INTERVIEW: “I Felt Like I Could Completely Be Myself” – Karan Soni & Jonathan Groff Discuss A Nice Indian Boy

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When I enter the Zoom, Jonathan Groff is singing.

“It was a little Beyonce,” he says, to which I compliment the warm welcome to what can otherwise be a stressful experience of trying to rush through questions in the short span of eight minutes. Such is junket life.

“He’s been doing it to everyone,” Karan Soni chimes in, grinning, “so I’m just letting you know.”

It’s an interaction that feels pulled from their new film, A Nice Indian Boy, which stars Soni as Naveen Gavaskar, who finds himself enamoured by Goff’s Jay Kurundkar when he comes to take his photo at the hospital he works in.

The two get swept up in a whirlwind romance, and Naveen proposes to Jay before bringing him home to meet his traditional Indian family, where their romantic bubble bursts.

Soni and Groff have clearly nurtured their friendship, which translates on screen beautifully in Roshan Sethi’s third feature film, A Nice Indian Boy.

First premiering in March 2024 at the South by Southwest Film Festival, it is now heading for its theatrical release on April 4, where audiences will finally get to see the magic of the film currently clutching firmly at its 100% on Rotten Tomatoes.

When I ask Soni for the moment in the script that made him say yes to playing the role of Naveen, he reveals, “It was the opening scene.”

“I grew up in India going to many weddings just sitting on the sidelines as a family member, watching two straight people get married over and over again and being like, ‘I’ll probably never see a gay version of this,’” he shares.

A Nice Indian Boy opens on the wedding of Naveen’s sister, Arundhathi, where the traditional commentary of “you next” is thrown at Naveen from various family members. A scenario many are familiar with.

“I didn’t really understand in a way how not healthy that is,” Soni says, “I remember this really weird feeling where I was like, ‘It’s so cool that we’re capturing this image of the traditional Indian ceremony with two men.’”

Groff recalls reading that scene for the first time, saying, “It was so evocative.”

For him, he was drawn in by the unconventional final act.

“I was, I guess, anticipating what would be the end of the story,” Groff says. “The sort of final coming together of the romantic story, but it then became about the family and the wedding and all of that. That, to me, was so beautiful and surprising.”

While Naveen and Jay’s romance is the sun A Nice Indian Boy orbits around, many love stories run through the film. We have a love story between mother and daughter, brother and sister, father and son-in-law. It feels like a remedy to the hostile environments love is currently facing in corners of the Western world.

“It is a love story about these two people,” says Groff. “But, in a broader sense, it’s a love story about joining somebody’s family. The last third of [A Nice Indian Boy] was such a beautiful surprise to me that made me want to be a part of it.”

A Nice Indian Boy was made in the dawning days before the strike.

“The movie was in pre-production before the strike was announced,” says Soni, revealing that the plan had to adjust in order to film before productions shut down. “[Production] got condensed more than it even needed to be, but that just meant that we were bonding through work and just there working all the time.”

“It was a really intense shooting schedule,” Groff recalls. “Six-day weeks.”

But that intensity bore camaraderie, and Groff and Soni speak with reverie about their time working on the film.

“Working on the movie gave me hope,” says Groff. “To be in an environment where Karan is bringing his full self and Roshan [Sethi] is bringing his full self, it trickled down through every department. There was this mission that everybody had. A north star of who they are and the story they were wanting to tell.”

There are films you watch where the energy from the cast and crew radiates back to the audience. A Nice Indian Boy is one of those rare gems. There’s a warmth flowing through it that makes it clear why the reviews are throwing out plaudits like “endearing”, “swoon-worthy”, and “absolutely hilarious”.

“Oftentimes you can have good experiences, but it doesn’t necessarily translate to the film,” Groff says. “The hope I was given was ‘Wow, really amazing kind people can be starring in and directing a film, telling a story from their heart, and it can be a great movie.’ You don’t have to have the drama, the trauma. They really led with their hearts on this one and made a beautiful film.”

Soni’s reflection on what this film instilled in him was personal.

“I was told early on in Hollywood when I started in 2010 that I can’t be two things,” he says. “They were like, ‘You’re Indian and gay. You can’t have both. You’ve got to pick one. You can’t have two marks against yourself.’”

Soni reflects on his reaction to this and remembers thinking, “I can’t change the color of my skin, so I’m just gonna let this gay part of me sort of die down in my work life, and it can thrive in my personal life.”

This sort of experience, though uncommon, still feels shocking. Soni reflects on how this early interaction in the business had a knock-on effect on how he navigated on-set life.

“I didn’t understand how bad that is to do for so long because so much of my life has been spent – luckily – on sets, but I didn’t realize how much of myself I was turning off, even in little interactions between takes and stuff,” he says.

A Nice Indian Boy gave him a chance to change the narrative.

“On this movie, I felt like I could completely be myself,” he says. “It was so nice. Then I had this revelation where I’m like, ‘It doesn’t matter. Moving forward, I’m just gonna be myself.’ I don’t really care as much anymore. I think it’s also getting older and stuff, but the movie really gave me permission to be like, ‘The world didn’t end. Nothing bad happened.’”

“I thought my work was better,” he continues. “I needed the permission in a safe space to fully be myself on a set. This movie helped with that.”