In the 1870 novel “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,” by Jules Verne, the submarine commander Captain Nemo is an often sullen recluse consumed by rage against the imperialist nation that murdered his wife and children. (That would be Britain.) In the 1954 Disney adaptation, in what is arguably his best-known screen representation, Nemo is still sullen, but the object of his outrage is much less clear.
Brought to life by the British actor James Mason, this Nemo plays melancholy tunes on his pipe organ, his anger now directed at a “hated nation” of capitalists and warmongers that seems a lot like Britain, yet goes conspicuously unnamed.
There have been dozens of screen adaptations of the adventure classic over the years, from feature films to TV series to radio plays. Despite their differences — and there have been many — a fairly uniform picture of Captain Nemo has emerged: brooding, relatively sedentary (to be fair, this is a guy who spends a good chunk of his time “under the sea”), 50s-ish, taciturn and almost always white.
The hero of the AMC series “Nautilus,” which premieres on Sunday, is not that Nemo.
He is young, for one, his story beginning with the maiden voyage of the Nautilus, decades before he has had a chance to become jaded and sour. He is also an action hero, battling with swords and cannons and rifles, going mano a mano with a giant squid and riding atop a mammoth harpooned whale swimming at full speed.
“I spent most of that day soaking wet on top of this mechanical whale,” said Shazad Latif, who plays Nemo. “They had to ferry my makeup artist over to me on this little paddle board for redos and touch-ups.”
Most notable, perhaps, this Nemo is Indian, the son of a maharajah. Verne’s Nemo was Indian too, a fact hinted at in “20,000 Leagues” and made explicit in the 1874 sequel, “The Mysterious Island.” In the books, Nemo’s bitter enemy was the British East India Company, whose brutal suppression of the Indian Uprising of 1857 drove the submarine commander to a life of self-imposed exile aboard the Nautilus.
People who know “20,000 Leagues” through only the film and TV adaptations, however, could hardly be expected to know any of this. The role has generally gone to non-Indian actors. Fans of Mason and the Disney classic, and of later adaptations starring actors like Patrick Stewart and Michael Caine, could reasonably assume that Nemo was, like the actors themselves, British and white.
Here’s a look back at some of the most significant Nemo representations onscreen and how they have evolved over more than a century.
‘20,000 Leagues Under the Sea’ (1916)
Allen Holubar
The first feature film to take on Verne’s classic was the 1916 silent “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,” which was billed as “The First Submarine Photoplay Ever Filmed” and starred the American actor Allen Holubar as the Indian prince, sporting vaguely Eastern garb and garish brownface. A mash-up of the original novel and its sequel, the film includes elaborate flashback sequences set in India, a giant octopus, and a feral woman clad in animal skins who runs amok on a South Pacific island.
‘20,000 Leagues Under the Sea’ (1954)
James Mason
Four decades later, the 1954 Disney adaptation starring Mason became a blockbuster hit, setting the standard for adaptations to come with its epic squid battle, its underwater documentary footage and its moments of comic relief (a singing and dancing Kirk Douglas performing “A Whale of a Tale,” jokes about seaweed cigars and blowfish steaks).
“There are some strange moments in that one, like the song that Kirk Douglas does,” Latif said. “But Mason’s an amazing actor, and there are some great moments in it.”
‘Captain Nemo and the Underwater City’ (1969)
Robert Ryan
In 1969, the commander of the Nautilus returned in “Captain Nemo and the Underwater City.” A British production, the film starred two American actors best known for their roles in Hollywood Westerns: Robert Ryan (“The Wild Bunch”) as Nemo and Chuck Connors (“The Rifleman”) as his adversary, the American Senator Robert Fraser.
Other than Latif’s Nemo, Ryan’s version is one of the most congenial, more Willy Wonka than Ahab, with a tender bromance developing between Nemo and Fraser that torments the sub captain’s jealous first mate.
’20,000 Leagues Under the Sea’ (1972)
Rankin/Bass
Three years later, in 1972, the animation company Rankin/Bass (“Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”) created a cartoon version that marked the return of Nemo as tortured soul. In this version, Nemo suffers from survivor’s guilt after his family was lost aboard a ship that was under his command.
‘20,000 Leagues Under the Sea’ (1997)
Michael Caine
In a 1997 mini-series, which aired on ABC, Michael Caine plays Nemo as a strict but otherwise beloved leader. “I am tied to all my men by bonds deeper than blood,” he tells his captive, the marine biologist Pierre Aronnax (Patrick Dempsey), who is smitten first by Nemo, then by his daughter (Mia Sara), whom Nemo keeps holed away in a separate part of the sub.
‘The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen’ (2003)
Naseeruddin Shah
In 2003, Nemo was Indian again, in the action/fantasy film “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.” Resplendent in a Sikh turban and royal blue captain’s coat, curved sword by his side, this Nemo, played by Naseeruddin Shah, boasts a larger, more souped-up Nautilus, martial arts skills and scores of armed troops at his command. He is also one superhero among many, sharing the stage with fantastical versions of Tom Sawyer, Dr. Henry Jekyll, Dorian Gray and others.
Like many people who had seen the Disney movie but had never read the books, Latif discovered that Nemo was South Asian like himself through “Extraordinary Gentlemen,” which he watched in the theater as a teen. (Latif is British; his father was Pakistani.)
“There’s so much of that in literature, isn’t there?” Latif said. “There are so many characters that now we can play in the correct way, which is great, obviously, for me.”
‘Nautilus’ (2025)
Shazad Latif
Latif doesn’t mind following in the footsteps of Michael Caine, James Mason and Patrick Stewart, who played Nemo in the 2005 TV movie “The Mysterious Island.” “These are all people I’ve grown up watching and admiring,” he said. “I’m a big movie buff, so to be alongside those names is something I never would have dreamed of as a child.”
Even so, Latif’s Nemo is unlike any of theirs, and not only because he is explicitly Indian. “Nautilus” roams farther afield of Verne’s vision than just about any other adaptation, with its focus on Nemo as an in-his-prime action hero. As the producer Xavier Marchand put it: “If you read the original text of ‘20,000 Leagues,’ you’ve got to be prepared for pages and pages of descriptions of fish. We wanted to make a big action adventure story.”
Latif called his version “the man before the myth.” Perhaps it is more apt, however, to call him a mythic man in the making.
“You’re getting to see this guy as a younger man, so he’s maybe a bit more idealistic,” Latif said, noting the ways in which Nemo was later shaped by his traumatic experiences under colonialism. But his swashbuckling adventures shaped him as well.
“It’s something Verne hinted at, but we never got to meet him,” Latif continued. “So it was fun to try and play all those things.”
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