forms. It can take the form of a road rage story or it can be about protecting your cocaine empire. But our ethnicities and where we come from, who we are and the fact that I’m an immigrant woman, is never lost but it’s just interwoven into a bigger plot point.”

As an actor, Jagannathan said she was yearning to tell stories outside the identity narrative.

“It was my dream to play an immigrant mom and I’ve never ever seen a three dimensional character of an immigrant mom portrayed. So ‘Never Have I Ever’ was a real gift.

“And I was dying to do something like the role of Lucky, dying to just be out there, completely, very much who she is and very much unexpected at the same time. It’s a delightful character,” said Jagannathan.

“Deli Boys” is created by Abdullah Saeed and developed by Jenni Konner and Nora Silver under Jenni Konner Productions. Michelle Nader is the showrunner and also executive produces the show alongside Saeed, Konner and Silver.

The series, which hails from Onyx Collective and is produced by 20th Television, will start streaming on JioHotstar from March 6.